English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For March 18/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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15 آذار/2023

Bible Quotations For today
‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’
Mark 03/01-12./”Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come forward.’ Then he said to them, ‘Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. Jesus departed with his disciples to the lake, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 17-18/2023
Video Documentary/The Lebanese Civil War, Explained | History Documentary
UN Special Coordinator Briefs Security Council on Implementation of Resolution 1701
US helps power-starved Lebanese businesses switch to solar
French, Saudi officials to met in Paris over crisis-hit Lebanon
European team ends Salameh questioning, to return in April
Lebanon Banking Chief Maintains Innocence in European Embezzlement Probe
Salameh says appeared before European team as 'witness'
From acclaim to blame: Central bank chief Riad Salameh
Geagea says Nasrallah had no knowledge of Iranian-Saudi deal
Report: Bukhari told MPs no objection on Franjieh
Shea announces $20 mn solar & renewable energy fund for Lebanon
Berri broaches financial, economic situation with IMF delegation, meets Gendarmerie Commander, receives Ramadan congratulatory cable from Egyptian...
Army Chief meets Czech Ministers of Defense Finance, broaches situation with MP Geagea
Increase in fuel prices in Lebanon
Lebanon expresses interest in supply of grain, fertilizers from Russia
Embassy of Romania: Beirut and Bucharest share aspirations towards progress and modernity
Information Minister welcomes UNIFIL’s Tenenti, Japanese Ambassador, former Information Minister Daouk
FOE participates in UN2023 Water Action Conference

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 17-18/2023
Question: “What are the most common things people think are in the Bible that are not actually in the Bible?”/GotQuestions.org/March 17/2023
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues arrest warrant for Putin over Ukraine war crimes
A Ukrainian commander has revealed the true scale of losses - and paid the price
Putin’s war is headed for a terrifying escalation
Russians flood Kazakhstan with sanction-busting requests - sources
NATO Edges Closer to Expansion as Turkey Backs Finland’s Bid
Turkey to start ratifying Finland's NATO bid, Erdogan says
Berlin Calls for Resolving Differences Over Iran’s Nuclear File
UAE President, Iran National Security Secretary Discuss Issues of Common Interest
EU Calls for UN to Probe Iran Schoolgirl Poisonings
Iranians Renew Protests as Regime Brutality Persists
Iranian Weapons Are Now Being Used on Both Sides of the Ukraine War
Elite officers in Israel's military plan Sunday walkout
Former Israeli premier urges world leaders to shun Netanyahu
In Israel, TV's dystopian 'Handmaids' is protest fixture
Anger spreads in France over Macron's retirement bill push
Timeline of events: 20 years since U.S.-led invasion of Iraq

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 17-18/2023
The White House is Whistling Past America's Bank Graveyard/Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/March 17, 2023
China Inaugurating a New World Order?/Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/March 17/2023
Kataib Babiliyoun pretends to be a local Christian unit, but its members have been recruited from Shia Muslim communities in southern Iraq with the goal of dominating Iraq's strategic Nineveh Plains region/Michael Knights and Yaqoub Beth-Addai/The Washington Institute/March 17/2023
Turkey’s Opposition, Straining at the Seams/M. Bahadırhan Dinçaslan/The Washington Institute/March 17/2023
Shattering the UN’s Many ‘Islamophobia’ Lies/Raymond Ibrahim/American Thinker/March 17/2023
What Divides The Syrian People and What Unites Them/Akram Bunni//Asharq Al-Awsat/March, 17/2023
Do Babies Still Win Wars?/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al-Awsat/March, 17/2023
The Silicon Valley Bank Rescue Just Changed Capitalism/Roger Lowenstein/The New York Times/March, 17/2023
The Saudi-Iran deal reflects a new global reality/Michael Singh/The washington Post/March 17/2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on March 17-18/2023
تقرير عن الحرب اللبنانية؟
Video Documentary/The Lebanese Civil War, Explained | History Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gORVn71fxZA&list=RDCMUCGwO43-vnmkQ2i1v886JjVw&t=2432

UN Special Coordinator Briefs Security Council on Implementation of Resolution 1701
NNA/March 17/2023
The United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka and the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peace Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix briefed the Security Council on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701 (2006). The focus was on the report of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, covering the period of 3 November 2022 to 20 February 2023. Overviewing the situation in Lebanon, the Special Coordinator echoed the grave concerns of the Secretary-General and of the International Support Group for Lebanon over the lack of progress towards the election of a new President since the last briefing in November and underlined the need for the country’s political leaders to demonstrate flexibility and urgency to elect a president for the sake of the Lebanese people. “The impact of the presidential vacuum, that is approaching its fifth month, is contributing to the paralysis of state institutions at a time when the country is most in need of urgent and efficient state action and undermining the country’s ability to address its pressing socio-economic, security and humanitarian challenges as citizens face growing hardships,” the Special Coordinator said. The Special Coordinator highlighted examples of the dire impact of the crisis on people’s lives, including the rapid devaluation of the Lebanese currency and its ripple effect on inflation, purchasing power and poverty rates, the decline in the provision of basic public services including in key sectors such as water, energy, education and health and the growing public frustrations resulting in prolonged strikes, particularly in the public sector. The Special Coordinator regretted that not enough was being done to adopt and implement reforms required to salvage the Lebanese economy and set the country on a path of recovery. This in turn has delayed the agreement on a financial programme with the IMF that can help stabilize the economy.
Emphasizing the importance of all of Lebanon’s constitutional milestones, the Special Coordinator welcomed the ongoing preparations for municipal elections later this year, while noting that further steps will be necessary from the government and Parliament to ensure their timely conduct. She said the elections will also be an opportunity to strengthen the participation and representation of women.
The Special Coordinator commended the diligent efforts of the Lebanese army and security forces despite their resource constraints and encouraged further international support to the military and security institutions, as trusted partners, so that stability and security is preserved in Lebanon. She also welcomed the cooperation between the army and UNIFIL in south Lebanon, which is important for the successful implementation of Resolution 1701. Discussions at the Security Council underlined the critical importance of Resolution 1701 to the security and stability of Lebanon, Israel and the region. While outstanding obligations remain for both parties, the Special Coordinator welcomed their commitment to the resolution and the steps taken in coordination with UNIFIL to maintain the calm along the Blue Line. The Special Coordinator and Security Council members reiterated their condemnation of the killing of a UNIFIL peacekeeper in the area of Al Aqbieh last December and underscored the importance of bringing the perpetrators to justice. The Special Coordinator also underlined the key role of an independent judiciary for Lebanon’s recovery and the need to expedite impartial and thorough judicial processes on numerous unresolved cases in Lebanon, including most tragically the Beirut Port explosion. The Special Coordinator welcomed the unanimity within the Security Council on Lebanon’s peace, security and stability and the readiness of the international community to offer needed support. “But long-term, sustainable solutions can only be nationally led and depend on Lebanese leaders,” she emphasized. In conclusion, the Special Coordinator reiterated the commitment of the United Nations to continue standing by Lebanon and its people.

US helps power-starved Lebanese businesses switch to solar
Najia Houssari/Arab News/March 17/2023
BEIRUT: The US has launched a $20 million fund to help Lebanese businesses install solar energy systems as owners struggle to stay afloat amid the collapse of the country’s electricity sector.
US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea launched the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund on Friday, saying it will help local businesses reduce operating costs, sustain their operations and maintain employment levels.
“This fund will support the purchase and installation of solar power generation systems for at least 25 businesses,” she said.
Lebanon’s crumbling power sector has forced businesses and households to rely largely on private diesel generators.
Power now is available for only four hours a day, thanks to a $60 million advance approved by the Cabinet in favor of the Electricite du Liban to supply fuel to operate the Deir Ammar and Zahrani plants.
However, few trust the state’s sudden generosity. Jamal, a lawyer, said: “Increasing feeding hours to four hours may be a temporary trap to impose the new price on taxpayers, after which we will fall back into darkness.”
Shea said: “Lebanese businesses are struggling in this current economic crisis. They have limited access to financing and their capital accounts, like those of all depositors, are trapped in Lebanese banks. For years, Lebanese enterprises relied on unsustainable and costly energy sources harmful to the environment.
“The US Agency for International Development contributed $4 million in seed capital to the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund, and we are working to secure an additional $16 million from private investors and other donors.”
She added: “The fund will lend capital to enterprises at commercial rates, anticipating that the loans will be repaid within two to three years. This will come from savings on reduced reliance on diesel generators. “We expect that these businesses will cut their operating costs by at least 20 percent, reducing their expenditures on electricity, and thereby boosting productivity and protecting Lebanese jobs.”
Lebanon has failed for decades to reform the electricity sector, which has cost the state billions of dollars without reaching effective solutions. The state treasury covers EDL’s losses, which amount to about $2.5 billion annually. The deficit created by the Lebanese electricity sector is about 45 percent of the country’s total. Protesters staged sit-ins at the EDL headquarters in 2019 over the reduced power supply. Before the crisis, the Lebanese received 12 hours of state electricity per day. However, the feeding hours gradually dropped to eight, then four, before power plants were temporarily shut down. Farid Belhaj, World Bank vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, met Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s caretaker premier, earlier this week and expressed the bank’s dismay at the government’s failure to reform the electricity sector, a condition for implementing a plan to draw energy from Jordan via Syria, funded by the bank. A decision by Lebanon’s energy ministry to raise subscription fees for access to electricity, based on the constantly changing exchange rate, has added to the burden facing many Lebanese. With monthly bills amounting to millions of Lebanese pounds, many are cancelling their subscription, saying they can no longer afford to pay state electricity and private generator fees, especially since the latter are priced in dollars.
As the value of the Lebanese pound continues to fall and the price of diesel to operate private generators rises, many have opted for solar energy. Thousands of solar panels have been installed on residential buildings and on rural land in the countryside to power factories producing local commodities. Lebanese citizen Ahmed Al-Rabih said: “I decided to cancel my electricity subscription because I cannot bear all these burdens. The consumption value is 10 cents for under 100 kilowatts, and 27 cents for over 100 kilowatts, which means that the bill will at least amount to 1,500,000 Lebanese pounds.”
An EDL employee told Arab News: “Many citizens who emigrated from Lebanon have asked their relatives to submit requests to cancel their electricity subscription because they would be pointlessly paying fees without benefiting from electricity. Others are canceling their subscription because they have private generators or solar energy for their buildings and there is no need for them to pay additional fees.”The employee said noted that a third category of people are canceling their subscriptions without having other alternatives, but they can simply no longer afford it. Activists launched an online campaign under the slogan “We will not pay” in objection to the new tariff for state electricity and to boycott the payment of EDL bills.

French, Saudi officials to met in Paris over crisis-hit Lebanon
Agencies/March 17/2023
French and Saudi officialsl met today in Paris and discussed the Lebanese crises, including the presidential file and the economic crisis. Saudi royal envoy Nizar Al-Aloula and Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari  met with French President Advisor Patrick Durrell and French presidential envoy Pierre Duquesne. The meeting  discussed the results of Duquesne's negotiations with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington and Paris, and the assistance that Lebanon had requested in the energy and financial recovery files, al-Joumhouria newspaper said Friday. It said it has learned from informed diplomatic sources that the meeting  also discuss the presidential file and the president's qualifications.

