English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For March 13/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Second Letter to the Corinthians/09/1a.05-15./Now it is not necessary for me to write to you about the ministry to the saints, So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you, and arrange in advance for this bountiful gift that you have promised, so that it may be ready as a voluntary gift and not as an extortion. The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written, ‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.’He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 12-13/2023
What Does The Lost Son Parable Teach Us/Elias Bejjani/March 12/2023
Al-Rahi rejects 'vetoes' and 'imposed' president and welcomes Saudi-Iran rapprochement3
Archbishop Aoudi On The Women's Day: Why don't we hand over the state and the country to the women, like pioneering countries, because of them
The Israeli army is carrying out a combing operation at the Lebanese border
Berri reportedly preparing to visit Saudi Arabia
Geagea: All economic solutions cannot reach a conclusion unless the state regains its sovereignty and authority
Lebanon's Rabih El-Sakka reaps victory in WPC World Cup in Egypt
Al-Murtada, Russian ambassador tour plastic art exhibition at National Library

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 12-13/2023
Israeli strikes on Syria kill two pro-Iran fighters
Syrian state media: Israel fires missiles at western city
Israel hits areas in Syria's Hama and Tartous countryside - Syrian state media
Saudi-Iran detente: a setback for Israel and wake-up call on US ties
Saudi deal with Iran worries Israel, shakes up Middle East
Iran upholds death sentence of Swedish-Iranian Arab dissident
US accuses Iran of cruel false prisoner swap claims
Russian advance stalls in Ukraine's Bakhmut, think tank says
Putin ‘expected to attend G20 summit in India’ after Kremlin clears diary
Russian wives beg Putin to stop sending husbands into 'meat grinder'
Hundreds of Russians killed in Bahkmut battle as snipers ‘create killing zone’
Russia 'Protecting The Children Of Elites' From The Impact Of The War In Ukraine, Says UK
North Korea Says It’s Adopting Steps to Deter ‘War Provocations’

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 12-13/2023
India’s rampaging rise threatens to tip world’s fragile balance of power/Ben Wright/The Telegraph/March 12/2023
China's War Warnings/Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute/March 12, 2023
Convert, Marry Me, or Die by Acid: Christian Women in Muslim Pakistan/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute./March 12, 2023
Saudi Iranian Relations…Are Things Changing?/Tariq Al-Homayed//Asharq Al Awsat/March 12/2023
Are We Nearing the End of Saudi-US Dispute?/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/March 12/2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 12-13/2023
What Does The Lost Son Parable Teach Us
Elias Bejjani/March 12/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/73276/elias-bejjani-values-that-we-can-we-learn-from-the-lost-son-parable/
In our Maronite Catholic Church’s rite, on the Fourth Lent Sunday we recall and cite the biblical Lost Son’s parable that is known also as The Prodigal Son. (Lost Son) This impulsive, selfish and thoughtless son, as the parable tells us, fell prey to evil’s temptation and decided to take his share of his father’s inheritance and leave the parental dwelling.
He travelled to a far-away city where he indulged badly in all evil conducts of pleasure and corruption until he lost all his money and became penniless. He experienced severe poverty, starvation, humiliation and loneliness. In the midst of his dire hardships he felt nostalgic, came back to his senses and decided with great self confidence to return back to his father’s house, kneel on his feet and ask him for forgiveness. On his return his loving and kind father received him with rejoice, open arms, accepted his repentance, and happily forgave him all his misdeeds. Because of his sincere repentance his Father gave him back all his privileges as a son. This parable is a road map for repentance and forgiveness. It shows us how much Almighty God our Father loves us, we His children and how He is always ready with open arms and willing to forgive our sins and trespasses when we come back to our senses, recognize right from wrong, admit our weaknesses and wrongdoings, eagerly and freely return to Him and with faith and repentance ask for His forgiveness. Asking Almighty God for what ever we need is exactly what the Holy Bible instructs us to do when encountering all kinds of doubt, weaknesses, stumbling, hard times, sickness, loneliness, persecution, injustice etc.Matthew 07/07&08: “Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened” All what we have to do is to pray and to ask Him with faith, self confidence and humility and He will respond. Matthew 21/22: “All things, whatever you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”
We are not left alone at any time, especially when in trouble, no matter how far we distance ourselves from God and disobey His Holy bible. He is a Father, a loving, caring and forgiving Father. What is definite is that in spite of our foolishness, stupidity, ignorance, defiance and ingratitude He never ever abandons us or gives up on our salvation. He loves us because we His are children. He happily sent His only begotten son to be tortured, humiliated and crucified in a bid to absolve our original sin.’ God carries our burdens and helps us to fight all kinds of Evil temptations.
Matthew11/28-30: “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
God is waiting for our repentance, let us run to Him and ask for forgiveness before it is too late

Al-Rahi rejects 'vetoes' and 'imposed' president and welcomes Saudi-Iran rapprochement
Naharnet/NNA/March 12/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/116514/%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a8%d8%b7-%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%af%d9%8a%d9%88-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%82%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%b3-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b0%d9%8a-%d8%aa%d8%b1%d8%a3%d8%b3%d9%87-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d9%88%d9%85-12-%d8%a2%d8%b0/
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Sunday rejected that a president be “imposed” on the Lebanese as well as “vetoes” on presidential candidates. “The major crime that the nation’s MPs are committing is the failure to elect a president due to vetoes on this or that candidate,” al-Rahi said in a sermon. “Where does the right to impose a veto or a candidate come from? If you want dialogue, you should impartially discuss the country’s current domestic and external needs and you should vote daily, as stipulated by the constitution,” the patriarch added. “Let the best and most appropriate president be elected in the current circumstances,” he said. Separately, al-Rahi welcomed the rapprochement deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, saying their relations had been severed due to “the failure to respect the sovereignty of each of the two countries and the interferences in their domestic affairs, which strained the relations and the domestic and regional ties in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and some Gulf nations.”“We bless this step… and hope that it happens here in Lebanon, which should restore its natural identity, which is neutrality, and should be distanced from foreign conflicts, disputes and wars,” al-Rahi went on to say.
NNA/Marcvh 12/2023/Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros Rahi on Sunday warmly welcomed the recent normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. "We welcome the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and we bless this step, which falls within the framework of political reconciliation," Rahi said in his message this Sunday from Bkerke, hoping that this reconciliation will be translated positively on the domestic arena. The patriarch spoke about the crime committed by the nation’s deputies, which is not electing a president due to vetoes,” stressing the need for daily voting as required by the constitution.

Archbishop Aoudi On The  Women's Day: Why don't we hand over the state and the country to the women, like pioneering countries, because of them
LCCC/NNA/March 12/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/116514/%d8%b1%d8%a7%d8%a8%d8%b7-%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%af%d9%8a%d9%88-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%82%d8%af%d8%a7%d8%b3-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%b0%d9%8a-%d8%aa%d8%b1%d8%a3%d8%b3%d9%87-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d9%88%d9%85-12-%d8%a2%d8%b0/
In sermon today, Archbishop Aoudi said;  "A few days ago, the world celebrated Women's Day. Many of us know that no matter what they do, they do not repay a woman with part of what she gives. She is the mother, the educator, the loving wife, the one who embraces and unites her family. Who leads the family with love, devotion and sacrifice, can she be stingy with her gifts for her country?" It is unfortunate for us that men block the way for pioneering women who are enthusiastic about working in the public field, sharing responsibility with men, and serving the country and society, and they may be more successful than men because they are more patient, more positive and generous, and reject injustice, violence and war. On this occasion, we can only think of what will happen. The situation would be if a woman was elected to the presidency of the republic. Since the establishment of the state in Lebanon, we have only seen men in the presidency, who were sometimes strong, capable, and sometimes incapable. Lebanon has not experienced women in leadership positions, as if women are marginalized, oppressed, and prevented from completing a leadership role. There is no doubt that she will succeed in it, which may constitute an inferiority complex for some males, and their weakness caused by their sitting on their thrones, which they consider property, will appear. Women do not know how to sit and rest, whether they are mothers, housewives, employees, or wherever they are. So why, then, does she not surrender? woman Who is the ruler of the affairs of the state and the country, like many countries that have become pioneers thanks to their presidents? Our students also celebrated their teachers on the occasion of Teacher's Day. The successful teacher creates successful generations. He raises his students to love knowledge and critical sense, and teaches them what helps them develop their abilities and develop their skills. A great teacher is inspiring to his students. He is "a hermit who devoted himself to serving knowledge just as a hermit devoted himself to serving religion," as one of the writers says.
He continued, "It is unfortunate that the difficult situation we are going through has made the teacher preoccupied with how to provide a decent life for his family instead of caring about his educational mission. The teacher, like all Lebanese people, suffers, and does not find a listening ear with officials, while today we need teachers more than we need politicians." The entire educational system suffers, as neither the parents are able to bear the burdens of educating their children, the teacher is not able to secure the lives of his children so that he can devote himself to his profession, and the educational institutions are not able to bear the cost of education, the cost of employment, and the assistance of those who should be helped as in the past, due to the financial, economic and political collapse. And because of the delay in electing a president with a clear vision and a reform program who would lead the country with his government to save the general situation and the educational situation that was Lebanon's distinguishing feature. In the shadow of failed policies, and the absence of conscience, which is the inner teacher that guides a person to goodness, truth, and righteousness, so when will salvation be? When will officials feel what the teacher and the entire people are suffering from?
And he concluded: "We raise prayers for the Lord to enlighten our lives with His uncreated light, which St. Gregory Palamas taught us about. We also pray for everyone to know that God is love, and love requires communication with the Beloved, and who else but God is our beloved and our sister. Our prayer is that the Lord preserves May God bless all women, male and female teachers, to pursue their message, and may He protect you all with the intercessions of the Holy Mother of God.”