European team ends Salameh questioning, to return in April
Agence France Presse/Associated Press/March 17/2023
A European legal team on Friday ended two days of questioning of central bank chief Riad Salameh in Beirut in a money-laundering probe linked to the governor. Salameh was questioned for two hours Friday and six hours the day before, Lebanese judicial officials said. The European delegation — with representatives from France, Germany, and Luxembourg — questioned Salameh through a Lebanese judge, acting as a go-between. Under Lebanese laws, the representatives cannot directly question Salameh. The sessions proceeded "calmly", media reports said. Salameh had provided Thursday "detailed" responses to some 100 questions submitted by investigators and "refuted all suspicions of money laundering". The team asked him about an apartment in Paris’ Champs Elysee rented by the central bank and Forry Associates Ltd, a brokerage firm owned by Salameh's brother, Raja, on whether the company existed, the officials said. They added that Salameh was “confident” when he responded to the questions in French. In his second questioning session Friday, Salameh faced an additional 100 questions put forward by the European delegation. Salameh,72, is part of the Lebanese political class widely blamed for a crushing economic crisis that began in late 2019 and which the World Bank has dubbed one of the worst in recent history. He faces allegations of crimes including embezzlement in separate probes in Lebanon and abroad, with investigators examining the fortune he has amassed during three decades in the job.
Salameh has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. France, Germany and Luxembourg seized assets worth 120 million euros ($130 million) in March last year in a move linked to a French probe into Salameh's personal wealth. The European investigation is looking into allegations of financial misconduct, including possible money laundering and embezzlement. The delegation is expected to leave on Saturday before returning on April 15 to question Salameh's brother Raja and former assistant Marianne Hoayek. The two had separately been summoned for a Lebanese investigation that opened in 2021. The delegation has submitted the questions to Lebanese judge Charbel Abu Samra, who for procedural reasons was to do the questioning in the presence of the European officials.Salameh would appear "as a witness" and would not be charged or arrested, a judicial source said, adding that the central bank chief could face several days of questioning.
Initial no-show
Salameh had been summoned to appear on Wednesday but failed to show up, alleging that "the presence of international judges in Lebanon and the investigation into the financial matters is in conflict with national sovereignty". The judiciary rejected his claim and the session was rescheduled for Thursday. In January, the European investigators interviewed banking officials in Beirut about the transfer of funds to countries where Salameh has significant assets. They also examined the central bank's ties to Forry Associates Ltd, a British Virgin Islands-registered company that listed Salameh's brother as its beneficiary. Forry is suspected of having brokered Lebanese treasury bonds and Eurobonds at a commission, which was then allegedly transferred to bank accounts abroad. Salameh has rarely appeared before investigating judges, despite numerous complaints and summonses. Last month, Lebanese authorities charged Salameh with embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion as part of their own investigation. A fresh complaint was filed against him on Wednesday, including for bribery and illicit enrichment.

Lebanon Banking Chief Maintains Innocence in European Embezzlement Probe
Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 17 March, 2023
Lebanese central bank governor Riad Salameh maintained his innocence Friday following a second and final day of questioning in Beirut before European investigators in a probe into his personal wealth. Salameh, 72, is part of the Lebanese political class widely blamed for a crushing economic crisis that began in late 2019 and which the World Bank has dubbed one of the worst in recent history. He faces allegations of crimes including embezzlement in separate probes in Lebanon and abroad, with investigators examining the fortune he has amassed during three decades in the job.
Following a three-hour session Friday, Salameh released a statement saying he appeared as a witness and "not as a suspect or facing charges". "Funds from the Lebanese central bank were not transferred to my account," he said in a statement, adding: "The transfers I made abroad, whatever the amount, were from my personal account." The European investigators, including representatives of authorities in France, Germany and Luxembourg, are looking into allegations of financial misconduct, including possible money laundering and embezzlement. Salameh "answered all the questions" and "pledged to provide all the documents tracing the sources of his wealth" as well as the addresses of people mentioned in the questioning sessions, a judicial official told AFP. Members of the European delegation plan to return to Beirut in April to question Salameh's brother Raja and former assistant Marianne Hoayek, the official said on condition of anonymity as he was not allowed to discuss matter with the press.
198 questions
Thursday's questioning session at Beirut's heavily guarded justice palace, which lasted more than five hours, was the first time Salameh had appeared as part of the European probe. The hearing had been scheduled to begin on Wednesday but Salameh failed to show up, claiming it was in "conflict with national sovereignty", an argument the judiciary rejected. For procedural reasons, the European investigators submitted their questions to a Lebanese judge, who was then responsible for putting them to Salameh in their presence, a judicial source previously told AFP. Salameh had answered 198 questions during the two sessions, the first judicial official said, mostly about the central bank's ties to Forry Associates Ltd, a British Virgin Islands-registered company that listed Salameh's brother as its beneficiary. Forry is suspected of having brokered Lebanese treasury bonds and Eurobonds at a commission, which was then allegedly transferred to bank accounts abroad.
Salameh denied that any central bank funds had gone to the company. He decried "ill intentions" against him and blamed an "ongoing media campaign" for his legal woes. In January, the European investigators interviewed banking officials in Beirut about the transfer of funds to countries where Salameh has significant assets. During this week's sessions, Salameh was also questioned about "the huge funds and real estate he owns in Lebanon and abroad," the official said. France, Germany and Luxembourg seized assets worth 120 million euros ($130 million) in March 2022 in a move linked to a French probe into Salameh's personal wealth. The three-decade bank governor has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has rarely appeared before investigating judges, despite numerous complaints and summonses. Last month, Lebanese authorities charged Salameh with embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion as part of their own investigation. The domestic probe was opened following a request for assistance from Switzerland's public prosecutor looking into more than $300 million in fund movements by the Salameh brothers.

Salameh says appeared before European team as 'witness'
Naharnet/March 17/2023
Central bank governor Riad Salameh said Friday that he has appeared "as a witness" before the European legal team and not as a suspect or an accused. Salameh was questioned for two hours Friday and six hours the day before about his properties abroad and his wealth.
He said in a statement, after leaving the Justice Palace where he was questioned, that he has presented documents that prove that no money has been transferred to his personal account from the central bank's funds. Salameh also said that the money transferred to bank accounts abroad was from his personal account and not from the central bank's money, accusing some media outlets, journalists, and "populist" politicians of "fabricating" evidence. "The transfers I made abroad, whatever the amount, were from my personal account," he said. The European investigators are looking into allegations of financial misconduct, including possible money laundering and embezzlement. In January, the European investigators interviewed banking officials in Beirut about the transfer of funds to countries where Salameh has significant assets. They have also been examining the central bank's ties to Forry Associates Ltd, a British Virgin Islands-registered company that listed Salameh's brother as its beneficiary. Forry is suspected of having brokered Lebanese treasury bonds and Eurobonds at a commission, which was then allegedly transferred to bank accounts abroad. Salameh denied he profited from any commissions to the company. He said that Forry has not received money from the central bank's funds and decried "ill intentions" against him, blaming an "ongoing media campaign" for his legal woes. The European team has set April 15 to start questioning the governor's brother, Raja Salameh and the governor's associate, Marianne Hoayek. While some local media said that Salameh won't be questioned again, LBCI reported that French Judge Aude Buresi told Salameh that he is required to attend a hearing session in Paris in mid-May, but Judge Charbel Abu Samra refused the oral notice and asked for an official notice through the Public Prosecution.

From acclaim to blame: Central bank chief Riad Salameh
Naharnet/March 17/2023
Central bank chief Riad Salameh, once lauded for reviving the economy, faces investigations into his personal wealth and is widely viewed as a key culprit in the country's dramatic economic crash.
Salameh, 72, one of the world's longest-serving central bank governors having held the post for three decades, was a previously untouchable figure in Lebanon. On Thursday and Friday, he appeared for the first time before European investigators probing his personal wealth and allegedly suspicious financial transfers abroad.
Now slapped with a travel ban, he faces numerous accusations of financial wrongdoing in Lebanon and abroad. Salameh has repeatedly denied all the accusations. Salameh was the architect of the financial policy that allowed Lebanon to recover from a grinding 1975-1990 civil war, and was responsible for pegging the Lebanese pound at 1,507 to the dollar. Known for his calm demeanor, he studied economics at the American University of Beirut and worked for Merrill Lynch in the Lebanese capital before becoming vice-president in France. "He has been a trader and a broker all his life, that is the problem," said a veteran Lebanese financial expert, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You need an economist to run a central bank, not somebody too close to the banking system that he wants to protect."
'Warning signs'
In 1993, Salameh was installed as central bank governor, a post in sectarian Lebanon reserved for a Maronite Christian. He was nominated by then prime minister Rafic Hariri, a wealthy real estate developer whose portfolio Salameh handled at Merrill Lynch. Salameh received accolades, named as the world's best central bank governor by Euromoney in 2006 and by The Banker magazine in 2009. "He's the man who knew how to revive the economy and gain the confidence of investors," said economist Nicolas Chikhani. But after war broke out in neighboring Syria in 2011, "warning signs started to grow" for the Lebanese economy, Chikhani said. Successive governments failed to take action to restructure the economy, and public debt piled up. From 2016, Salameh launched so-called financial engineering aimed at increasing central bank reserves, providing capital to banks and maintaining the value of the pound, in measures that some have compared to a Ponzi scheme. In late 2019, when Lebanon's economy began to unravel and banks imposed draconian restrictions on withdrawals, he became the main focus of public anger. In 2020, Lebanon defaulted on its debt for the first time, and this week the local currency sank to a historic low of 100,000 pounds to the dollar on the parallel market.
'Ready to cooperate'
Salameh now faces allegations of crimes including embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion in separate probes in Lebanon and abroad. His brother has also been accused of complicity. France, Germany and Luxembourg in March last year seized assets worth $130 million in a move linked to a French probe into Salameh's personal wealth. Last month, Swiss media reported that 12 banks in the European country had received a large part of the money Salameh is alleged to have embezzled -- estimated at up to $500 million. Salameh, who says he amassed his fortune during his two decades at Merrill Lynch, has rarely appeared before the judiciary. He enjoys strong support from much of Lebanon's political class and some media outlets, and has maintained his innocence while staunchly defending his monetary policy. "The central bank deals with the outcome of the crisis. It is not the side causing it," he told AFP in a December 2021 interview. "I am ready to cooperate with all investigations," he said, claiming they were based on "fabricated evidence" that made it seem as though he "took all of Lebanon's money and pocketed it." Some political circles have suggested Salameh's mandate -- already extended four times -- could be renewed again when it expires in July. But Western countries have told Lebanese officials that keeping him in his post would be seen "as a negative message for international donors", a diplomatic source told AFP.

Geagea says Nasrallah had no knowledge of Iranian-Saudi deal
Naharnet/March 17/2023
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea told al-Markaziya news portal that those related to Israel's roadside bombing should be very careful, "because the situation in Lebanon cannot tolerate any mistakes." The Israeli army had said Wednesday that soldiers have killed an armed man suspected of entering the country from Lebanon and blowing up a car, raising the risk of renewed tensions with Hezbollah. On another note, Geagea said, in remarks published Friday in al-Markaziya , that despite the Saudi-Iranian deal, the Shiite Duo are still insisting on their presidential candidate, adding that Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah had no prior knowledge of the deal since he had said in his penultimate speech that those betting on an Iranian-Saudi agreement will have to wait for long.

Report: Bukhari told MPs no objection on Franjieh
Naharnet/March 17/2023
Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon walid Bukhari has informed a number of MPs he met that Saudi Arabia is not against the election of Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh as president, al-Liwaa newspaper said. Sources told the daily, in remarks published Friday that Saudi Arabia has no objection on Franjieh or any other candidate, but rather cares about the president's program and how he will address the political and economic challenges. Bukhari has recently met with Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi. He told al-Rahi that his country urges for the election of an uncorrupt president who can save the country, and told reporters after his meeting with Berri that there is "certainly" something positive for Lebanon. The Saudi ambassador will reportedly meet in the upcoming hours with French officials in Paris to discuss the Lebanese financial crisis and the presidential file.

Shea announces $20 mn solar & renewable energy fund for Lebanon
Naharnet/March 17/2023
U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea announced Friday the launch of a $20 million Solar & Renewable Energy Fund at an event in the presence of Minister of Industry George Bouchikian, Minister of Energy and Water Dr Walid Fayad, Minister of Environment Dr Nasser Yassin, USAID Lebanon Acting Mission Director Nicholas Vivio, investors, and local enterprises. The fund, created by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Trade and Investment Facilitation (TIF) Activity and Lebanon Investment Initiative (LII), will unlock private sector investments to finance the cost of solar panel installations for Lebanese entities, the U.S. embassy in Lebanon said. “This fund is not our first intervention in response to Lebanon’s energy crisis, and it will not be the last. Since 2012, the United States Government, through USAID, has been providing affordable and renewable back-up electricity to homes and businesses,” said Shea. “We are confident that Lebanese businesses and investors will see this opportunity as a chance to capitalize on the energy fund to support Lebanon’s economy, the viability of domestic businesses, the jobs of hundreds of Lebanese, and their belief in a cleaner and more productive tomorrow,” she added. “This fund is the first seed to help catalyze clean and sustainable energy financing in Lebanon,” said Mark Rostal, the TIF project’s Chief of Party. “We hope this initiative will draw in more investment in renewable energy in Lebanon, and consequently support the recovery and relaunch of Lebanese businesses that have long suffered, risked closure and layoffs due to the prolonged energy crisis.”USAID, through TIF and LII, committed $4 million in seed funding and $500,000 to structure the fund. With investors pitching in, the fund will raise up to $20 million, the embassy said in a statement. It added that securing investment for renewable energy through the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund will sustain production operations for SMEs in need, thus increasing their export capacity, which in turn positions Lebanon as an important export hub. "Moreover, the fund will also support the livelihoods of households by sustaining the jobs of those working in affected institutions. Up to 25 entities will benefit from the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund in the first round of funding opportunities," the statement said. “The current situation calls for measures, and this is where we come into play. With the support of USAID, Berytech along with IM Ventures are committed to creating sustainable ways of living,” said Maroun N. Chammas, President of Berytech Foundation. “Now, the starting point is to implement the Solar & Renewable Energy Fund which will provide Lebanese companies with power supply at a lower cost, increasing energy efficiency,” he added.

Berri broaches financial, economic situation with IMF delegation, meets Gendarmerie Commander, receives Ramadan congratulatory cable from Egyptian...
NNA/March 17/2023
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Friday welcomed at the Second Presidency in Ain al-Tineh, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission, Ernesto Ramirez-Rigo, who visited him with an accompanying IMF delegation. Discussions reportedly touched in depth on the financial and economic situation, and the stages of the existing dialogue between Lebanon and the IMF and the reform legislations accomplished by the Parliament in this regard. Speaker Berri also received Gendarmerie Commander, Brigadier General Marwan Sleilati. On the other hand, Berri received a congratulatory cable on the occasion of the blessed month of Ramadan from Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.  In his cable and marking the advent of the holy month of Ramadan, President Al-Sisi wished the two brotherly peoples and all the peoples of the Arab and Islamic nations further development, progress and prosperity.

Army Chief meets Czech Ministers of Defense Finance, broaches situation with MP Geagea
NNA/March 17/2023
Army Commander, General Joseph Aoun, on Friday received at his Yarzeh office, Czech Minister of Defense, Jana Cernochova, and Czech Minister of Finance, Zbynec Stanjura, in the presence of Czech Ambassador to Lebanon Jiri Dolezel.
Discussions reportedly touched on cooperation relations between the armies of both countries. Maj. Gen. Aoun also received MP Strida Geagea, with discussion touching on the current general situation.

Increase in fuel prices in Lebanon
NNA/March 17/2023
Fuel prices have increased in Lebanon on Friday, with the price of the canister of 95-octane gasoline and that of 98-octane gasoline rising by LBP 18,000, that of diesel by LBP 18,000, and that of LP gas by LBP 12,000.
Consequently, prices are as follows:
95-octane gasoline: LBP 1,963,000
98-octane gasoline: LBP 2,010,000
Diesel: LBP 1,856,000
LP gas: LBP 1,307,000

Lebanon expresses interest in supply of grain, fertilizers from Russia
NNA/March 17/2023
Acting Minister of Agriculture of the Lebanese Republic Al-Haj Hassan noted that the Russian Federation and Ukraine are global suppliers of products and without them it is impossible to ensure food security. The agreement regulating the export of grain and fertilizers from Russia and Ukraine is in the interests of Lebanon. This was announced to TASS on Thursday by the Acting Minister of Agriculture of the Republic, Abbas al-Haj Hasan, commenting on the extension of the grain deal for 60 days. “The agreements reached are of concern to us, since we are buying such a strategic product as wheat abroad, including in Russia,” he noted. “The government is interested in this and approaches an international agreement, based primarily on what it will bring benefit to Lebanon. According to i. O. head of the Ministry of Agriculture, grain is now imported from many countries. "But we prefer that the situation calms down in the Black Sea region and everything returns to normal," he stressed. "This is the principled position of Lebanon when we talk about the Ukrainian crisis, and we hope that this will happen." Al-Haj Hasan noted that "Russia and Ukraine are global suppliers of products, without which it is impossible to ensure food security." "Of course, grain and fertilizers can be purchased in the United States or, for example, in India, but the question is where it is more profitable to do so," the agency's interlocutor stated, recalling that Lebanon has historically played the role of a trade intermediary in the region. "Today we are all in the same boat, and it is threatened by many storms, so food security should be taken seriously," he said. The minister said that Lebanon has been exporting fresh fruits and vegetables to many countries for decades. "The supply of Lebanese agricultural products to Russia, we believe, will help strengthen the trade and economic relations that bind our friendly countries," he stressed. "In order to move forward on this issue, it is necessary to involve the chambers of commerce and industry."

Embassy of Romania: Beirut and Bucharest share aspirations towards progress and modernity
NNA/March 17/2023
The Embassy of Romania in Beirut on Friday shared the following statement marking the inauguration of Bucharest Street on 21 March 2023: “On the occasion of the inauguration of Bucharest Street on 21 March 2023, the Embassy of Romania to the Lebanese Republic warmly thanks the distinguished representatives of Beirut, Mayor Jamal Itani, the Beirut City Council members, Governor Marwan Abboud and expresses its gratitude for the gesture of friendship they have made towards Romania, by awarding the name Bucharest to a street in Downtown Beirut. It is a beautiful response sent today to Romania's capital, where Beirut Street and Khalil Gibran Park are already testimonies of the importance we give to the traditional, very good relations between our countries. Beirut and Bucharest share aspirations towards progress and modernity, while cultivating the urban heritage, charm and atmosphere of the Romanian Little Paris and Paris of the Middle East of former times.”

Information Minister welcomes UNIFIL’s Tenenti, Japanese Ambassador, former Information Minister Daouk
NNA/March 17/2023
Caretaker Information Minister, Ziad Makary, on Friday welcomed United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon’s (UNIFIL) spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, who expressed UNIFIL’s keenness to strengthen relations with the Lebanese official media sector.
In the wake of his meeting with Minister Makary, Tenenti further reaffirmed that UNIFIL is keen to establish relations with the National News Agency (NNA) and Tele Liban. “We can obtain information on our missions in southern Lebanon, tasks that UNIFIL has been carrying out for years in order to maintain stability in this region in close cooperation with the Lebanese army, and to ensure assistance to local communities,” Tenenti said. Minister Makary separately welcomed Japanese Ambassador to Lebanon, Magoshi Masayuki, with whom he discussed bilateral relations. Makary also welcomed Former Information Minister, Walid Daouk, with whom he discussed the country's most recent developments in light of the ailing living conditions nationwide.