The Israeli army is carrying out a combing operation at the Lebanese border
LCCC/March 12/2023
Today, Sunday, the Israeli army announced a combing operation on the border with Lebanon, after two explosions and gunfire occurred near the city of Nahariya. And Israeli media had pointed out that "the Israeli army is verifying reports of gunfire at the border with Lebanon." Israeli sources had referred to "a report of a security incident on the fence separating Lebanon." This coincided with "the flight of Israeli helicopters on the Lebanese border." On the Lebanese side, there was no indication of any security incident taking place from Lebanese territory. The information said that the video of the helicopters, which spread, is of a weekly routine air patrol that takes place in the airspace of the colonies. According to information, the Israeli enemy army "is conducting a limited maneuver in the vicinity of the Ruwaisat al-Alam site in the Shebaa Farms, with the participation of a drone." In the morning hours, explosions were heard in some areas of the south. This is what the sources considered as normal routine exercises carried out by Hezbollah.

Berri reportedly preparing to visit Saudi Arabia
Naharnet/Sun, March 12, 2023
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri is preparing to visit Riyadh in the coming period, should circumstances allow him to carry out such a visit, highly informed sources have said. “He will try to play a certain role that would allow for reconciling viewpoints between his Hezbollah-led political camp and Saudi officials,” the sources told the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper in remarks published Saturday. The Speaker “will discuss means to resolve the Lebanese crisis, starting by the presidential juncture,” the sources added. The report comes a few hours after Saudi Arabia and Iran announced that they have decided to restore diplomatic ties following years of tensions.

Geagea: All economic solutions cannot reach a conclusion unless the state regains its sovereignty and authority
NNA/Sun, March 12, 2023
Head of the "Lebanese Forces" Party, Samir Geagea, confirmed that "the solution to get out of the current situation is not economic, but rather political." He added: "All the economic crises we are witnessing are symptoms of the actual crisis, so all possible economic solutions cannot lead to any results unless the state regains its sovereignty, authority, and prestige, and a radical change occurs in the state's administration." In this context, Geagea stressed that the entrance to the solution to these crises that we live is by the presidential elections. The LF leader stressed that one of the characteristics of the next president is that he should not be from the other party or any figurehead candidate who cannot play the role of the actual president of the republic as it should be. "The presidential battle is local, but there are those who insist on linking it to regional and international developments...," he explained. Geagea pointed out that "we are continuing to nominate Michel Moawad at the present time, but we are open to consulting with the opposition forces on any alternative name that has the required specifications."Geagea's words came during the second annual closed meeting of the "Lebanese Forces" in Bsharri, held at the party's headquarters in Maarab.

Lebanon's Rabih El-Sakka reaps victory in WPC World Cup in Egypt
NNA/Sun, March 12, 2023
Lebanese sports player, Rabih Mustafa El-Sakka, from Sidon, was crowned world champion in physical strength after partaking in the WPC World Cup in Egypt, with the participation of champions from 19 countries. Sakka won the gold medal for the fourth time in a row, setting a new world record in the bench press, and the highest number in the championship, and was honored as the best athlete. Sakka dedicated his victory to the Lebanese people in general, and the people of his city Sidon in particular, stressing that it was "a new achievement through which he wished to bring joy to the hearts of the Lebanese."

Al-Murtada, Russian ambassador tour plastic art exhibition at National Library
NNA/Sun, March 12, 2023
Caretaker Minister of Culture Mohammad al-Murtada and Russian ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Rudakov, toured the plastic art exhibition by artists from Russia and Lebanon, which was held as part of the activities of the Russian Culture Festival in Lebanon at the headquarters of the National Library.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 12-13/2023
Israeli strikes on Syria kill two pro-Iran fighters
Agence France Presse/Sun, March 12, 2023
Israeli airstrikes targeting a weapons depot in Syria on Sunday killed two pro-Iran fighters and wounded three soldiers, a war monitor said. "Israeli strikes targeted a weapons depot belonging to pro-Iran forces located... between Tartus and Hama provinces," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "Two pro-Iran fighters were killed and three Syrian soldiers were wounded," he told AFP. Syrian state news agency SANA, citing a military source, reported that "at around 7:15 am (0415 GMT), the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack, firing missiles from the direction of north Lebanon with targets in the Tartus and Hama countryside." SANA did not specify the target, but said the attack "wounded three soldiers and caused some material losses," adding that Syrian air defences intercepted some of the missiles. The Israeli military said it did not comment "on reports in the foreign media". Since Syria's civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against its northern neighbour, targeting government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Lebanon's Hezbollah fighters. The Israeli military rarely comments on individual strikes against Syria, but has vowed repeatedly to keep up its air campaign to stop arch foe Iran consolidating its presence. On Tuesday, Israeli warplanes killed three people in a raid on the airport in Aleppo, Syria's second city, the Observatory said. On February 19, an Israeli airstrike killed 15 people in a Damascus district that houses state security agencies, according to the war monitor.

Syrian state media: Israel fires missiles at western city
BEIRUT (AP)/Sun, March 12, 2023
Israeli missiles targeted a western Syrian city on Sunday wounding three Syrian soldiers, Syrian state media reported. The official news agency SANA, citing a military source, said the missiles were fired at Masyaf in Hama province at dawn. Syria's air defenses shot several of them down. No deaths were reported. Photos from SANA show that the missiles may have landed on farmland. There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has staged hundreds of strikes on targets in Syria over the years. However, it rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. It says it targets bases of Iran-allied militias, notably Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group. Hezbollah has fighters deployed in Syria and fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government forces. Israel also says it targets arms shipments believed to be bound for the militias. Israel previously attacked Masyaf in May and August 2022 killing five people and wounding two. According to the Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attacks targeted weapons depots belonging to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and Iran-backed militias.

Israel hits areas in Syria's Hama and Tartous countryside - Syrian state media
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi/AMMAN (Reuters)/Sun, March 12, 2023
Israel launched several rocket strikes on areas in Syria's Hama province and the coastal Tartous countryside on Sunday, Syrian state media reported. Rockets flew from across northern Lebanon towards their targets, with three military personnel injured according to the report, which gave no further details. An Israeli military spokesperson declined comment. An Israeli air strike knocked Aleppo airport out of service on Tuesday and caused "material damage" to the airport, according to Syrian state media. Western intelligence sources say the airport attack targeted Iranian arms shipments delivered by air under the cover of humanitarian aid and relief air by dozens of planes that were landing at the airport for people affected by last month's earthquake. Israel has in recent months intensified strikes on Syrian airports and air bases to disrupt Iran's increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah. Israel has for years carried out attacks against what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran's influence has grown since it began supporting President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war that began in 2011. The strikes are part of an escalation of what has been a low-intensity conflict termed a "war between wars", whose goal was to slow Iran's entrenchment in Syria, Israeli military experts say. Iran's proxy militias, led by Hezbollah, now hold sway in vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and in several suburbs around the capital.

Saudi-Iran detente: a setback for Israel and wake-up call on US ties
Dan Williams/Reuters/March 12, 2023
- The Saudi-Iran detente sets back Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to isolate Tehran, but time will tell whether it also hinders his outreach to Riyadh or planning for any eventual military strike against Iranian nuclear sites.
The more pressing worry for Israel, some experts argue, is that Friday's Chinese-brokered deal between the top Sunni and Shi'ite Muslim powers suggests the United States is giving ground in the region just when the Netanyahu government needs it most.
An Israeli official who requested anonymity described the detente as an unsurprising and preliminary process that should not hinder any parallel progress toward normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. After all, Israel has drawn close to the United Arab Emirates despite Abu Dhabi also engaging Tehran. Meanwhile, Israel is keeping up a campaign of veiled threats to attack Iran alone if it deems nuclear diplomacy a dead end.
But all scenarios still hinge on Washington - a sponsor and sweetener of Israeli-Arab peace accords and guardian ally which, if it red-lights military action, Israel will be loath to cross. "This is a brilliant stroke by China and Iran to undercut Saudi-American and Saudi-Israeli normalisation. It helps bring Tehran in from the cold and undermines American and Israeli efforts to build a regional coalition to confront Iran as it is on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies in Washington.
There are unrelated strains on the Israeli-U.S. alliance, however. The Democratic administration of President Joe Biden, which has yet to invite Netanyahu to the White House, has voiced unusually strong concern at his religious-nationalist coalition.
Netanyahu is also beset by unprecedented mass demonstrations in Israel against his judicial overhaul push. The protests have included pledges by some air force reservists not to turn up for training, a signal that combat readiness and morale have been shaken.
WAKE-UP CALL
Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief under Netanyahu, said the Saudi-Iran detente should be a wake-up call. "The government's focus on the judicial overhaul, which is tearing the nation apart and weakening Israel in all dimensions, reflects a deep disconnect between Netanyahu and international geopolitical trends," Yadlin said on Twitter. Accusing Netanyahu of "generating extraordinary damage to our national security," Yadlin said he should scrap the reforms - which critics call an attempt to subordinates the courts to the government - and close ranks with Biden on how to forge Israeli-Saudi ties and jointly tackle Iran's nuclear programme. That suggested that Yadlin - who was among pilots who bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 and served as a top general during Israel's 2007 attack on a suspected reactor in Syria - may not place much store in Israel's ability to go solo against Iran, whose nuclear sites are distant, dispersed and defended.
Similarly, Ehud Barak, a former Netanyahu defence minister turned political critic, described Iran as "marching confidently towards becoming a de facto nuclear threshold state". "U.S.-Israeli coordination appears to be strong in the defence sphere but weak and in need of change in the offence sphere," he wrote in the best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth daily. Iran denies seeking nuclear weaponry. Eitan Ben-David, a former Netanyahu deputy national security adviser, said Israel was building up capacity to take unilateral military action of necessary, with the U.S. partnership and possible Gulf Arab alliances being of secondary priority. Saudi Arabia remained aware of the key U.S. role in the region and of the value of bilateral ties with Israel, he said.
"Today, too, there is a vigorous effort to deepen and renew and advance these ties - with U.S. involvement, of course, but also directly," Ben-David told Israel's Kan public radio. The New York Times reported over the weekend that, in return for normalising relations with Israel, Riyadh wanted help with developing a civilian nuclear programme and fewer restrictions on U.S. arms purchases. Yadlin warned against Netanyahu, squeezed politically at home and at odds with the White House, accommodating such demands "in his alacrity to hold up a Saudi peace plan as an achievement". The Saudi government's media office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the New York Times report. Saudi Arabia has linked any move by the kingdom to normalise ties with Israel to a resolution of Palestinian statehood goals.
For its part, the White House appeared to downplay China's involvement in Friday's development. Its national security spokesperson John Kirby said the White House believes internal and external pressure, including effective Saudi deterrence against attacks from Iran or its proxies, ultimately brought Tehran to the table.
(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by William Maclean)