FOE participates in UN2023 Water Action Conference
NNA /March 17/2023
The Faculty of Engineering at the University of Balamand is pleased to announce its participation in the prestigious UN2023 Water Action conference at the UN Headquarters in New York on March 24th, 2023. UOB will present its innovative 1 Million Action Postcard (1MAP) initiative through Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Dr Yasmine Jabaly. The 1MAP initiative, created by Dr. Jabaly in her capacity as UOB LEWAP Student Chapter advisor, aims to raise awareness and encourage positive action on water challenges by connecting solutions across generations. The project has already gained significant support from our partners from the Netherlands, Wavemakers United, further highlighting our international collaborations to make a meaningful impact globally. The initiative, "Youth Perspectives Through 1 Million Postcards," 1MAP for short, was developed in response to the UN Gamechangers Challenge. The UN2023 Water Action conference will feature a special side event dedicated to 1MAP, a remarkable feat for the initiative being the only side event hosted by a Lebanese University as a part of the UN2023 Water Action Conference. The University of Balamand is proud to host this event, especially as it was among the 102 proposals selected out of 1270 applications. UOB Vice President for Internationalization and Engagement and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Professor Rami Abboud commended the efforts of Dr. Jabaly and the UOB LEWAP chapter in their contributions to the success of 1MAP, which has truly "taken Balamand to the world". He also underlined UOB and the Faculty of Engineering's strategic commitment to fostering and promoting sustainable initiatives.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 17-18/2023
Question: “What are the most common things people think are in the Bible that are not actually in the Bible?”
GotQuestions.org/March 17/2023
Answer: In Psalm 119:16, David promises God, "I shall delight in Your statutes; I shall not forget Your word." In Deuteronomy 11:18-19, God exhorts the Israelites, "You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up." As believers, we know we are to study the Bible, memorize it, and obey it. But does the Bible say what we think it says? The truth is, there are several phrases that sound like they come from the Bible, but do not.
"God helps those who help themselves."
The earliest recording of this saying is actually from Aesop’s fable "Hercules and the Waggoner." A man’s wagon got stuck in a muddy road, and he prayed for Hercules to help. Hercules appeared and said, "Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel." The moral given was "The gods help them that help themselves." Aesop was a Greek writer who lived from 620 to 564 BC, but obviously did not contribute to the Bible. As a biblical truism, the proverb has mixed results. We can do nothing to help when it comes to salvation; salvation is through Christ alone. In the work of sanctification—becoming more spiritually mature—we are to join in the work. 1 Peter 1:14-15 says, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior."
"Cleanliness is next to godliness."
Despite the strict rules given to the Israelites about uncleanness as a metaphor for sinfulness and ceremonial washing required by the priests (see: Exodus, Leviticus), this phrase is not in the Bible. It originated as an ancient Babylonian and Hebrew proverb, but became very popular during the Victorian era after being revived by Sir Francis Bacon and John Wesley. Is the proverb true beyond the metaphor? A new study shows that people are generally fairer and more generous when in a clean-smelling environment. But Jesus also exhorts us to worry more about the sin in our hearts than the dirt on our hands (Matthew 15:16–20).
"In the last days, you will not be able to know the seasons except by the changing of the leaves."
Even a thorough Google search will not reveal the origin of this saying, but it is not found in the Bible. Matthew 24:32-33 uses the budding of leaves heralding the coming of summer as a metaphor for the signs that Christ will return. But nowhere does the Bible mention that seasons will be so altered that only the changing leaves will identify them.
"It is better to cast your seed in the belly of a whore than to spill it out on the ground."
This verse is usually used to justify fornication or adultery over masturbation. It is one more misinterpretation of the story of Onan in Genesis 38:6-10. Onan’s brother died, and Onan had the responsibility of marrying his brother’s wife to provide an heir. Instead, Onan "wasted his seed on the ground in order not to give offspring to his brother." This passage isn’t even about masturbation; God struck Onan down because he selfishly refused to provide an heir for his brother’s inheritance. In addition, the proverb is inaccurate. In no way would the Bible encourage the use of anyone other than a spouse for sexual gratification. Instead, we are called to not allow physical appetites to control us (1 Corinthians 6:12-20).
"Hate the sin, love the sinner."
Although this is a biblical-sounding admonition, it is not directly from the Bible. It’s actually a loose quote of something Mahatma Gandhi wrote in 1929, “Hate the sin and not the sinner.” Augustine expressed a similar thought back in AD 424: “With love for mankind and hatred of sins.” The biblical principle backing this up is found in Jude 1:22–23. We are to hate sin—even our own. And we are to show love to other people. The “hating sin” part is coming under fire today as more and more people define themselves by their sin and resent the guidelines God has given us in His Word.
"Money is the root of all evil."
This is a common misconception with an easy fix. 1 Timothy 6:10 actually says, "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil…" Money is not good or bad, and being wealthy is not a sin; Job was wealthy and described as a man who was "blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil" (Job 1:1). Loving money, which in the Greek is "avarice" and implies an emotional affection, is the root of all sorts of evil as the desire to accumulate wealth is placed above God and others.
"This too shall pass."
This is actually a misinterpretation of a line from "The Lament of Deor," an Old English poem. Deor has been replaced as his lord’s poet, and calls to mind several other Germanic mythological figures who went through troubled times. Each refrain ends with, "that passed away, so may this." Several verses in the Bible remind us that our lives and, indeed, heaven and earth will pass away (Matthew 24:35). But while we can find comfort knowing that our earthly sorrows are temporary, we’re still called to rejoice in our trials, knowing that they will lead to endurance and sanctification (James 1:2-4).
"The lion shall lay down with the lamb."
Although Jesus is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb of God (Revelation 5), this phrase does not appear in the Bible. Isaiah 11:6 says, "And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little boy will lead them." Similarly, Isaiah 65:25 reads, "The wolf and the lamb will graze together and the lion will eat straw like an ox…" The sentiment reads true, however—hunter and prey will be reconciled and live in peace in the eternal kingdom.
God left us the Bible as a written testimony of His Word. His truth is found in the Bible. Some sayings are simple rewordings of biblical truth, but others are dangerous heresy. Despite how clever or even edifying a quote may be, if it isn’t in the Bible, we have no guarantee that it is the Word of God. And the only way we’ll know is if we read the Bible.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues arrest warrant for Putin over Ukraine war crimes
THE HAGUE (AP)/March 17/2023
The International Criminal Court said on Friday it issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine.The court said in a statement that Putin “is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and that of unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.”It also issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the President of the Russian Federation, on similar allegations.The court’s president, Piotr Hofmanski, said in a video statement that while the ICC’s judges have issued the warrants, it will be up to the international community to enforce them. The court has no police force of its own to enforce warrants.
“The ICC is doing its part of work as a court of law," he said. "The judges issued arrest warrants. The execution depends on international cooperation.”A possible trial of any Russians at the ICC remains a long way off, as Moscow does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction— a position reaffirmed on Friday by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a first reaction to the warrants.“The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view,” she said.
But Ukrainian officials were jubilant.
“The world changed," said presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the “wheels of Justice are turning," and added that "international criminals will be held accountable for stealing children and other international crimes.”Ukraine also is not a member of the court, but it has granted the ICC jurisdiction over its territory and ICC prosecutor Karim Khan has visited four times since opening an investigation a year ago. The ICC said its pre-trial chamber found “reasonable grounds to believe that each suspect bears responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and that of unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.”The court statement said that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Putin bears individual criminal responsibility” for the child abductions “for having committed the acts directly, jointly with others and/or through others (and) for his failure to exercise control properly over civilian and military subordinates who committed the acts. After his most recent visit, in early March, ICC prosecutor Khan said he visited a care home for children two kilometers (just over a mile) from frontlines in southern Ukraine. “The drawings pinned on the wall ... spoke to a context of love and support that was once there. But this home was empty, a result of alleged deportation of children from Ukraine to the Russian Federation or their unlawful transfer to other parts of the temporarily occupied territories,” he said in a statement. “As I noted to the United Nations Security Council last September, these alleged acts are being investigated by my Office as a priority. Children cannot be treated as the spoils of war.”And while Russia rejected the allegations and warrants of the court as null and void, others said the ICC action will have an important impact. “The ICC has made Putin a wanted man and taken its first step to end the impunity that has emboldened perpetrators in Russia’s war against Ukraine for far too long," said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch. "The warrants send a clear message that giving orders to commit, or tolerating, serious crimes against civilians may lead to a prison cell in The Hague.”Prof. David Crane, who indicted Liberian President Charles Taylor 20 years ago for crimes in Sierra Leone, said dictators and tyrants around the world "are now on notice that those who commit international crimes will be held accountable to include heads of state.”Taylor was eventually detained and put on trial at a special court in the Netherlands. He was convicted and sentenced to 50 years' imprisonment. n“This is an important day for justice and for the citizens of Ukraine,” Crane said in a written comment to the Associated Press Friday. On Thursday, a U.N.-backed inquiry cited Russian attacks against civilians in Ukraine, including systematic torture and killing in occupied regions, among potential issues that amount to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity.
The sweeping investigation also found crimes committed against Ukrainians on Russian territory, including deported Ukrainian children who were prevented from reuniting with their families, a “filtration” system aimed at singling out Ukrainians for detention, and torture and inhumane detention conditions. But on Friday, the ICC put the face of Putin on the child abduction allegations.
*Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says that Russia doesn’t recognize the International Criminal Court and considers its decisions “legally void.”He added that Russia considers the court’s move to issue an arrest warrant Friday against Russian President Vladimir Putin “outrageous and unacceptable.”

A Ukrainian commander has revealed the true scale of losses - and paid the price
James Kilner/The Telegraph/March 17, 2023
Battalion commander, known by his call sign Kupol, gave an unusually frank assessment of Ukrainian losses in an interview - The Washington Post Battalion commander, known by his call sign Kupol, gave an unusually frank assessment of Ukrainian losses in an interview - The Washington Post. Ukraine has demoted a top battlefield commander after he admitted his unit had been decimated in fighting around the city of Bakhmut. The battalion commander, known by his call sign Kupol, gave an unusually frank assessment of Ukrainian losses in an interview from the front lines earlier this week. He revealed that all of the original 500 soldiers in his unit had either been killed or injured, a rare acknowledgement from inside the Ukrainian ranks, where losses are kept strictly confidential. The Ukrainian high command is at pains to present a positive spin on the increasingly bloody defence of the East. US officials have estimated that the Ukrainian army may have taken 120,000 casualties compared to 200,000 by the Russian army. Kupol told the Washington Post this week that the Ukrainian army training was often poor and that some of the rookie replacements didn’t know how to throw a hand grenade or fire a rifle.
Others had abandoned their positions shortly after arriving at the frontline, he said. “I get 100 new soldiers,” he said. “They don’t give me any time to prepare them. They say, ‘Take them into the battle.’ They just drop everything and run. That’s it. Do you understand why? Because the soldier doesn’t shoot. I ask him why, and he says, ‘I’m afraid of the sound of the shot.’ And for some reason, he has never thrown a grenade. … We need NATO instructors in all our training centres, and our instructors need to be sent over there into the trenches. Because they failed in their task.”Kupol said what was left of his unit was also facing ammunition shortages. “You’re on the front line,” he said. “They’re coming toward you, and there’s nothing to shoot with.”Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are being trained by the British Army and other Nato countries but thousands more receive more rudimentary training in Ukraine.
Kupol said that he had been motivated to speak out to try to improve training levels but furious Ukrainian generals instead demoted him. The Washington Post said he had consented to have his picture taken but admitted he could face “personal blowback” for his honest assessment.
Valentin Shevchenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian military, accused Kupol of “disseminating false information”. “The losses announced in the unit of which he had command are significantly overestimated,” she told Ukrainian media.
Shortly after his demotion, Kupol quit the Ukrainian army. Within hours of his reassignment to a training camp, dozens of Ukrainian soldiers, politicians and journalists had voiced their support for the battalion commander.. “One of the Armed forces finest commanders has just been removed,” Yuriy Butusov, a well-known Ukrainian war correspondent, wrote on Facebook.
“Instead of analysing mistakes that will defeat the Russian army, honest comments are suppressed and those who make them are punished.”The leak on casualty numbers will be deeply embarrassing for the Ukrainian military which has diligently built up a narrative of its outnumbered but highly motivated and well-trained army taking on hordes of Russian soldiers and convicts. It also undermines confidence in their much-talked-up counteroffensive planned for spring. The attritional nature of the war in Ukraine has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Both sides have admitted that they are running out of artillery shells and ammunition. Ukraine and Russia guard their casualty numbers closely, believing that they could undermine morale, although military commanders still hint at the high death tolls at their evening briefings when they boast of killing hundreds of enemy soldiers.
On Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that Ukrainian forces had killed more than 1,100 Russian soldiers in the past week. Russia’s ministry of defence said that day that it had killed 220 Ukrainian soldiers in the past 24 hours.
It is not possible to independently verify these numbers. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also been killed. On the battlefield, the British ministry of defence has said that Russian fighters led by Wagner mercenaries have broken over the river in the centre of Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, but that their advance had stalled because they were exhausted. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s Security Council, said that Mr Zelensky was determined to defend the city despite growing pressure to withdraw. “This is our land, and we have no right not to defend it,” he told Radio Free Europe.

Putin’s war is headed for a terrifying escalation
Robert Clark/The Telegraph/March 17, 2023
Poland and Slovakia are arming Kyiv with fighter jets. Russian warplanes are forcing American drones out of the skies. Chinese President Xi Jinping is visiting Moscow in a show of support for Vladimir Putin while Chinese companies are shipping assault weapons and body armour to Moscow’s troops. Putin’s war in Ukraine is headed into dangerous waters, and the potential for escalation with the West is higher now than at any point since the initial invasion. While Nato has remained committed to avoiding direct confrontation with Russian forces, its support for Ukraine is what has enabled Kyiv to hold out. As Putin becomes increasingly desperate, the potential for escalatory threats and actions in an attempt to force the West into backing down is growing. Any miscalculation in such an environment could lead to catastrophic consequences.
All the elements for an accidental escalation are there. First, Russia is facing horrendous losses on the ground. The Ukrainian armed forces are grinding down Russian troops and Wagner convicts in and around Bakhmut. Armed with Western weapons and training, they are inflicting daily casualty figures that would make other military leaders baulk.Second, the West is increasingly bold in its actions in support of Ukraine. On Wednesday Polish president Andrzej Duda announced that Warsaw would send four Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine – the first Western nation to send fighter jets to Kyiv since the war began. As they are replaced over this year, we may well see all 28 of Poland’s MiGs head to Ukraine. Slovakia has also committed planes. These actions were rejected last year for fear of escalation. Ukraine’s Nato allies had restricted their actions to providing spare parts for Kyiv’s fleet of Soviet jets as supplying actual airframes could be viewed as direct participation by the Kremlin. Now this line has been crossed, and Finland and the Netherlands could well follow suit. With greater Western willingness to arm Ukraine and cross Russian red lines, with victories thin on the ground, Moscow may find itself backed into a corner. And with the survival of his regime at stake, nothing would be off the table for Vladimir Putin. We’ve already seen a dangerous new development in the clash between a Russian jet and a US surveillance drone. Despite operating in international airspace, Moscow felt entitled to intervene. These intelligence-gathering platforms have provided a significant battlefield advantage to the Ukrainian war effort, and it’s not entirely surprising that the Kremlin is now sending warning shots.
Sensing that this incident may have been a one-off and opportunistic attack, Washington has avoided any further escalation save a diplomatic dressing-down for Moscow’s ambassador. But in the absence of any harder response, Moscow may now see attacks against Nato unmanned vehicles as fair game: no loss of life, legally ambiguous, and of significant battlefield advantage. Any further incidents in a contested airspace could have real potential for drawing far harder military responses, and with them, the well known risks of miscalculation, miscommunication and potentially disastrous escalation.
This is particularly true given the announcement of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s visit to Putin in Moscow, taking place next week. While Beijing has attempted to pitch itself as a neutral negotiator, the revelation that Chinese state-owned defence contractors have been sending military equipment to Russia has shredded this attempted deception. Far from peacemaker, Beijing is attempting to become kingmaker. Now that the gloves are truly off, who knows where Chinese military support for Russia could ultimately lead? Emboldened by greater support, Russia may well begin to assert itself against the West, just as China is doing over Taiwan. This pattern of escalation has real potential to draw in further British and Nato efforts to a point where conflict past Ukraine’s borders no longer remains unthinkable. We must do everything in our collective power to help Ukraine win, and as soon as possible.
*Robert Clark is the Director of the Defence and Security Unit at Civitas. Prior to this he served in the British military.

Russians flood Kazakhstan with sanction-busting requests - sources
Olzhas Auyezov and Mariya Gordeyeva/ALMATY (Reuters)/Fri, March 17, 2023
Russian companies have flooded their Kazakh partners in recent weeks with new requests to help them circumvent Western sanctions and import badly needed goods, seven sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters. After Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia's $2.1 trillion economy, prompting Moscow to seek circuitous routes for importing technology and goods. With the sale of thousands of items banned by the West, traders established an elaborate network of supply chains through third countries to bypass the restrictions. Many goods enter via Turkey and former Soviet republics, economists say. The seven sources, who all spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said they had seen a rise in Russian requests to help get everything from bearings and aircraft parts to rare earth metals across Kazakhstan's 7,591-kilometre (4,717-mile) land border with Russia. Two of the sources linked the increased Russian interest directly with reported Turkish plans to crack down on the transit of sanctioned goods. "This means the boom is just beginning," said one businessman involved in foreign trade who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
RARE EARTH METALS
Another Kazakh entrepreneur said he had been offered $1 million to help move a truckload of rare earth metals originally from Australia. "From phones and bearings to airplane parts and rare earth metals," the entrepreneur said, giving examples of requests, all of which he said he had turned down. The Kazakh government did not reply to a request for comment. Russians have a very long shopping list which includes industrial equipment, railway bearings, advanced electronics, radio equipment, turbines, airplane parts, raw materials, and even bank card materials, the sources said. Some Russian firms have sought to establish long-term sanction-busting partnerships, the sources said. Under Russian law, it is an offence to comply with the Western sanctions and sanctions-busting has become a profitable boom industry for some entrepreneurs. President Vladimir Putin has quipped that Western luxuries are still available in Moscow, though they are more expensive. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urged Central Asian countries during a visit to the region this month to uphold the sanctions and promised to help them deal with collateral damage. But a Central Asian official, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of Blinken's visit, said governments could do little to stop traders from re-exporting goods to Russia. "I walk into a European company's office and inquire about certain equipment, they say they cannot sell it because it might end up in Russia," said one Kazakh businessman dealing in industrial equipment. "As I walk out, I get a call from a Turkish company offering me that same equipment." Turkey, a NATO ally, said last month it did not export products that could be used in Russia's war effort, after U.S. warnings about exports of chemicals, microchips and other items. Ankara also said it would not allow Western sanctions to be violated in or via Turkey and was taking steps to prevent this.
BOOMING TRADE
Russia remains Kazakhstan's biggest trading partner. Kazakh exports to Russia rose by a quarter to $8.8 billion last year and sales of some items surged. For example, exports of bearings doubled to $111 million, official statistics showed. Exports of plastic pipes, certain kinds of which Russia has had trouble producing or sourcing, more than tripled last year to $12 million. At the same time, Kazakhstan sharply increased imports of computers from European countries and Taiwan, although it is unclear how many of them were then re-exported to Russia. Sometimes no law is even broken, the sources said. Often complex items include sanctioned components but are not explicitly banned themselves. So sharp is the rise in trade that Kazakh customs are overloaded, they added. Another source said Russian banks were importing equipment and plastics needed to produce bank cards via Kazakhstan. Still, such business comes with additional costs. Kazakh businessmen reselling goods to Russia are normally eligible for a 12% VAT refund but those who move "suspicious items" do not file for it so as not to expose the whole supply chain, the businessman said. One source, though, used a Russian proverb to explain why he had decided to get involved in the illicit trade: "For some war is grief and misery but for others it is a way to flourish."
(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Gareth Jones)

NATO Edges Closer to Expansion as Turkey Backs Finland’s Bid
Selcan Hacaoglu, Kati Pohjanpalo and Natalia Drozdiak/Bloomberg/Fri, March 17, 2023
Turkey will ratify Finland’s accession into NATO, bringing the military alliance a step closer to welcoming its 31st member as the ripples from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spread across the European security landscape. “We’ve decided to start the process for the approval of Finland’s membership in our parliament,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference Friday together with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto in Ankara. Ties with Finland will be reinforced when the Nordic country joins the alliance, Erdogan said. “Progress on Sweden’s bid depends on steps it will take,” Erdogan said. He added he hoped to complete the approval process for Finland by May 14 elections due in Turkey. Turkey’s likely ratification would remove what had been seen as the biggest obstacle to Finland’s accession. It could potentially leave Hungary as the last holdout in the enlargement process if Prime Minister Viktor Orban continues to delay a parliamentary vote in contrast with his statements of support. It also casts further doubt on Sweden’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “I have a feeling that Finnish NATO membership is not complete without Sweden,” Niinisto said. “We have so much common interest having been neighbors and having the Baltic sea area on our shore. So, I would like to see in Vilnus that we will meet the alliance of 32 members.”The US has pushed for the fast ratification of both Nordic nations’ entry and most allies want the northern enlargement completed by the bloc’s upcoming summit in July. Hungary currently targets a vote on the Nordic entrants in late March or early April following multiple delays. Finland’s membership is set to enable the alliance to start securing the area around the Baltic Sea in defense of its Baltic members, which are often seen as potential targets of Russian aggression.
Russia Border
Including Finland in the alliance would double the length of NATO’s border with Russia, which now comprises just 6% of Russia’s land perimeter. It would enable the alliance to improve its surveillance of Russia’s western flank with the help of Finland’s well-trained military, which already uses weapons compatible with the alliance. Turkey is effectively deferring a decision on Sweden’s membership bid until after its new anti-terrorism laws go into force in June. “We’ve no different stance toward Sweden. But Sweden has opened its arms to terrorists,” Erdogan said. “We’ve relayed names of 120 terrorists to them but they could not extradite them to us,” Erdogan said. “Since they could do not give them to us, it is not possible for us to look positively to Sweden. That’s why we had to separate Sweden from Finland.”With Turkey’s ratification likely before its May 14 elections, and Hungary’s vote potentially in the coming weeks, Finland’s entry could happen within weeks.
Silver Lining
For Sweden, the solo entry of its eastern neighbor is a setback with a silver lining. While it adds to uncertainty over completing Sweden’s accession, it still introduces a NATO buffer between Stockholm and Moscow. “Sweden has security guarantees from the US and the UK and other countries, so from a pure military perspective it’s not the end of the world, but it’s a pretty sad look,” said Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow for foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute. For NATO, the separation of the Nordic bids complicates defense planning. While the alliance’s northern enlargement is set to improve its ability to defend the three Baltic states, Sweden acts as a key supply route and brings depth to the defenses of Finland.
Security Landscape
Finland guards a border with Russia roughly 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) long and has a reserve of 900,000 troops thanks to a conscription-based system that wasn’t dismantled after the Cold War ended. It’s able to deploy about a third of them in war time — more than many much larger European nations.
NATO’s expansion underscores the drastic transformation of the European security landscape after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 prompted Germany to abandon its postwar reticence over defense spending and embark on a massive revamp of its military. Holding up Turkey’s approval of Sweden is a perception that the biggest Nordic country has not done enough to crack down on groups Ankara calls terrorist. What initially began as an opportunity for Erdogan to air disappointment with NATO and European allies’ contribution to its fight with groups including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, later centered on Stockholm’s failures. The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the US. Erdogan was particularly incensed by protests in January that saw an effigy of his likeness suspended upside down publicly and a Koran burnt outside the Turkish Embassy in the Swedish capital. Sweden has since prevented at least two Koran burnings and put forward an anti-terrorism law that’s been long in the works. That’s due to enter into force on June 1 and could help Turkey move ahead with its ratification. With many allies having set the mid-July Vilnius summit as a deadline, Braw at the American Enterprise Institute said that a failure to bring Sweden in beforehand would mean “the momentum is somehow lost.”“Once that summit has come and gone, it’s just harder for all parties involved to drum up a sense of urgency again,” Braw said, adding that “also domestically in Sweden, it’ll be difficult to give a reason why things should happen quickly.”
--With assistance from Leo Laikola, Patrick Sykes and Thomas Hall.

Turkey to start ratifying Finland's NATO bid, Erdogan says
ANKARA (Reuters)/March 17, 2023
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey's parliament will begin ratifying Finland's NATO bid, but not that of Sweden, removing the biggest remaining hurdle to enlarging the Western defence alliance as war continues to rage in Ukraine. Speaking in Ankara alongside Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto, Erdogan said Helsinki won Turkey's blessing after taking concrete steps to keep its promises to crack down on what it sees as terrorists and to free up defence exports. Ankara will continue discussions with Stockholm on terrorism-related issues and Sweden's NATO membership bid would depend directly on measures taken, he added. The parliaments of all 30 NATO members must ratify newcomers. "We have decided to initiate the ratification of Finland's accession process to NATO in our parliament," Erdogan told reporters after meeting with Niinisto, adding he hoped parliament would endorse the bid before May 14 elections.Niinisto said he welcomed the decision and called it "very important" for Finland, which shares a long border with Russia. In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland applied last year to join the trans-Atlantic pact but faced unexpected objections from Turkey. Ankara says Stockholm harbours members of terrorist groups, a charge Sweden denies. Apart from Hungary, whose ruling party has said it backs the two Nordic bids but has delayed steps, Turkey is the only NATO member not yet to have given Finland and Sweden its green light.