Saudi deal with Iran worries Israel, shakes up Middle East
Associated Press/Sun, March 12, 2023
News of the rapprochement between long-time regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran has sent shockwaves through the Middle East and dealt a symbolic blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made the threat posed by Tehran a public diplomacy priority and personal crusade.
The breakthrough — a culmination of more than a year of negotiations in Baghdad and more recent talks in China — also became ensnared in Israel's internal politics, reflecting the country's divisions at a moment of national turmoil.
The agreement, which gives Iran and Saudi Arabia two months to reopen their respective embassies and re-establish ties after seven years of rupture, more broadly represents one of the most striking shifts in Middle Eastern diplomacy over recent years. In countries like Yemen and Syria, long caught between the Sunni kingdom and the Shiite powerhouse, the announcement stirred cautious optimism.
In Israel, it caused disappointment — along with finger-pointing.
One of Netanyahu's greatest foreign policy triumphs remains Israel's U.S.-brokered normalization deals in 2020 with four Arab states, including Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. They were part of a wider push to isolate and oppose Iran in the region.
He has portrayed himself as the only politician capable of protecting Israel from Tehran's rapidly accelerating nuclear program and regional proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel and Iran have also waged a regional shadow war that has led to suspected Iranian drone strikes on Israeli-linked ships ferrying goods in the Persian Gulf, among other attacks. A normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful and wealthy Arab state, would fulfill Netanyahu's prized goal, reshaping the region and boosting Israel's standing in historic ways. Even as backdoor relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have grown, the kingdom has said it won't officially recognize Israel before a resolution to the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since returning to office late last year, Netanyahu and his allies have hinted that a deal with the kingdom could be approaching. In a speech to American Jewish leaders last month, Netanyahu described a peace agreement as "a goal that we are working on in parallel with the goal of stopping Iran." But experts say the Saudi-Iran deal that announced Friday has thrown cold water on those ambitions. Saudi Arabia's decision to engage with its regional rival has left Israel largely alone as it leads the charge for diplomatic isolation of Iran and threats of a unilateral military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The UAE also resumed formal relations with Iran last year.
"It's a blow to Israel's notion and efforts in recent years to try to form an anti-Iran bloc in the region," said Yoel Guzansky, an expert on the Persian Gulf at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank. "If you see the Middle East as a zero-sum game, which Israel and Iran do, a diplomatic win for Iran is very bad news for Israel." Even Danny Danon, a Netanyahu ally and former Israeli ambassador to the U.N. who recently predicted a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia in 2023, seemed disconcerted. "This is not supporting our efforts," he said, when asked about whether the rapprochement hurt chances for the kingdom's recognition of Israel. In Yemen, where the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran has played out with the most destructive consequences, both warring parties were guarded, but hopeful. A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen's conflict in 2015, months after the Iran-backed Houthi militias seized the capital of Sanaa in 2014, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Houthi rebels welcomed the agreement as a modest but positive step. "The region needs the return of normal relations between its countries, through which the Islamic society can regain security lost from foreign interventions," said Houthi spokesman and chief negotiator Mohamed Abdulsalam. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government expressed some optimism — and caveats. "The Yemeni government's position depends on actions and practices not words and claims," it said, adding it would proceed cautiously "until observing a true change in (Iranian) behavior."
Analysts did not expect an immediate settlement to the conflict, but said direct talks and better relations could create momentum for a separate agreement that may offer both countries an exit from a disastrous war. "The ball now is in the court of the Yemeni domestic warring parties to prioritize Yemen's national interest in reaching a peace deal and be inspired by this initial positive step," said Afrah Nasser, a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Arab Center. Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf analyst with the International Crisis Group, said she believed the deal was tied to a de-escalation in Yemen.
"It is difficult to imagine a Saudi-Iran agreement to resume diplomatic relations and re-open embassies within a two-month period without some assurances from Iran to more seriously support conflict resolution efforts in Yemen," she said. War-scarred Syria similarly welcomed the agreement as a move toward easing tensions that have exacerbated the country's conflict. Iran has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government, while Saudi Arabia has supported opposition fighters trying to remove him from power.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry called it an "important step that will lead to strengthening security and stability in the region."
In Israel, bitterly divided and gripped by mass protests over plans by Netanyahu's far-right government to overhaul the judiciary, politicians seized on the rapprochement between the kingdom and Israel's archenemy as an opportunity to criticize Netanyahu, accusing him of focusing on his personal agenda at the expense of Israel's international relations. Yair Lapid, the former prime minister and head of Israel's opposition, denounced the agreement between Riyadh and Tehran as "a full and dangerous failure of the Israeli government's foreign policy." "This is what happens when you deal with legal madness all day instead of doing the job with Iran and strengthening relations with the U.S.," he wrote on Twitter. Even Yuli Edelstein from Netanyahu's Likud party blamed Israel's "power struggles and head-butting" for distracting the country from its more pressing threats.
Another opposition lawmaker, Gideon Saar, mocked Netanyahu's goal of formal ties with the kingdom. "Netanyahu promised peace with Saudi Arabia," he wrote on social media. "In the end (Saudi Arabia) did it … with Iran."
Netanyahu, on an official visit to Italy, declined a request for comment and issued no statement on the matter. But quotes to Israeli media by an anonymous senior official in the delegation sought to put blame on the previous government that ruled for a year and a half before Netanyahu returned to office. "It happened because of the impression that Israel and the U.S. were weak," said the senior official, according to the Haaretz daily, which hinted that Netanyahu was the official.
Despite the fallout for Netanyahu's reputation, experts doubted a detente would harm Israel. Saudi Arabia and Iran will remain regional rivals, even if they open embassies in each other's capitals, said Guzansky. And like the UAE, Saudi Arabia could deepen relations with Israel even while maintaining a transactional relationship with Iran. "The low-key arrangement that the Saudis have with Israel will continue," said Umar Karim, an expert on Saudi politics at the University of Birmingham, noting that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank remained more of a barrier to Saudi recognition than differences over Iran. "The Saudi leadership is engaging in more than one way to secure its national security."

Iran upholds death sentence of Swedish-Iranian Arab dissident
DUBAI (Reuters)/Sun, March 12, 2023
Iran's supreme court has upheld the death sentence handed down to a Swedish Iranian dual national convicted of leading an Arab separatist group accused of attacks including one on a military parade in 2018 that killed 25 people, state media reported on Sunday. Iran said in 2020 that its security forces arrested Sweden-based Habib Farajollah Chaab in Turkey and took him to Tehran, without saying where or how he was captured. "Chaab was sentenced to death after several court sessions with the presence of his lawyer ... The Supreme Court confirmed his death sentence," Iran's judiciary's Mizan news agency reported. In 2022, Iran started trial of Chaab on charges of leading the separatist Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz, which seeks a separate state in the oil-rich Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran, and plotting and carrying out "numerous bombings and terrorist operations". He was sentenced to death for being "corrupt on earth", a capital offence under Iran’s strict form of Islamic law, Iranian state media said. The Islamic Republic has had tense relations with its ethnic minorities, which include Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and Baluch, and has accused them of aligning with neighbouring countries rather than Tehran. Arabs and other minorities have long said they face discrimination in Iran, a charge the Islamic Republic denies. The confirmation of Chaab's death sentence comes amid soured relations between Iran and Sweden over a Swedish court's life time in prison sentence for a former Iranian official for involvement in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988 in the Islamic Republic. Iran has rejected former Iranian official Hamid Noury's sentence as "baseless, distorted and fabricated".

US accuses Iran of cruel false prisoner swap claims
Doug Faulkner - BBC News/March 12/2023
The US has accused Iran of making "cruel" false claims that a prisoner exchange had been agreed between the two countries. Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Sunday told state media a deal had been struck, which would probably be carried out soon. But a White House security spokesperson denied this, saying Iranian officials did not hesitate to "make things up". The latest claim would cause heartache for affected families, they added. Mr Amir-Abdollahian told state TV that an agreement had been reached in the recent days and "if everything goes well on the US side, I think we will witness a prisoner exchange in a short period". He added that Iran was ready, while the US was working on "final technical coordination". While insisting the claim was false, the US spokesperson said Washington was committed to securing the release of Americans held in Iran - naming Siamak Namazi, Emad Shargi and Morad Tahbaz. Oil executive Siamak Namazi, who has dual US-Iranian citizenship, was jailed for 10 years on charges of spying and cooperating with the US government in 2016.
Emad Shargi is an Iranian-American businessman who was arrested in 2018 while working for a tech investment company. Iranian-American environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, who also holds British citizenship, was given a 10-year sentence on charges of spying for the US and undermining Iranian security in 2019. He released on bail last July with an electronic bracelet - with UK officials saying they were working with the US to secure his "permanent release".There have been tensions between the US and Iran in recent years since President Donald Trump pulled out of a nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions which severely damaged the Islamic republic's economy. Iran has detained a number of US-Iranian dual citizens and Iranians with US permanent residency in recent years, most of them on spying charges. Tehran has sought the release of more than a dozen Iranians in the United States for years, including seven Iranian-American dual nationals, two Iranians with permanent US residency and four Iranian citizens with no legal status in the United States. In 2019 the two countries conducted a prisoner swap which saw Chinese-American researcher Xiyue Wang released to the US while stem cell expert Massoud Soleimani went in the other direction.