Berlin Calls for Resolving Differences Over Iran’s Nuclear File
London - Berlin - Tehran - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 17 March, 2023 -
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday called for resolving differences over the Iranian nuclear efforts and expressed his concern about the “real danger” posed by Tehran's program.
Speaking alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after talks in Berlin, Scholz said Germany and other countries are working to prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “Israel should not be threatened,” he affirmed. Meanwhile, Netanyahu wrote on his Twitter account that Israel will do what it needs to do to defend itself against those who want to annihilate the Jewish state. “Israel will also act against Iran's aggression and terrorism. Those who perpetrate terror attacks against Israel and those who send them will pay a heavy price,” he said. On March 7, France, Germany and the UK (E3) gave a joint statement to the IAEA Board of Governors on Iran’s implementation of its nuclear commitments under the JCPoA. The E3 said they are especially alarmed by the recent sampling at Fordow, which showed the presence of highly enriched uranium (HEU) particles to 83.7%. “This is significantly inconsistent with the level of enrichment declared by Iran and Iran has yet to convince us that this was due to its claimed ‘unintended fluctuations,” the statement said. Earlier this month, IAEA said Iran has given sweeping assurances to the UN nuclear watchdog that it will finally assist a long-stalled investigation into uranium particles found at undeclared sites and even re-install removed monitoring equipment. IAEA is asking Iran for more inspections and the reactivation of surveillance cameras and monitoring equipment at some of the country's nuclear sites. Also, Iran should offer the UN nuclear watchdog convincing explanations on the origin of uranium particles enriched to 83.7% purity - very close to weapons grade - at Iran's underground Fordow. Meanwhile in Tehran, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) said Thursday that Deputy Director General and Head of the Safeguards Department of the UN nuclear watchdog (IAEA) is on his way to Tehran for talks with Iranian officials. Spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Behrouz Kamalvandi, said that Massimo Aparo will pursue the negotiations recently held by experts of the IAEA and those of the AEOI during Grossi’s recent visit to Iran this month.
Kamalvandi noted that the safeguards and technical discussions will be in line with the joint statement of the IAEA and the AEOI that was issued during the visit. Meanwhile, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell called on Iran, in a phone call with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, to speed up the implementation of the agreement between Tehran and the IAEA, according to Iranian websites. The call came a few hours after Grossi said he’s sending a technical team to Iran in the next few days to follow up on Tehran’s commitments. “We still need to start the process of getting these additional, further monitoring and verification capacities,” Grossi said, explaining that the process could take “maybe weeks or days.”“I hope there won’t be any trouble,” the IAEA chief added, according to WSJ reporter Laurence Norman.
Also, US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley said he met with Grossi and discussed the IAEA chief’s recent meetings in Tehran this month. “We stressed that Iran should follow through on its commitments made to IAEA and should facilitate any access deemed necessary by the agency,” Malley wrote on his Twitter account. Meanwhile, Russia's Permanent Representative to International Organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said, “somebody needs to engage the US on finalization of the Vienna talks on restoration of the nuclear deal in order to avoid the high risk of uncontrolled escalation.”

UAE President, Iran National Security Secretary Discuss Issues of Common Interest
Abu Dhabi, Tehran – Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 17 March, 2023 -
United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan received in Abi Dhabi on Thursday Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Shamkhani. Discussions focused on bilateral relations and ways to bolster cooperation between their countries in various fields to achieve common interests. The officials also discussed regional and international developments of interest and the importance of supporting peace and cooperation in the region to meet the aspirations of their people for development and prosperity. A day earlier, Shamkhani had met with UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. They discussed bilateral relations and ways to bolster and develop them to achieve mutual interests, especially in political, economic and trade fields. They tackled several issues of common interest and underscored the importance of exerting efforts to achieve regional stability and prosperity. Shamkhani was accompanied by senior economic, security and banking officials. Iranian media had reported that Shamkhani would visit the UAE at an official invitation from Sheikh Tahnoun. The UAE had downgraded its relations with Iran after Saudi Arabia severed ties with Tehran in January 2016. Shamkhani visited the UAE a week after Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to restore diplomatic relations. Shamkhani told Sheikh Tahnoun that the “lack of trust in the strategic region overlooking the Gulf is preventing economic development, which is the goal of enemies from outside the region,” Iranian media quoted him as saying.
He stressed that “comprehensive, ongoing and constructive cooperation with neighbors is a firm strategy in Iran’s foreign policy,” Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported him as saying. “Current challenges that don’t serve the interests of any country in the region should be resolved through cooperation and rapprochement, and away from disputes and animosity,” he added. Moreover, he remarked that “disputes and lack of trust” were “serious obstacles in achieving economic development.”“We must talk and work together and expand political, security and cultural cooperation to counter the unconstructive role of outsiders,” he added. For his part, Sheikh Tahnoun said that “cooperation and friendship” between nations were a top priority to the UAE, IRNA reported. On the Saudi-Iranian agreement, he told Shamkhani that it “will play a constructive role in expanding peace, stability and sustainable security in the region.”
“The development of friendly and fraternal relations between Abu Dhabi and Tehran are among the UAE’s priorities,” he stated. Furthermore, he added that Shamkhani’s visit was a “turning point in relations” between their countries and will give “a greater push in developing their ties,” according to IRNA. Shamkhani noted that all countries in the region “share the same fate and are members of the same large family.” “Family disputes must be resolved through dialogue, good intentions and forgiveness so that we can create a strong and developed region,” he added. The exchange of economic, trade and investment relations is a top priority for Tehran in establishing ties with its neighbors, he went on to say. He said he believed that his visit to the UAE will open a new chapter in political, security and economic relations between their countries. Later on Thursday, Iranian deputy foreign minister for political affairs Ali Bagheri Kani revealed that his country will soon reinstate its ambassador to the UAE. Arrangements to dispatch the envoy to the UAE have kicked off, Iranian media quoted him as saying.
Relations between Iran and the UAE “were never severed”, rather they were simply downgraded, he remarked.

EU Calls for UN to Probe Iran Schoolgirl Poisonings
Brussels - Asharq Al-Awsat/Friday, 17 March, 2023
European lawmakers called on the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday to conduct an independent investigation into a wave of poisonings that have hit schoolgirls in Iran. Some 13,000 pupils, mostly girls, have fallen ill after "suspected poisonings" according to state media and officials in Iran, with some politicians blaming religious groups opposed to girls’ education. In a resolution, the European Parliament condemned "in the strongest terms, this atrocious attempt to silence women and girls in Iran". According to Reuters, it also urged EU member states to facilitate the issuance of visas, asylum and emergency grants to those who need to leave Iran, "particularly women and girls". The sickness in schools has added to public anger at the authorities, already running high after the death last September of a young woman while in the custody of morality police, which unleashed the biggest anti-government protests in Iran in years. Some activists have accused the establishment of orchestrating the poisonings in revenge for the fact that schoolgirls joined the protests. Iran's supreme leader said earlier this month that the poisoning schoolgirls is an "unforgivable" crime that should be punished by death if deliberate, state TV reported. Iran has arrested several people it said were linked to the wave of poisonings and accused some of connections to "foreign-based dissident media".

Iranians Renew Protests as Regime Brutality Persists
FDD/March 17/2023
Latest Developments
Iranians renewed protests against Tehran’s clerical regime this week to mark the country’s traditional fire festival, a celebration with Zoroastrian roots linked to the Persian new year. Meanwhile, Iran International reported today that Iran’s parliament “is planning a raft of new repressive measures in further crackdowns on hijab rebels, including increased surveillance and cutting access to social services.” New reports of torture by the regime against protesters have also emerged, reflecting Tehran’s ruthless determination to stymie the unrest. Iranian security forces have killed more than 520 protesters and arrested some 22,000 since the latest round of demonstrations began in September 2022.
Expert Analysis
“After six months of protests, the courageous Iranian people have shown that the regime’s brutality will not deter them from demanding their rights. The Biden administration should unequivocally endorse their calls for regime change and snap back UN sanctions on Iran. There can be no negotiating with a regime that murders its own people in the streets.” — Tzvi Kahn, FDD Research Fellow and Senior Editor
Torturing Child Protesters
A human rights group reported today that Tehran’s “intelligence and security forces have been committing horrific acts of torture, including beatings, flogging, electric shocks, rape and other sexual violence against child protesters as young as 12 to quell their involvement in nationwide protests.” The torture often aimed to elicit forced confessions. One boy recalled, “I was forced to say what they wanted because they raped me with a hosepipe. They were taking my hand and forcibly making me fingerprint the papers.”
Blinding Demonstrators
Iranian security forces often deliberately fire at the eyes of protesters in order to blind them and deter further demonstrations. According to a comprehensive report by IranWire released on Tuesday, at least 580 Iranians, including children, have lost one or both eyes during protests. In one case in November, five-year-old Benita Kiani Flavarjani lost an eye after police fired some 20 metal pellets at her head.
Journalists Behind Bars
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Iranian affiliate, the Tehran Province Journalists Association (TPJA), called on Tehran today to release the 15 Iranian journalists currently in prison for covering the protests. “While the arrests continue,” IFJ and TPJA stated, “the sentences are raining down on those on trial, with extremely heavy penalties ranging from one year to 18 years in prison. Other sentences include community service, lashes, exit restrictions and bans on working as a journalist.” The organizations also condemned Iran’s continued censorship of reformist media and internet shutdowns.

Iranian Weapons Are Now Being Used on Both Sides of the Ukraine War
Adam Rawnsley and Asawin Suebsaeng/Rolling Stone/March 17, 2023
The video shows a Ukrainian soldier unboxing his prize to a soundtrack of dance beats — a brand-new crate of 125mm tank ammunition. On the surface, the clip posted to social media is no different than thousands that Ukrainian soldiers have filmed depicting the day-to-day logistical drudgery of war.
But this crate, first spotted by consultants working for the open source Ukraine Weapons Tracker Project, is altogether different from the ones often seen among troops from the Ukrainian army. The crate contains Iranian ammunition made in December 2022, part of a trail of Iranian arms that have appeared in the hands of Ukrainian forces. For months, arms trackers have noticed Ukrainian forces using artillery shells, rockets, and mortars made in Iran — with no explanation of how they appeared in Kyiv’s arsenals.
“Starting in the late summer of 2022, we have seen a consistent trend of Iranian ammunition showing up in the hands of the Ukrainian army,” a consultant from Ukraine Weapons Tracker, who goes by the handle Calibra Obscura, tells Rolling Stone. “In particular, these have manufacturer dates going from early 2022 through December 2022, indicating that the supply is not from legacy captures by Western forces in the Middle East.” (“Legacy captures” refer to armaments seized after years of military operations by the U.S. and European allies in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Ukraine’s embassy in Washington did not respond to questions from Rolling Stone.
Iran has sided squarely with Russia in its invasion of Ukraine — and has been a U.S. adversary for nearly half a century. In 2007, the U.N. placed an arms-export embargo on Iran as part of a package of sanctions on its nuclear program. The ban expired in 2020, but U.S. and European sanctions on purchases from Iran still remain. Despite those restrictions, Iran has still managed to export large quantities of small arms and light weapons to proxy militias in Yemen, Iraq, and other countries in the Middle East.
But the appearance of Iranian arms in the hands of U.S.-backed Ukrainian forces is part of a shadowy, global scavenger hunt for ammunition kicked off by the furious pace of fighting. Both Russia and Ukraine have churned through ammunition, reportedly firing thousands of shells a day and depleting stocks in both countries. With Iran on Russia’s side, there’s zero suggestion it’s supplying Ukraine directly, leaving open the question of which third party is acquiring the weapons and how.
“Ukrainians are receiving donations from everybody, anywhere, at an incredibly fast pace, and they don’t have time to ask where it came from. They’re in the middle of a war,” says Reuben F. Johnson, a defense-technology analyst with years of experience in Ukraine. “We’re also in a world where the shadowy business of ammunition and other munitions supplies goes through a lot of hands.”
The so-called shell hunger has sent Russia on shopping trips to North Korea and Iran, and led Russian diplomats to plead with China to export arms for the war effort. Ukraine, since the start of Russian aggression a year ago, has redoubled its pleas to NATO and other allied nations for more and better weaponry. “Artillery is the number-one thing we need. Both [artillery] systems and ammunition, as well as shells in large quantities to stop Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky said earlier this month during a meeting with Latvian officials.
In response, the West has offered thousands of shells, artillery systems, and long-range rockets capable of striking farther into Russian-held Ukrainian territory. The Biden administration has withheld longer-range weapons like MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System, citing concerns about its own supplies of the missiles as well as the potential for Russian escalatory responses.
The Iranian tank ammunition spotted by the Ukraine Weapons Tracker consultants is just the latest in a series of evidence showing Kyiv has managed to obtain at least some access to weaponry from the Islamic Republic. In September 2022, the consultants spotted a video of Ukrainian forces unboxing rounds of 122mm artillery. The shells were packed in crates with the telltale style of packaging from Iran’s Defense Industries Organization familiar to arms trackers — khaki-colored crates, with packing slips marked in the same formatting seen in previous Iranian arms seizures and displays on Iranian TV.
In January, the consultants noted Ukrainian troops with multiple launch-rocket systems loaded with Iranian 122mm “Grad” rockets marked as produced in 2022. Earlier this month, they spotted troops from Kyiv’s 24th Mechanized Brigade toting Iranian-made 120mm mortar bombs with 2022 production markings. Moscow has leaned heavily on supplies from Iran to fuel its assault on Ukraine, launching Shahed suicide drones — explosives-laden drones used as GPS-guided, propeller-driven cruise missiles — to rain destruction on Ukrainian cities and civilians. In November, Russian forces also received a shipment of Iranian artillery from Iran, according to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
Most of Kyiv’s allies are in the NATO alliance, which tends to use standardized calibers of artillery and ammunition different from those of former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet Republics. The U.S. and its allies have donated NATO-caliber artillery systems and ramped up production of matching shells, but finding sufficient supplies of ammunition to match Ukraine’s weapons has proved more challenging. Ammunition from as far away as Sudan and Pakistan have also appeared in Ukrainian arsenals, without any hints of how it got there.
Since the war began, Ukraine has amassed a spectrum of ammunition from international partners who’ve sold and donated spare stocks. But it’s unclear how Ukrainian troops managed to obtain the Iranian ammunition identified by arms watchers. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs expelled Iran’s ambassador in September 2022, as Iranian drones were being used in Russia’s assault, and Tehran has remained firmly in Russia’s corner since the start of the war.
In the meantime, the Biden administration has debated whether it could leverage Iranian ammunition seized off the coast of Yemen in support of Kyiv. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the White House has considered sending Iranian weapons seized by the U.S.-led naval coalition. The Journal reported that lawyers for the administration were looking for legal authority to transfer a tranche of anti-tank missiles, assault rifles, bullets, and proximity fuzes seized in January for violating the U.N. embargo on arms exports to Yemen.