Russian advance stalls in Ukraine's Bakhmut, think tank says
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)/Sun, March 12, 2023
Russia’s advance seems to have stalled in Moscow's campaign to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, a leading think tank said in an assessment of the longest ground battle of the war.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said there were no confirmed advances by Russian forces in Bakhmut. Russian forces and units from the Kremlin-controlled paramilitary Wagner Group continued to launch ground attacks in the city, but there was no evidence that they were able to make any progress, ISW said late Saturday. The report cited the spokesperson of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Eastern Group, Serhii Cherevaty, who said that fighting in the Bakhmut area had been more intense this week than the previous one. According to Cherevaty, there were 23 clashes in the city over the previous 24 hours. The ISW’s report comes following claims of Russian progress earlier this week. The U.K. Defense Ministry said Saturday that paramilitary units from the Kremlin-controlled Wagner Group had seized most of eastern Bakhmut, with a river flowing through the city now marking the front line of the fighting. The assessment highlighted that Russia’s assault will be difficult to sustain without more significant personnel losses.
The mining city of Bakhmut is located in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk province, one of four regions of Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last year. Russia’s military opened the campaign to take control of Bakhmut in August, and both sides have experienced staggering casualties. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has vowed not to retreat. In its latest report Sunday, the U.K. Defense Ministry said Sunday that the impact of the heavy casualties Russia is continuing to suffer in Ukraine varies dramatically across the country. The ministry's intelligence update said that the major cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg remain “relatively unscathed,” particularly among members of Russia's elite. In contrast, in many of Russia’s eastern regions, the death rate as a percentage of the population is “30-40 times higher than in Moscow.” The report highlighted that ethnic minorities often take the biggest hit. In the southern Astrakhan region, for example, about “75% of casualties come from the minority Kazakh and Tartar populations.” Russia’s mounting casualties are reflected in a loss of government control over the country’s information sphere, ISW said. The think tank said that Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed “infighting in the Kremlin inner circle” and that the Kremlin has effectively ceded control over the country’s information space, with Putin unable to readily regain control.
The ISW sees Zakharova’s comments, made at a forum on the “practical and technological aspects of information and cognitive warfare in modern realities” in Moscow, as “noteworthy” and in line with the think tank’s long standing assessments about the “deteriorating Kremlin regime and information space control dynamics.”In a separate statement, Zakharova said Sunday that the next round of talks regarding extending the Black Sea grain deal will be held on Monday in Geneva. The meeting will see a Russian delegation meet with top U.N. officials before the deal’s latest extension that expires on March 18. The wartime agreement that unblocked grain shipments from Ukraine and helped temper rising global food prices was last extended by four months in November.
The deal, which Ukraine and Russia signed in separate agreements with the U.N. and Turkey on July 22, established a safe shipping corridor in the Black Sea and inspection procedures to address concerns that cargo vessels might carry weapons or launch attacks. Ukraine and Russia are key global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food to countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia where millions of impoverished people lack enough to eat. Russia was also the world’s top exporter of fertilizer before the war. A loss of those supplies following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 had pushed up global food prices and fueled concerns of a hunger crisis in poorer countries. Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russian attacks over the previous day killed at least five people and wounded another seven across Ukraine’s Donetsk and Kherson regions, local Ukrainian authorities reported on Sunday morning. Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that two people were killed in the region, one in the city of Kostyantynivka and one in the village of Tonenke. Four further civilians were wounded.
Also in the Donetsk province, Sloviansk Mayor Vadim Lyakh said the power grid and railway lines were damaged by Russian shelling on Sunday, but didn't report any casualties. Local officials in the southern Kherson province confirmed that Russian forces fired 29 times on Ukrainian-controlled territory in the region on Saturday, with residential areas of the regional capital, Kherson, coming under fire three times. Three people died in the province and a further three were wounded. A woman was wounded in Russian shelling in the village of Bilozerka on Sunday, just outside Kherson. In Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv province, the Kharkiv, Chuhuiv and Kupiansk districts came under fire, but no civilian casualties were reported. The head of Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv province Gov. Vitali Kim said Sunday morning that the town of Ochakiv, set at the mouth of the Dnieper River, came under artillery fire in the early hours of Sunday. Cars were set ablaze, while private houses and high-rise buildings sustained damage. No casualties were reported.

Putin ‘expected to attend G20 summit in India’ after Kremlin clears diary
Shweta Sharma/The Independent/March 12/2023
Vladimir Putin is expected to attend the September G20 summit in India after skipping the gathering of world leaders for two consecutive years, said people familiar with the Russian leader’s schedule. The Kremlin is clearing up Mr Putin’s schedule around the same time so he can fly for the summit in Delhi, reported Bloomberg, citing anonymous people familiar with Mr Putin’s diary. Mr Putin’s aides have pushed the dates by a week for an annual economic forum in Vladivostok, from its earlier 9-10 September date, the sources said. The adjustment could now put Mr Putin in the same room as Western leaders for the first time since the war began – if he attends. An official confirmation of the Russian president’s participation has not been issued yet. Russia had earlier accepted a formal invitation extended by India for the summit. The postponing of the economic forum will also open the possibility of senior officials from India and China attending the high-level Vladivostok forum, according to the report. An adviser for Mr Putin confirmed the date change to 12-15 September for the annual Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in a statement. “The decision to change the dates of the Eastern Economic Forum is linked to the schedule of international events. We are expecting the participation of foreign leaders and high-level guests,” said Anton Kobyakov, adviser to Mr Putin and the executive secretary of the EEF Organising Committee. Mr Putin had skipped the G20 summit last year when it was held under Indonesia’s presidency. Last year’s summit was the first gathering of G20 leaders after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February. He had also skipped the G20 meeting in Rome in 2021 after being under self isolation due to the Covid pandemic, but had attended through a video link. The Russian leader avoided a potential confrontation with the US and its allies by not attending the Bali summit, where Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron deplored Russia’s war in the strongest terms. The report comes as Russia and China joined forces during the G20 meet for foreign ministers in Delhi and refused to allow the condemnation of the war to be a part of the joint communique as agreed by Western leaders. The ministers’ meeting, which was attended by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, ended without a joint statement. India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar said differences over Ukraine “could not be reconciled”. A G20 gathering for finance ministers and central bank chiefs in Bangaluru city before had ended before without a joint statement as well. The grouping had failed to reach a consensus on the language to be used to describe the war.

Russian wives beg Putin to stop sending husbands into 'meat grinder'
George Styllis/The Telegraph/Sun, March 12, 2023
A group of Russian women have appealed to Vladimir Putin to stop sending their husbands and children to the frontline like 'meat' without adequate training. In a video shared online, the women say the mobilisation of new recruits to the army has been a betrayal after the Russian President said they would not be sent to the front line immediately. The women say their sons, husbands and brothers have been "thrown like meat" to storm fortified areas in Ukraine. In the video shared by the independent Telegram news channel SOTA, they can be seen standing in a group holding a sign in Russian that reads, “580 Separate Howitzer Artillery Division,” dated March 11, 2023. “My husband… is located on the line of contact with the enemy,” one woman says. “Our mobilized [men] are being sent like lambs to the slaughter to storm fortified areas – five at a time, against 100 heavily armed enemy men,” she continued. Putin ordered the mobilisation of more than 300,000 men in September - the first since 1941 - to the shock of many ordinary Russians. Of those who were drafted, many have perished. Among the reasons for the high casualties have been poor training and a lack of equipment. New recruits have reported being sent to battle with old weapons and unsuitable clothing. A team of independent Russian journalists called the No Future project says authorities have attempted to cover up the deaths of dozens of mobilised Russians from Volgograd who were sent to fight without any ammunition. The group says new recruits are also deprived of first aid kits and hot food, while during one training session the men just “played on their phones” for two weeks. “They are prepared to serve their homeland but according to the specialisation they’ve trained for, not as stormtroopers. We ask that you pull back our guys from the line of contact and provide the artillerymen with artillery and ammunition,” said the woman. The group’s criticism of the Kremlin comes amid growing anger among Russian wives and mothers over the war. In a rare acknowledgment of the government’s failings, Putin last year told a group of angry mothers that he felt “their pain” during a choreographed sit-down in which he at times appeared emotional. He has also said “mistakes” were made in the call-up to reinforcements. Despite that the Kremlin has hinted at a second mobilisation. MPs have proposed a law that will give Russia’s National Guard more power to enforce military draft orders and another that will allow property to be confiscated from Russians who flee abroad.

Hundreds of Russians killed in Bahkmut battle as snipers ‘create killing zone’
Andy Gregory/The Independent/Sun, March 12, 2023
Hundreds of Russian troops have been killed in Bakhmut as Vladimir Putin’s troops seek to wrest control of the frontline Donetsk city – with Kyiv’s snipers said to have set up a “killing zone”. Some 520 Russian troops were killed and wounded in Bakhmut alone in one day’s fighting, Ukraine’s military said, claiming Russia had suffered 2,000 fatalities since Friday – marking some of the deadliest days of the war since Russia’s invasion. Seeking to replenish its heavy losses, Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said his Wagner private army had opened recruitment centres in 42 cities – as the UK asserted that the impact of casualties “varies dramatically” across Russian regions. Losses are more than 30 times higher in many eastern regions than in Moscow, with the capital and St Petersburg “relatively unscathed” while in other places ethnic minorities bear the brunt of the Kremlin’s war, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defence. “Insulating the better-off and more influential elements of Russian society” is likely a “major consideration”, the ministry said, adding that none of the officials in the two front rows of the audience at Mr Putin’s state of the union speech on 21 February are known to have children in the military. Russian casualties are believed to have soared by tens of thousands as the fighting centred around Bakhmut in recent months, becoming one of the bloodiest battlegrounds of the entire war as Moscow aims to punch a hole in Ukraine’s defences in a step towards seizing the entire Donbas region. Moscow’s intensified onslaught in the city was finally making progress but their assault will be difficult to sustain without more significant losses, British military officials said.
Wagner Group units have seized most of eastern Bakhmut, with a river flowing through the city now marking the frontline, according to UK intelligence, with Wagner’s leader Mr Prigozhin claiming his mercenaries were less than a mile from the city’s administrative centre. Ukrainian troops and supply lines remain vulnerable to continued Russian attempts to outflank them from the north and south as Wagner mercenaries try to close in on them in a pincer movement, British officials said. But it will be “highly challenging” for Wagner’s soldiers to push ahead because Ukraine has destroyed key bridges over the river, while Ukrainian sniper fire from fortified buildings further west has made the thin strip of open ground in the city’s centre “a killing zone.”Meanwhile, Russian military bloggers claimed Moscow’s forces had entered a heavily built-up and fortified metal processing factory in the city’s northwest, the focus on which – as opposed to a “wider encirclement of western Bakhmut” – the US-based Institute for the Study of War assessed could bring a further wave of Russian casualties. While Russia's defence ministry said that up to 210 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the broader Donetsk part of the frontline, Kyiv’s ground forces signalled an intention to hold out in Bakhmut, claiming their top officer, Colonel Oleksandr Syrskyi, was personally overseeing “the most important sectors of the front” to deny Moscow a victory.“It is necessary to gain time to accumulate reserves and start a counter-offensive, which is not far off,” the military cited Mr Syrskyi as saying.
*Additional reporting by agencies

Russia 'Protecting The Children Of Elites' From The Impact Of The War In Ukraine, Says UK
HuffPost UK/Kevin Schofield/Sun, March 12, 2023
The children of Russia’s “elite” are being protected from the impact of the war in Ukraine, according to UK intelligence. In their latest update on the conflict, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said Russia “continues to suffer extremely heavy casualties”. However, areas containing ethnic minorities are taking “the biggest hit” while “the richest cities of Moscow and St Petersburg have been left relatively unscathed”. “This is especially true for the families of the country’s elite,” the MoD said. “On 21 February 2023, Russian senior officials were photographed making up the front two rows of the audience of President Putin’s state of the nation speech. None of these are known to have children serving in the military. “In many of the eastern regions, deaths are likely running, as a percentage of population, at a rate 30+ times higher than in Moscow. “In places, ethnic minorities take the biggest hit; in Astrakhan some 75% of casualties come from the minority Kazakh and Tartar populations. “As the Russian MoD seeks to address its continued deficit of combat personnel, insulating the better-off and more influential elements of Russian society will highly likely remain a major consideration.”Russia has stepped up its bombardment of Ukraine in recent weeks, while America has warned that the war could go on for years. Zaporizhzhia, where the country’s largest nuclear power station is based, has also been affected – raising international fears about the potential for dangerous nuclear consequences. Meanwhile, Russian forces continue to zero in on the eastern city of Bakhmut, which has turned into a gruelling battlefield in recent months and is completely without power, gas or water.