Elite officers in Israel's military plan Sunday walkout
Associated Press/March 17/2023
Hundreds of elite officers in Israel's military reserves say they will not show up for duty starting on Sunday in protest over the government's plans to overhaul the judicial system.
The firm date is the first time set for an unprecedented political protest within the security services. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial legal overhaul has sparked weeks of mass protests across Israel amidst a deteriorating security situation in the occupied West Bank and rising tensions with Palestinians. In two separate letters published Thursday, about 750 elite officers from the Air Force, special forces, and Mossad threatened to stop volunteering for duty. The typically taboo talk underlines how deeply the overhaul plan has divided Israel and is now tearing at what Israeli Jews see as their most respected institution, the military. After completing three years of mandatory service, many Israelis continue in the reserves until their 40s, when service becomes voluntary. Reservists are the backbone of the force when security crises erupt, and regularly serve in complex operations overseas.
One hundred elite Air Force officers, including two former chiefs, said in an open letter reported by Channel 12 News, Israel's top television program, that Netanyahu's government was subverting the nation's security and democracy. "We fear that following military orders would be a violation of our oath, our conscience and our mission," read the Air Force reservists' letter. About 650 more officers from the reserves' special forces and cyber units said in a separate letter that, "We will not serve a dictatorship. The contract was broken. We are ready to give our life and soul and the government should give responsibility and sanity."The officers pointed to a statement in early March by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in which he suggested erasing a Palestinian town in the West Bank that was attacked by Jewish settlers. Smotrich later backtracked, saying he didn't mean for the Hawara to be erased but for Israel to operate surgically within it against Palestinian militants. "You want a dictatorship - you will pay the full price," they wrote. Israel's military chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, has met with protesting officers and warned Netanyahu about the rising discontent in the ranks.

Former Israeli premier urges world leaders to shun Netanyahu
Associated Press/March 17, 2023
Israel's former prime minister has urged world leaders to shun Israel's current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as he presses ahead with a plan to overhaul the country's justice system. The United States and Germany, two of Israel's closest allies, called on Netanyahu to slow down. The rare calls for restraint and international intervention came as thousands of Israelis once again took to the streets to protest Netanyahu's plan. Ehud Olmert, who served as prime minister from 2006-2009, told The Associated Press that global leaders should refuse to meet with Netanyahu. He appealed specifically to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is expected to host Netanyahu in the coming weeks.
"I urge the leaders of the friendly countries to the state of Israel to refrain from meeting with the Israeli prime minister," Olmert said.
He added that he was aware his call, as a former Israeli prime minister, "is quite extraordinary" but that the situation calls for it. "I think that the present government of Israel is simply anti-Israeli," Olmert said. He took aim at Netanyahu's far-right coalition, an alliance of ultra-Orthodox and ultranationalist parties that oppose Palestinian independence and support increased settlement construction in occupied territories claimed by the Palestinians.
Netanyahu's coalition allies today have close ties with the West Bank settler movement and have a history of statements offensive to Palestinians, women, LGBTQ people and minorities.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the current minister for national security was convicted in the past of incitement to racism and supporting a terror group. Netanyahu's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, recently called for a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank to be "erased," though he later apologized after an international uproar over the comments. "Those who are in favor of the state of Israel should be against the prime minister of the state of Israel," Olmert said.
A spokesman for Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Netanyahu and his allies are now barreling ahead with a plan that aims to weaken Israel's Supreme Court and give his parliamentary coalition control over the appointment of judges.
Netanyahu says the plan will correct an imbalance that he says has given the courts too much sway in how Israel is governed. Critics say the overhaul will upend the country's system of checks and balances and would give the prime minister too much power. They also say Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, could escape justice once the court system is revamped.
Israel's figurehead president, Isaac Herzog, offered a compromise proposal to the nation late Wednesday. But Netanyahu quickly rejected the package as "one sided" and favoring his opponents.
The overhaul has plunged Israel into one of its worst domestic crises. Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets over the past two and a half months, and the plan has sparked an uproar from top legal officials, business leaders who say it will damage the economy and from within the country's military, the most trusted institution among Israel's Jewish majority. Reservists have pledged not to serve under what they see as a shift toward autocracy.
Protesters held a "day of disruption" for a third week on Thursday, with thousands of people blocking roads, including the main highway of the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv. Protesters in Jerusalem drew a large red and pink streak on city streets leading to the Supreme Court and a small flotilla of bloats blocked the shipping lane off the coast of the northern city of Haifa.
"The elected government is doing a legislative blitz that aims to give absolute power to the executive. And absolute power to the executive with no checks and balances is simply a dictatorship. And this is what we're fighting against," said Shlomit Tassa, a protester in Tel Aviv, waving an Israeli flag.
Five opposition party leaders staged a joint press conference and called on Netanyahu to accept the president's proposal. Yair Lapid, the Knesset opposition leader, said they "welcome the president's proposal because in a civil war, there will only be losers."
Key Israeli allies also waded into the debate. At a joint news conference with Netanyahu in Berlin, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz voiced concern about the overhaul plan and praised the Israeli president's attempts to seek a "broad basic consensus."
"As close friends of Israel with shared democratic values, we are following this debate very closely, and I cannot hide the fact that we're following it with great concern," Scholz said at a news conference alongside Netanyahu. "The independence of the judiciary is a precious democratic asset."
Netanyahu showed no sign of being swayed. "I am attentive to what is happening in the nation, but we need to bring something that is in line with the mandate we received," he told reporters.
The White House also praised Herzog's effort to broker a compromise. "The genius of our democracy — and frankly Israel's democracy — is that they're built on strong institutions, that they include checks and balances that foster an independent judiciary," White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said. He said Herzog's efforts are "consistent with those same democratic principles."
Olmert was once one of Netanyahu's fiercest rivals in the hard-line Likud Party. But over time, Olmert veered far to the left. As prime minister, he held months of intense peace talks with the Palestinians before he was forced to resign to face his own legal troubles.
Olmert later spent 16 months in prison after being convicted of accepting bribes and obstructing justice for acts committed years before he was prime minister.
Olmert announced his resignation in 2008, long before he was indicted. At the time, Netanyahu, then in the opposition, led the calls for him to step down, saying he was unfit to rule while facing a criminal probe. Asked about Netanyahu's refusal to step down in similar circumstances, Olmert said he had different values than his old rival. He said that at a certain point, he realized the country's interests were more important than his personal interests.
"The state of Israel comes first," he said. "I retired a year before I was indicted because I felt that it is not right."

In Israel, TV's dystopian 'Handmaids' is protest fixture
Associated Press/March 17, 2023
It's become an ominous fixture of the mass anti-government protests roiling Israel: a coil of women in crimson robes and white caps, walking heads bowed and hands clasped. They are dressed as characters from Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel, "The Handmaid's Tale," and the eponymous TV series.
The women, growing in numbers as the demonstrations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies intensify, say they are protesting to ward off what they believe will be a dark future if the government follows through on its plan to overhaul the judiciary.
"This display is a representation of the things that we fear," said Moran Zer Katzenstein, founder of the women's rights advocacy group Bonot Alternativa, or "building an alternative," which is behind the Handmaid's protest.
"Women are going to be the first to be harmed" under the overhaul, she added. In a move that has sparked widespread opposition, Netanyahu's government is pushing to weaken the Supreme Court and limit the independence of the judiciary, steps they say will restore power to elected legislators and make the courts less interventionist. Critics say the move upends Israel's system of checks and balances and pushes it toward autocracy. The overhaul has sent tens of thousands of people into the streets in protest each week.
Unmissable in the crowd are the women in red robes, turning otherwise usual protest scenes into an otherworldly sight.
Ahead of one demonstration, a group of women rode the train from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in costume, transforming the cars and the platform into what could have been a scene from the Hulu series. Another time, they encircled a central fountain in the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv, a site that's typically home to kids in strollers and dogs on leashes. They have also blocked intersections, staying in character during the protests, keeping quiet as they walk in formation.
Their jarring appearance is meant to drive home the notion that Israel, which portrays itself as the Middle East's lone democracy, could morph into a chilling dystopia where women are stripped of their rights. Atwood's 1985 novel about a futuristic patriarchal society where the robed handmaids are forced to bear children for leaders, has reemerged in recent years as a cultural touchstone thanks to the popular TV series. Its themes of female subjugation and male domination have resonated with women today who see threats in limits on abortion rights, or in Israel's case, in the rise of its conservative, religious government.
The government, Israel's most right-wing ever, is overwhelmingly male. Only nine out of 64 members of Netanyahu's coalition are women. Ultra-Orthodox parties, which are key components of the coalition, deny inclusion to women members entirely.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said men and women should not be permitted to serve together in military combat units, while his governing partners have voiced support for discrimination against LGBTQ people and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
The costume, which has come to embody globally the threat to women under the patriarchy, has been used in protests elsewhere. American women opposing former President Donald Trump's conservative Supreme Court nominees have donned the garb, as have Iranian women demonstrating in Britain in support of the protests in Iran, and Polish women calling to preserve abortion rights.
But with the crisis in Israel showing no sign of abating, the women in red have become a mainstay at protests around the country and their numbers are growing. About 1,000 women wore the robes at a recent Tel Aviv rally.
They're also getting noticed. Atwood herself has retweeted several posts about the women. And Simcha Rothman, the lawmaker and parliamentary committee head spearheading the overhaul, has criticized them, while claiming the legal changes will only strengthen women's rights in Israel.
"I am attentive to the protests and demonstrations and happy to give a response to any concern regarding the legal plan. What do I not accept? A scare campaign that incites falsely that Israel will become 'The Handmaid's Tale,'" he tweeted earlier this month. "The reform will not harm the protection of women."
Zer Katzenstein, who left a career in marketing for international brands to steer the protest, said that she wouldn't count on Rothman, a religious Jew and conservative ideologue, to protect her rights.
The protest is not an exaggeration of where Israel might be headed as some have charged, but rather a warning light, she said.
"We don't think that we (will) wake up and realize that we live in Gilead," she said, referring to the name of the fictional republic in Atwood's book. "But we fear that it's going to be something evolving. First here and then there and another one and another one," she added. "Our message is that we are drawing a red line and we will not let this happen, not even a bit."