North Korea Says It’s Adopting Steps to Deter ‘War Provocations’
(Bloomberg)/Hooyeon Kim/Sun, March 12, 2023
North Korea said it’s taking “important and practical” measures to deter any acts of aggression by the US and South Korea as the two allies prepare to hold large-scale military drills through the next two weeks.
Pyongyang discussed and adopted “steps for making more effective, powerful and offensive use of the country’s war deterrent in coping with the present situation,” North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Sunday. “War provocations” by the U.S. and South Korea are reaching its red line, it said. The decision was made at a meeting of the Central Military Commission of North Korea’s Workers’ Party in which leader Kim Jong-un was present, according to KCNA. North Korea Slams US ‘War Preparation,’ Fires Off Missiles. The US and South Korea are planning to hold their “Freedom Shield” exercises March 13-23, aimed at bolstering their “joint defense posture in the face of North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats,” according to the militaries of the two countries. The drills are expected to be some of the largest the two have held in years. North Korea, which for decades has decried such drills as a prelude to an invasion and nuclear war, has pledged an unprecedented response. It has demanded that the US and South Korea halt hostile military actions, criticizing the US for deliberately increasing tensions in the Korean Peninsula and the broader region. Last week, Kim presided over live-fire drills where his military launched several suspected short-range ballistic missiles.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 12-13/2023
India’s rampaging rise threatens to tip world’s fragile balance of power
Ben Wright/The Telegraph/March 12/2023
Deciding the agenda for the recent G20 meeting of finance chiefs was always going to be a little tricky. The US and its allies wanted to discuss new sanctions against Russia and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Moscow and Beijing preferred to criticise Western “blackmail and threats”.
Indian officials hosting the meeting of the world’s largest economies in Bengaluru were busily working behind the scenes to try and avoid using the word “war” in any joint statement. Ajay Seth of India’s finance ministry had even suggested Russia’s attack on Ukraine was beyond the mandate of finance ministers and central bank governors.
Other attendees pointed out it was quite hard to argue Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of a neighbouring country almost exactly a year ago hadn’t had an impact on the global economy. It was probably, therefore, worth at least a passing mention.
In the end, they agreed to disagree: no joint communique was issued.
The world will probably find a way to survive without the usual bland diplomatic tropes and empty verbiage. But India’s discomfit is emblematic of how the war in Ukraine is driving a wedge between the world’s most powerful economies.
In a motion at the United Nations General Assembly earlier this month calling for an end to the fighting and Moscow’s immediate withdrawal from Ukraine, Russia voted against, while China, India and South Africa abstained. Everyone else was in favour.
But, whereas Beijing has repeatedly been called out for its tacit support of Moscow, New Delhi, which has increased its imports of Russian crude oil by 33 times since the war started, has avoided censure.
That’s because, in the increasingly complicated three-dimensional chess of global geopolitics, India is seen by Western governments as an important potential bulwark to Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.
As an increasingly muscular China prompts businesses to rethink their reliance on the country’s factories, and as defence policies are redrawn around the world in the face of a bellicose Russia, India is becoming increasingly important politically, economically and militarily on the world stage.
It probably helps that the country boasted the second fastest growing large economy behind only Saudi Arabia last year. For years, countries around the world were more or less forced to hitch their wagons to the Chinese engine of global growth or risk being left behind.
But Covid, an increasingly authoritarian regime in Beijing and retreating globalisation have all led to a recalibration of the political and economic calculus.
There are two other reasons that leaders are rethinking their approach to China to the benefit of India, though they are less likely to be mentioned out loud by Western diplomats: ongoing efforts to ensure that Beijing continues to struggle in its attempts to achieve technological parity with the US; and the fact that China’s own economic growth appears to be plateauing.
These trends are all fast reshaping the world’s approach to relations with Beijing.
Hawks in the West have long argued that China policy should be shaped by the character of the regime rather than economic self-interest. It is much easier to make their case when growth is in the low single digits.
But this presents another problem: where should the world now turn for fresh economic impetus?
At first glance, India is a good candidate. Its population has just overtaken (or, depending on how you calculate it, is just about to overtake) that of China. Crucially, its working age population is still growing unlike China, which continues to be hobbled by the disastrous one-child policy.
The median age in India is a full 11 years younger than in China. According to Shilan Shah at Capital Economics, India’s working-age population will exceed China’s by an astounding 235m by 2040, roughly the population of Pakistan today.
Internal reforms mean that the Indian economy is on a tear. Morgan Stanley has predicted that India will be the world’s third largest economy by as soon as 2027 and that the country’s gross domestic product will more than double from $3.4 trillion to $8.5 trillion over the next decade.
The UK, with its long history of cultural ties and a shared language, should be in prime position to benefit from the shifting geopolitical axis.
Yet an attempt to agree a bilateral trade deal by Diwali in October last year was torpedoed when Suella Braverman, the home secretary, expressed concern about a potential increase in Indian migration to the UK.
A reciprocal migration deal was finalised a month later ahead of Rishi Sunak's first face-to-face meeting with Modi in November. Sunak, a practising Hindu with strong family links to India, has said a trade deal is “just one part of a broader relationship” with New Delhi and stated he doesn’t want to “sacrifice quality for speed” in trade negotiations.
However, while talks progress, concerns about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts to undermine democracy and marginalise Muslims are raising red flags.
Gauging the best approach to managing relations with India, the rising superpower, will be a delicate balancing act.
Economic awakening
Much of India’s post-colonial history has been a pretty eloquent counter to Auguste Comte’s suggestion that demography is destiny.
Despite the country’s population exploding from around 340m at the time it gained independence from Britain to 1.4bn today, its economic story has been far from straightforward.
As Ruchir Sharma, the chair of Rockefeller International, points out, at independence in 1947, India was the sixth largest economy in the world and average incomes were 18pc of the global average; 75 years later, it was the sixth largest economy in the world and average incomes were 18pc of the global average.
This apparent stagnation actually hides a huge dip and rebound. At one point the economy had sunk to 12th in the world rankings, before recovering.
India has long held the promise of becoming the next China but repeatedly failed to deliver.
Its own domestic market was too fragmented, with different rules and tax regimes in all the separate states. It could not nurture enough home-grown large companies or seed a long-expected manufacturing boom, a tried and tested method for developing nations to turbocharge their growth.
The country only began to make up lost ground when the government started to release the private sector from the iron grip of socialist controls in the 1990s.
This unleashed a torrent of pent-up entrepreneurialism. Shares listed on the Indian stock market have risen by 12pc a year, in dollar terms, since 1990 – twice the global average.
The number of Indian billionaires has almost tripled from 55 to 140 in just the last decade – a fact that simultaneously highlights both the country’s struggles with inequality and its dynamism.
Encouragingly, many made their money in areas like technology and manufacturing, where India has traditionally punched below its weight.
When Modi first took power in 2014, India was the 10th largest economy in the world. In the subsequent seven years, it grew by a full 40pc. Only China performed better over the same period. But now the rampaging elephant is catching up with the limping dragon.
Last year, India overtook the UK to take fifth spot on the global economic league table. Its stock market is already the fourth largest in the world – behind just the US, China and Japan – and it is home to the third largest number of unicorns (start-ups worth more than $1bn) – behind only the US and China.
The progress has been staccato. Modi’s ill-considered decision to ban bank notes in 2016, a crisis in the shadow banking system in 2018 and Covid lockdowns in 2020 all resulted in disruption.
But overall, progress has been made.
Many of the reforms that have helped forge a single national market predate Modi’s tenure but he deserves credit for expediting them.
There are no longer huge queues of lorries waiting to have their paperwork checked as they cross between states, thanks to the adoption of a nationwide goods-and-services tax that replaces a bewildering array of local levies.
The higher revenues the new tax has raised have been ploughed into big infrastructure projects.
The country’s highway network has increased by 50pc since 2014. Modi has promised to “connect every corner of the country” with 75 Vande Bharat Express semi-high-speed trains.
More recently, the country has rolled out a set of state-sponsored digital services that furnishes all Indians with electronic identities, bank accounts and tax systems.
A once highly inefficient, cash-based economy is being dragged into the 21st century at lightning speed. And there's room for further acceleration.
“Crucial to India making the most of its demographic potential will be the development of a globally competitive, labour-intensive manufacturing sector,” says Shah at Capital Economics.
He points out that every economy in Asia that successfully moved beyond low or lower-middle income status (including Korea in the 1960s, Taiwan in the 1980s and China in the 2000s) did so by establishing a thriving manufacturing sector.
But at the moment this only accounts for a relatively small share of India’s economy.
Shah adds: “The well-worn argument goes that it is relatively easy to increase the productivity of low-skilled workers by taking them out of other sectors (typically agriculture, but also relevant in India’s case, low-end services) and putting them to work in factories using machines that require only basic training to operate.”
Here, too, recent developments have been positive.
Last year, Apple, which makes most of its iPhones in China, began producing its iPhone 14 in southern India. It was a small step (and initial reports suggest the smartphone maker is having some issues with quality control) but it was nevertheless a big moment: where Apple goes, others tend to follow.
Shah says Apple’s decision could “prove pivotal”, especially if “it helps to form an ecosystem of suppliers or encourages other multinationals to follow suit”.
Companies around the world are looking at “friend-shoring” their supply chains after finding out the hard way that they were over reliant on China.
Beijing’s harsh Covid policies and sweeping lock down rules have repeatedly hit production in recent years. Now, rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China are dragging companies, especially those in the technology sector, into conversations they’d far rather swerve – can they still afford to be in China?Modi’s government has been looking to boost domestic manufacturing and exports through its “Made in India” campaign. Costs are low. The country is English-speaking. There’s a huge and growing local market – India already has, for example, the second-largest number of smartphone users in the world after China.Where better to set up shop and diversify your supply chains?
The Modi problem
The West has turned a blind eye to Narendra Modi's growing reliance on Russian gas -
In reality, however, moving supply chains to India is not as obvious a decision as it may at first seem.
Modi has signed trade deals with the European Union, the US and Australia. However, most of these are quite narrow in scope. Worryingly, India has a long history of protectionism and import substitution (advocating for locally produced goods rather than those bought from overseas).
Worries about Chinese competition have so far stopped India from joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and instead adopting the policy of “Atmanirbhar Bharat”, of “self-reliant India”.
This approach includes a range of subsidies for domestic industries and higher tariffs to protect them from foreign competition.
The former have, in fairness, resulted in a big increase in business investment as the country’s large conglomerates plough money into clean energy, electronics and pharmaceuticals, in particular.
But the latter may be part of the reason why more of the foreign manufacturers that have quit China in the past decade as costs there increase have instead chosen to set up in Vietnam and Bangladesh.
Modi’s electoral prowess has delivered a good measure of political stability but he is prone to big missteps.
“The evidence from Modi’s nine years in power is that implementation of the structural reforms needed to boost manufacturing will be stop-start at best, ebbing and flowing depending on the political climate,” says Shah at Capital Economics.
More worrying still is the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s tendency to deliberately stoke religious tensions with its anti-Muslim chauvinism and the possibility that Modi’s strongman political dominance will harden into outright autocracy.
The recent signs have not been encouraging in this regard. Two senior Indian opposition politicians from different parties have been arrested in recent days. One, a spokesman for the country’s main opposition party, was detained for merely insinuating a controversial tycoon was so influential he was effectively Modi’s father.
Last month, the BBC’s offices in India were raided by tax officials just a few weeks after a documentary critical of Modi was blocked by the government. Documents and phones belonging to several journalists were seized and the offices sealed.
The series – called “India: The Modi Question” – focussed on the role the now-prime minister played in violent Hindu-Muslim riots that took place in Gujarat in 2002 when he was chief minister of the state.
Allegations of Modi’s complicity in the violence, which left more than 1,000 people dead, resulted in the politician being denied a visa to travel to the US in 2005.
The Indian government has accused the BBC of bias and a “colonial mindset” and pointed out that Modi was cleared of all charges by a supreme court panel in 2012.
The episode is unlikely to escalate into a full-blown diplomatic spat; the Beeb prefers to avoid asking for formal political support if it can, in order to demonstrate it has an arm’s-length relationship with the British state.
Regardless of the outcome of the current situation, Western governments will have to tread carefully when dealing with India – especially with regards to the thorny subject of foreign policy.
In a meeting with Vladimir Putin in September, Modi said the friendship between India and Russia was “unbreakable”. He has called for a ceasefire in Ukraine but has steadfastly refused to apportion blame for the situation.
India has long had close ties with its northern neighbour. During the Cold War, Moscow repeatedly vetoed Security Council resolutions concerning the disputed region of Kashmir, which lies on India’s border with Pakistan.
Spectators watch as a US Air Force's (USAF) fifth-generation supersonic multirole F-35 fighter jet flies past during a flying display on the second day of the 14th edition of Aero India 2023 - MANJUNATH KIRAN/AFP via Getty Images
Russia supplies over half of all India’s military kit – amounting to something like $13bn worth of arms in the last five years alone.
India is also the world’s third largest importer of oil, which presented something of an opportunity for both Moscow and New Delhi when the rest of the world started shunning Russian crude and gas.
The Biden administration and Western allies may have concluded that if India is to act as a counterweight to China, they will have to turn a blind eye to how it acquires that heft.
India and China share a 2,000-mile disputed border and India is seeking to tool up in order to offset China’s increasing assertiveness in the region.
It’s even possible that in the medium-term this could help the West to cement closer ties with India. New Delhi is, for example, desperate to modernise its airforce and worried about supply delays from Russia, whose war machine is working overtime to supply its own troops operating in Ukraine.
Washington looks willing to step into the breach. It showed off its most advanced fighter jet, the F-35, at the Aero India air show in Bengaluru last month, the first time it had appeared in the country.
For the US and Britain, India’s rise is simply too significant to ignore or resist. Engagement, with caveats, is the order of the day.
For now, the best approach to managing relations with India appears to be an adaptation of Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim about diplomacy: speak softly and carry a squadron of stealth multirole combat aircraft.

China's War Warnings
Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute/March 12, 2023
The world needs to look at what the Chinese leadership is in fact doing. Xi Jinping appointed what is now known as his "war cabinet" in October, at the Communist Party's 20th National Congress; he is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War; he has been trying to sanctions-proof his regime; and he is mobilizing the civilian population for war. Communist Party cadres, for example, are taking over privately owned factories and converting them from civilian to military production.
In the latest move, China's regime is establishing National Defense Mobilization Offices across the country. The Reservists Law went into effect the first of this month.
Whatever China intends, its intended victims need to match its preparations. There has never been a time when it has been more important to deter the People's Republic of China.
Even if all this is the biggest bluff in history, the Chinese military is provoking incidents that could lead to war, especially in the tense climate Xi Jinping has created. In December... a Chinese fighter jet dangerously intercepted a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the South China Sea.
Moreover, beginning January 28, China's large spy balloon intruded into American airspace, then proceeded to surveil nuclear weapons sites, including Malmstrom, F. E. Warren, and Minot Air Force Bases, which house all of America's Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles..... This path suggests China is gathering intelligence for a nuclear strike on America's strategic weapons — and shows Beijing's utter disrespect for the United States.
Whatever China's intentions... this cannot end well. The problem is complacency. Xi Jinping and Qin Gang, whatever they are doing, are establishing a justification to strike America — and they are making preparations to do so.
Chinese President Xi Jinping appointed what is now known as his "war cabinet" in October; he is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War; he has been trying to sanctions-proof his regime; and he is mobilizing the civilian population for war. Pictured: Sailors and fighter jets on the deck of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy aircraft carrier Liaoning in the sea near Qingdao, in eastern China's Shandong province on April 23, 2019. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images)
"If the U.S. doesn't hit the brakes and continues to barrel down the wrong track," China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang said on March 7, "no amount of guardrails can prevent the carriage from derailing and crashing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation." He also spoke of "catastrophic consequences."
The unusually pointed warning followed that of Chinese ruler Xi Jinping of the day before. "Western countries, led by the U.S., are implementing all-round containment, encirclement, and suppression against us," he told the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing.
These comments suggest a marked deterioration in relations between Washington and Beijing. What is happening?
"We have to not rule out the stratagem of empty fortress," tweeted City University of New York's Ming Xia, one of America's most astute China watchers, on March 8.
Xia was referring to a tactic employed many times in ancient Chinese history. Perhaps the most famous "empty fortress" tale comes from the Three Kingdoms period when military strategist Kung Ming had to figure out how to repel an invader, Sima Yi, with few troops. Kung appeared on his fortress wall in a confident pose, which convinced Yi to retreat.
In all probability, Xi and Qin were employing this ancient tactic, attempting to intimidate the Biden administration into not enforcing or adopting measures they do not like.
The Hudson Institute's Miles Yu, another leading China watcher, reminds Americans that the Communist Party is using a time-worn tactic of "Using Confrontation to Promote Cooperation." "It's always in the CCP's playbook," Yu points out.
For many reasons, the Chinese fortress is empty at this moment. Among other difficulties, the country's economy is stumbling, debt defaults are continuing, the currency is weakening, food shortages are worsening, localities are running short of cash, and diseases continue to afflict the population. Moreover, the Chinese people are unhappy. Since late October, they have taken to the streets in demonstrations over varied complaints. Some protestors have even demanded the removal of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.
How bad is the situation in China? Chinese people are risking their lives to cross the Darien Gap, the region separating Colombia and Panama, to walk to America. U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions of Chinese migrants at the southern border were up about 800% for the October to January period, compared to the same time a year ago.
Chinese rulers, I think, understand that war at this moment would not be in China's interest. Yet just because they may know better does not mean Americans and others should feel assured or relieved.
For one thing, no one outside a small circle in Beijing knows what Chinese leaders in fact intend, so it is exceedingly dangerous for others to base policy on what they think China's decision-makers are thinking. Over the course of four decades there has been far too much "mirror imaging." American leaders, for instance, have continually told their Chinese counterparts what they should think — nothing wrong with that — but then assumed that the Chinese thought the same as they did.
The world needs to look at what the Chinese leadership is in fact doing. Xi appointed what is now known as his "war cabinet" in October, at the Communist Party's 20th National Congress; he is implementing the largest military buildup since the Second World War; he has been trying to sanctions-proof his regime; and he is mobilizing the civilian population for war. Communist Party cadres, for example, are taking over privately owned factories and converting them from civilian to military production.
In the latest move, China's regime is establishing National Defense Mobilization Offices across the country. The Reservists Law went into effect the first of this month.
Whatever China intends, its intended victims need to match its preparations. There has never been a time when it has been more important to deter the People's Republic of China.
Even if all this is the biggest bluff in history, the Chinese military is provoking incidents that could lead to war, especially in the tense climate Xi has created. In December, Chinese troops moved into India's Tawang Sector in Arunachal Pradesh; Chinese planes and naval vessels maneuvered near Taiwan, especially on Christmas Day; there were provocative Chinese moves against Japan in the East China Sea and the Philippines in the South China Sea; and a Chinese fighter jet dangerously intercepted a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the South China Sea.
Moreover, beginning January 28, China's large spy balloon intruded into American airspace, proceeded to surveil nuclear weapons sites, including Malmstrom, F. E. Warren, and Minot Air Force Bases, which house all of America's Minutemen III intercontinental ballistic missiles. The balloon also passed close to Whiteman Air Force Base, home to the nuclear-capable B-2 bomber fleet, and Offutt Air Force Base, the headquarters of Strategic Command, which controls U.S. nuclear weapons. This path suggests China is gathering intelligence for a nuclear strike on America's strategic weapons — and shows Beijing's utter disrespect for the United States.
Whatever China's intentions, this cannot end well. Xi Jinping, for instance, will not stop talking about war. The world, and America in particular, need to listen. As Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute tells Gatestone, "Xi has completed his purge of all dissenters and now hears no moderating voices to rein in his great thirst for military adventurism driven by extreme ideological resentment of the United States."
"Will the U.S. lose its own composure and confidence to fall into hysterical style of politics?" CUNY's Xia warns. At this moment, hysteria is not the problem. The problem is complacency. Xi Jinping and Qin Gang, whatever they are doing, are establishing a justification to strike America — and they are making preparations to do so.
*Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.
© 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.

تقرير من موقع معهد كايتستون للكاتب ريموند ابراهيم يلقي من خلاله الأضواء على حوادث اضطهاد نساء المسيحيين في باكستان المسلمة
Convert, Marry Me, or Die by Acid: Christian Women in Muslim Pakistan
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute./March 12, 2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/116530/116530/
"As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus. Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street. A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital. At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian."— Daily Mail, July 12, 2012.
Not one of these attacks, with the exception of Julie Aftab, was reported on the mainstream media. Even then, no mention was made that such attacks on Christian women follow a pattern in Pakistan.
Perhaps that is something for all those who claim to care about women's rights to think about.
In Pakistan, acid attacks against women — especially minority women, mainly Christians — are a common form of "retribution" for Muslim men who feel scorned. Pictured: Asiya Bibe, an acid attack victim, poses with a portrait before her disfigurement, in Multan, Pakistan on March 16, 2012. (Photo by Bay Ismoyo/AFP via Getty Images)
A Muslim man recently splashed acid onto the face of a teenage Christian girl, disfiguring her permanently. Her crime? Refusing to convert and turning him down.
On February 1, 2023, in Karachi, Pakistan, according to the report, when Sunita Munawar, aged 19, stepped off the bus on her way to work:
"While at the bus stop she noticed that Kamran Allah Baksh a local neighbour who had been stalking and harassing her for several years, was already waiting at the bus stop. Despite a sense of foreboding, Miss Munawar bravely exited the bus and headed towards her workplace.
"As she passed by Mr Baksh without warning he threw something on Miss Munawar's face. She could feel intense pain in her eyes and on the skin of her face, arms, torso and legs and knew immediately, that something was seriously wrong. She screamed and tried to wipe away the acid but found that the pain would not stop, a pain so severe that at some point Miss Munawar fainted and collapsed to the ground."
Munawar was taken a nearby hospital, where it was confirmed that she had suffered 20 percent acid burns. From her hospital bed she said of her assailant:
"He wanted me to be his girlfriend but I refused his advances. I can't believe what he has done to me, I did nothing to deserve this. It feels like he has destroyed my life. I have bright scars everywhere he sprayed the acid on me, it's so hard to take."
Munawar's uncle added: "He would try to force her to renounce her Christian faith, assuring her that he would marry her once she became a Muslim, but she refused to surrender to his illegitimate demands.... Sunita had informed her siblings about Kamran's harassment, and they had repeatedly complained to his parents, urging them to stop him, but that did not work."
After being apprehended, Kamran Allah Baksh confessed to his crime. "In his statement," authorities reported, "Kamran claimed that he had fallen in love with Sunita and had attacked her with acid in retaliation after she rejected his marriage proposal."
Whatever punishment — if any — might be meted out to Baksh, the damage is irrevocable, the girl's uncle said:
"Sunita is just 19, but now her whole life has been physically and mentally scarred by Kamran. Even if he is convicted for his crime, will Sunita be able to live a normal life again? We all know how our society treats acid attack survivors...."
Munawar's case is, unfortunately, not isolated. In April 2018, also in Pakistan, a Muslim man poured acid over a Christian woman and set her on fire. She, too, had refused to convert to Islam and marry him. Asma Yaqoob, 25, with burns covering nearly 90 percent of her body, died five days later. Soon after Yaqoob had answered the door, her father said, "we heard her screaming in pain." They "rushed outside to see what had happened" and saw Rizwan Gujjar, 30, a onetime family friend, fleeing "while Asma was engulfed in flames." Three months earlier, Gujjar had begun pressuring her to marry him. She, "not wanting to recant her Christian faith," had politely declined and tried to avoid him.
Acid attacks against women — especially minority women, mainly Christians — are a common form of "retribution" for Muslim men who feel scorned.
In the last few months, just in Karachi, where Munawar was disfigured, there have been at least a dozen acid attacks.
In Pakistan, between 2007 and 2018, according to the "NGO the Acid Survivors Foundation (ASF), there were 1,485 reported cases of acid attacks. Nearly a third of victims were children splashed with acid when family members were attacked."
Discussing this trend, Juliet Chowdhry, of the British Asian Christian Association, said:
"Acid throwing attacks are extremely violent crimes. Perpetrators seek to inflict severe physical and mental suffering on their victims, the large majority of whom are women. In Pakistan, the most common reasons for such attacks are domestic violence, refusal of a marriage proposal, or the denial of a sexual advance. These attacks are vicious, pernicious and involve a high degree of premeditation. More responsive police could have prevented this attack when Sunita first reported stalking and harassment. Instead their inability to act, now means that Sunita will suffer years of disfigurement and treatments."
Some attacks on Christian women are motivated simply because they are Christian.
In 2012, for instance, Julie Aftab, a Christian woman who had fled her native Pakistan to America, recalled how Muslim men had permanently disfigured her when she was 16. After one entered her place of employment and noticed her wearing a cross around her neck, he "became abusive," telling her "that she was living in the gutter and would go to hell for shunning Islam." The man then "left and returned half an hour later, clutching a bottle of battery acid which he savagely chucked over her head".
"As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus. Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street. A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital. At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian. 'They all turned against me... Even the people who took me to the hospital. They told the doctor they were going to set the hospital on fire if they treated me.' ... 67 per cent of her esophagus was burned and she was missing an eye and both eyelids. What remained of her teeth could be seen through a gaping hole where her cheek had been. The doctors predicted she would die any day. Despite the odds she pulled through."
Fatal attacks are commonplace. In 2021, the bloated bodies of two Christian sisters were found in a sewer. Two months earlier, Sajida (28) and Abida (26), who were both married and had children, were reported missing. According to their husbands, the two Muslim men for whom they worked had regularly pressured them to convert to Islam and marry them. Even though the young women "made it clear that they were Christian and married, the men threatened them and kept harassing the sisters."
After their decomposed bodies were discovered, their Muslim supervisors "confessed that they had abducted the sisters," Sadija's husband said, "and after keeping them hostage for a few days for satisfying their lust, had slit their throats and thrown their bodies into the drain." He described the families' ordeal:
"When police informed us that they had identified the two bodies as those of our loved ones, it seemed that our entire world had come crumbling down.... I still cannot fathom the site [sic] of seeing my wife's decomposed body."
Around the same time, two other Muslim men also murdered a young Christian woman. Five months earlier, one of the men, Muhammad Shehzad, had started to harass Sonia Bibi, 24. When he would ask her to renounce her faith and marry him, she would decline. One day, while she was walking to work, Shehzad and an accomplice drove by and shot Bibi dead. In the words of her father,
"A few days before the incident, Sonia was again harassed by Shehzad. Since she was a committed Christian she did not betray Jesus and sacrificed her life for her faith."
"We are being harassed and pressurized to withdraw the case against culprits," her father, who must at least have hoped for justice, said.
In another incident, in June 2021, a young Christian woman, Neelam Masih, was beaten and raped in her home for refusing to convert to Islam and marry the man who then raped her. She was alone, Masih said, when Faisal Basra "entered my home at gunpoint."
"[He] dragged me to my bedroom and began to punch and kick me. He threw me on the bed and started to rape me. He demanded I marry him and convert to Islam. I refused. I am not willing to deny Jesus and he said that if I would not agree he would kill me. He hit me on the face with his pistol and I shouted and screamed and tried to escape but he kept pulling me back, dragging me by my hair."
Eventually Masih's Christian neighbor heard her cries and came rushing to the house, prompting Basra to flee.
How do some Muslim men see Christian women in Pakistan?
In January 2016, a group of Muslims in a car stalked and sexually harassed three Christian girls walking home from work. When the girls tried to run away, the Muslims chased them down in their car and ran them over, killing one of the girls, aged 17. After the girls had refused their advances, and before the chase began, the surviving girls had heard one of the Muslims mockingly say, "Christian girls are only meant for one thing, the [sexual] pleasure of Muslim men."
If they resist, they might get splashed with acid or murdered outright.
Not one of these attacks, with the exception of Julie Aftab, was reported on the mainstream media. Even then, no mention was made that such attacks on Christian women follow a pattern in Pakistan.
Perhaps that is something for all those who claim to care about women's rights to think about.
*Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West, Sword and Scimitar, Crucified Again, and The Al Qaeda Reader, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
© 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.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19464/pakistan-acid-attacks-christians

Saudi Iranian Relations…Are Things Changing?
Tariq Al-Homayed//Asharq Al Awsat/March 12/2023
Saudi Arabia and Iran announced the re-establishment of diplomatic ties through a Chinese initiative. This is not the first time that relations between them have been re-established; they had been severed for the first in April 1988 before being severed again in January 2016, due to the Iranian attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran.
It is normal for the two countries to have diplomatic relations, even if at the lowest level of representation because the two countries have several matters on which they diverge as a result of Iran’s expansionist approach, which is not Riyadh’s approach. Well, relations have resumed, so have their divergences become a thing of the past? Of course not.
The statement issued after relations were resumed emphasizes the approach Saudi Arabia has always taken - respect for good neighborliness and international agreements and non-interfere in the affairs of others. The simplest example is the reactivation of the security cooperation agreement.
Signed in 2001, it was known as the “Nayef-Rouhani agreement,” in reference to Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, may God have mercy upon his soul, and Hassan Rouhani. This affirms the consistency of Saudi Arabia’s approach and Iran’s non-compliance.
Saudi-Iranian relations were also resumed in earlier periods, during the terms of Hashemi Rafsanjani and then Mohammad Khatami. These experiences also showed the Saudis that the men they had seen as the doves of Iran were not so, and so the Saudis have plenty of experience in dealing with Iran. Here someone might say: What has changed then?
The fact is that Saudi Arabia has not changed. What has changed is that the Iranian regime is undergoing an existential crisis. However, anyone who believes that Riyadh has thrown Tehran a lifeline at this time is mistaken, as the Iranian crisis is of the regime’s making, and Iran’s crisis is purely domestic.
There is also an external Iranian crisis, a more complicated one, which was engendered by Iran’s nuclear program, and Riyadh does not have a hand in that either. Saudi Arabia would not be involved if Iran is attacked by the United States or Israel, which always hints at this prospect.
The situation in the region shows us that Saudi Arabia is now in a much stronger position, both economically and politically. Meanwhile, Iran is faced with crises internally and externally. Riyadh does not want to get involved in these crises; it wants regional relations to be built on cooperation, not confrontation.
Hence, there was an opportunity for one side that works on development day and night, Saudi Arabia, and another party that is skeptical of any form of progress, Iran. The story has different dimensions; though Tehran has never committed to an agreement, not with Saudi Arabia nor anyone else, however, this time the Chinese are involved.
China is this agreement's guarantor, meaning that there will be consequences if Tehran does not comply. This certainly bothers Washington and the Europeans, but they, Washington and the West have not been serious about the region’s security since concluding the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015.
And so, Saudi Arabia has worked to further its interests, recalibrating its political position so as not to be a party to any conflict and devote itself to development... Has Riyadh changed? No, it continued with its reasonable approach grounded in dialogue. Is Iran honest? History says: no.
Has Saudi Arabia rushed into this? Not in the slightest. Taking a reasonable approach and defusing tension has always been the Kingdom’s approach. It is seeking stability and keeping its eyes open. Finally, will the region change? We hope so, but the question of Iran’s nuclear program is bigger than we imagine.

Are We Nearing the End of Saudi-US Dispute?
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/March 12/2023
I recently took part in a forum that discussed the strained Saudi-US relations.
In the event, organized in AlUla by a think tank, American and Saudi figures discussed in a rather frank atmosphere several diplomatic, military, economic, technological, and cultural aspects of bilateral ties.
I am not at liberty to disclose details of this closed convention, but I will allow myself to share this one simple but significant declaration: “Saudi Arabia today is not the Saudi Arabia of five years ago; nor is the US today the same US it was yesterday. And yet, the Saudi leadership and the Democratic Party are staying with us.”
When facts are clear, emotional debates on historical relations and interests give way to realistic and fruitful discussions.
Not all the factors that drove the two governments to review the ties that bind them were negative. Some stemmed from the necessity of bilateral relations in the service of higher interests. Losing the special relation with Washington is not conducive to the Kingdom’s demise – that much is clear. This fallacy is disproved by nearly a century of stable Saudi leadership. The relations with China are not emotional ones, either. They’re based on interest, on buying and selling oil, cars, phones, and others.
Even if the bilateral relations hit a slump, Saudis will still enjoy American Netflix movies regardless of politics. China will seek to protect its trade routes and petroleum zones through its diplomats or perhaps its warships in the future, as did the Portuguese, British, and Americans in the past in their bids to protect their trade routes in our region.
I believe our dispute is past the stage of danger. The divorce with Washington is past us; now, our focus is on transparent, honest talks to restructure our relations.
On our part, our mistake was setting high expectations on the history of our bilateral relations and our ability to build on them. Surely, ours was a vital and successful relationship that served both countries for decades.
There was oil partnership, confronting communists around the world, repelling Baathists, liberating Kuwait, development projects, the scores of university graduates, and massive trade. But things were not always smooth. There were at times political differences, expulsions of diplomats, military disappointments, and media altercations.
Our history goes way back, but today we open a new page, and I believe the coming chapters will be better than the last seven decades.
But can there be a “strategic” relationship with the US without oil? After all, this was Washington’s target when it infiltrated the region. Does the relationship exist if Riyadh no longer plays its Cold War-era role in the face of Washington's rivals?
The coming days will show that there is opportunity for developing strong ties without oil and without Cold War alliances. Saudi Arabia is repositioning itself as a global economy with regional and international influence. Riyadh’s growing sway will restore its importance as a political and economic partner.
The relation between Riyadh and Washington has gone from unrest to relative stability during the terms of the last three US Presidents. Under Obama, Saudi Arabia was treated with negligence and underestimated, as was the entire region, no longer serving a strategic purpose for the US in Obama’s eyes. When Trump arrived in the White House, he had the courage to establish strong dealings with Riyadh, but those were not under the umbrella of a state strategy. Biden has largely followed in Trump’s footsteps and is currently establishing a long-term framework for the bilateral ties.
For Washington, Saudi Arabia was synonymous with oil. Today, the Kingdom is cementing its role as an economic global power, while continuing to capitalize on its other gains: its unmatched role in the Islamic world, its vital geopolitical status, its stability in a turbulent region, and the crucial role that oil plays in global politics and economy and will still play for another quarter of a century at the very least.
Both sides have clear visibility of the challenges ahead. The US cannot buy the 2 million barrels of oil per day that China does. Nor can Riyadh ignore the superpower that dominates the world with its military prowess, currency, and technology. The Americans are well aware of Saudi Arabia’s development plans and what the Kingdom will look like in a decade.
Are we witnessing a revitalization of bilateral relations in the midst of the global race looming before us? It surely seems like it.