Anger spreads in France over Macron's retirement bill push
Associated Press/March 17/2023
Protesters disrupted traffic in Paris on Friday as angry critics, political opponents and labor unions around France blasted President Emmanuel Macron's decision to force a bill raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 through parliament without a vote.
Opposition parties were expected to start procedures later Friday for a no-confidence vote on the government led by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. The vote would likely take place early next week.
Macron ordered Borne on Thursday to wield a special constitutional power to push the highly unpopular pension bill through without a vote in the National Assembly, France's lower house of parliament.
His calculated risk infuriated opposition lawmakers, many citizens and unions. Thousands gathered in protest Thursday at the Place de la Concorde, which faces the National Assembly building. As night fell, police officers charged the demonstrators in waves to clear the Place. Small groups then moved through nearby streets in the chic Champs-Elysees. neighborhood setting street fires.
Similar scenes repeated themselves in numerous other cities, from Rennes and Nantes in eastern France to Lyon and the southern port city of Marseille, where shop windows and bank fronts were smashed, according to French media.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told radio station RTL on Friday that 310 people were arrested overnight. Most of the arrests, 258, were made in Paris, according to Darmanin.
The trade unions that had organized strikes and marches against a higher retirement age said more rallies and protest marches would take place in the days ahead. "This retirement reform is brutal, unjust, unjustified for the world of workers," they declared.
Macron has made the proposed pension changes the key priority of his second term, arguing that reform is needed to keep the pension system from diving into deficit as France, like many richer nations, faces lower birth rates and longer life expectancy.
Macron decided to invoke the special power during a Cabinet meeting a few minutes before a scheduled vote in the National Assembly, where the legislation had no guarantee of securing majority support. The Senate adopted the bill earlier Thursday.
Opposition lawmakers demanded the government to step down. If the expected no-confidence motion passes, which requires approval from more than half of the Assembly, it would be a first since 1962 and force the government to resign. Macron could reappoint Borne if he chooses, and a new Cabinet would be named. If the motion does not succeed, the pension bill would be considered adopted.

Timeline of events: 20 years since U.S.-led invasion of Iraq
Associated Press/March 17/2023
It's been 20 years since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq began. Here are some key dates from the invasion and following developments.
March 20, 2003: The invasion is launched, and Baghdad is attacked with missiles and bombs in an attempt to target Saddam Hussein and bring down the government.
April 9, 2003: American troops storm Baghdad, and the statue of Saddam is toppled in Firdous Square in a symbolic collapse of his government. May 1, 2003: U.S. President George W. Bush declares an end to major combat operations in Iraq.
August 2003: Initial hopes for peace recede. An anti-coalition insurgency begins in earnest. Attacks include a car bombing of the Jordanian embassy; a truck bomb that demolishes the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad and kills top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello; and the bombing of a Najaf shrine that kills more than 85 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim.
December 2003: Saddam is captured in an underground hideout near Tikrit. March 2004: Violent resistance to the U.S. presence intensifies. Four security contractors are ambushed and killed in Fallujah, prompting a battle for the insurgent-dominated city west of Baghdad. Al-Qaida in Iraq, a militant Sunni movement that attracts some of Saddam's former Baathist security forces, leads the insurgency.
April-August 2004: Clashes emerge between U.S.-led coalition forces and followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who demands that foreign forces leave Iraq.
October 2004: U.S. arms inspector David Kay reports his team has found no evidence of stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.
November 2004: Following the failure of a first U.S. campaign for Fallujah, a second battle destroys much of the city but leaves the U.S. in control.
January 2005: Iraqis select a new parliament in the first elections since the fall of Saddam. Shiite and Kurdish parties take an overwhelming majority after Sunnis largely boycott.
December 2005: Fighting takes on the character of a sectarian civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, with ethnic cleansing, killings and terror attacks in mixed neighborhoods. The death toll mounts around the country over the next two years among insurgents, coalition forces and Iraqi civilians.
January 2007: After enlisting sympathetic Sunni tribal leaders to oppose the anti-coalition insurgency in the so-called Sunni Awakening, President Bush orders a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops to contain the spreading violence.
Late 2008: After a year of escalating chaos, coalition forces begin to root out both al-Qaida and Shiite militias opposing the elected government. Barack Obama is elected U.S. president on a promise to withdraw U.S. forces.
December 2010: After much political turmoil, Shiite politician Nouri al-Maliki wins second term as prime minister, supported by al-Sadr.
December 2011: The last U.S. troops leave Iraq, turning responsibility for security over to the Iraqi army and police.
2013-2018: From the remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq, a new terrorist force emerges. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria breaks Sunni militants out of prisons and mounts a battle to establish a worldwide Islamic State caliphate based in Syria. In Iraq, the Islamic State group takes over Mosul, Fallujah, Tikrit and Ramadi with lightning speed, ultimately controlling about 40 percent of the country. A U.S. bombing campaign, special forces operations and Shiite militias allied with Iran turn back the tide. Islamic State group is evicted from strongholds in northern Iraq and in Syria, although skirmishes continue in remote areas.
October 2019-January 2020: With the battle against the Islamic State group mostly ended, Iraqi public dissatisfaction boils over with anti-government protests against rampant corruption, poor services and unemployment erupting in Baghdad and the predominantly Shiite south. The demonstrations draw young men and women who camp out alongside each other, a rare occurrence in the conservative, majority-Muslim country.
Jan. 3, 2020: The U.S. assassinates top Iranian Gen. Qassim Soleimani, head of the Quds Force expeditionary forces, in a drone strike near the Baghdad airport. Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis also is killed in the attack, bringing tensions between the U.S. and Iraq to a fever pitch, and later fragmenting rival Shiite camps.
October 2022: After a year of political stalemate following 2021 elections, the Shiite-dominated parliament chooses Kurdish leader Abdul Latif Rashid as president. He nominates Shiite politician Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as prime minister. Al-Sudani forms a government, promising to fight corruption and improve living standards.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 17-18/2023
The White House is Whistling Past America's Bank Graveyard
Lawrence Kadish/Gatestone Institute/March 17, 2023
Once I built a railroad, I made it run
Made it race against time
Once I built a railroad, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime
Once I built a tower, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Written by E. Y. Harburg and Jay Gorney during the height of 1930s, the song became America's grim national anthem during The Great Depression.
As we watch the instability of our banking system unfold, those 90 year old lyrics may be more relevant than we wish to acknowledge.
Part of today's banking crisis was instigated by the Federal Reserve whose micro-management of interest rates created a balance sheet gap for some regional banks, institutions that have played a crucial role in powering our economy by working with small and middle size businesses.
Another lit fuse in this crisis is a White House that has allowed crypto currency to be considered a genuine part of our economy. It is not. It is little more than a digital set of zeroes and ones with illusionary value, dictated hourly by an online marketplace. Then there is Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellin, who is currently engaging in a national theatrical performance seeking to convince Americans the banking system is secure. Her performance on and off stage leaves much to be desired.
There will now be calls for additional regulations and oversight of the banks as if that will change the outcome. The fact is Signature Bank's issues were already well known to regulators, but it was New York Governor Kathy Hochul who decided it would be best for her PR if she moved to close the bank.
Say what you will about former President Bill Clinton, he never lost sight of the fact that "it's the economy stupid..." Far more important than a political strategy, history reminds us it is the economy upon which great nations rise or fall. It is a lesson that is either unknown or unheeded by the current occupant of the Oval Office. One wonders if he can carry the tune to "Brother can you spare a dime?"
*Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
© 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.

China Inaugurating a New World Order?
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/March 17/2023
On March 10, Chinese President and Communist Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping brokered a surprise agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries, effectively knocking the US off the Middle Eastern chessboard and showing himself as a power-broker on the world stage.
Xi is, in fact, on his way to Russia, possibly as soon as next week, with a 12-point peace plan -- ostensibly to see if he can pull off the same wizardry with Ukraine, but more likely to nail down plans to seize Taiwan.
China as the world's new power-broker anywhere, especially in the Middle East -- until Biden squandered America's alliances there -- is conceivably a seismic turning point: possibly the beginning of China fulfilling its dream of replacing the US as the dominant superpower in a new world order.
For the Biden Administration, this is a blow for which it has only itself to thank.
In addition to ignoring Saudi security concerns about Iran's escalating nuclear weapons program, Biden also let Iran's terrorist proxies off the hook. He removed Yemen's Iranian-sponsored Houthi terrorist group from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in February 2021, and refused to put it back even after the Houthis resumed missile and drone attacks on the United Arab Emirates, as well as more attacks on the Saudi Arabia.
Is it any wonder, then, that in the vacuum the US created, the Saudis felt pushed towards China and Iran? What, after all, was their alternative?
It is likely that the Saudis were hoping that the Americans, even at the last minute, would pledge completely to terminate their negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal, which permits Iran unlimited nuclear weapons.
China and other aggressors also cannot avoid seeing America's non-stop ineptitude, whether the focus in the US military on teaching critical race theory and "climate change" rather than on how to win or deter wars; billions for "climate change," which must give China, which is building "six times more coal plants than other countries," a good laugh, while the US military budget has been in a steady net-decline, outpaced by Biden's 6% inflation. Someone has not been minding the store.
Will more countries be willing to reject an international order based on democratic values -- not to mention the world's reserve currency -- of the US?
On March 10, Chinese President and Communist Party General-Secretary Xi Jinping brokered a surprise agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to reestablish diplomatic relations between the two countries, effectively knocking the US off the Middle Eastern chessboard and showing himself as a power-broker on the world stage.
Xi is, in fact, on his way to Russia, possibly as soon as next week, with a 12-point peace plan -- ostensibly to see if he can pull off the same wizardry with Ukraine, but more likely to nail down plans to seize Taiwan.
China as the world's new power-broker anywhere, especially in the Middle East -- until Biden squandered America's alliances there -- is conceivably a seismic turning point: possibly the beginning of China fulfilling its dream of replacing the US as the dominant superpower in a new world order.
For the Biden Administration, this is a blow for which it has only itself to thank.
From the outset of his presidency, President Joe Biden completely deprioritized the Middle East: "If you are going to list the regions Biden sees as a priority, the Middle East is not in the top three," a former senior national security official and close Biden adviser told Politico in 2021.
Biden then proved this highly unwise policy to anyone in doubt with his disastrous Afghanistan exit, creating a power vacuum in the region and demonstrating to allies everywhere that they could not rely on the US.
Biden then decisively cleared the path for China with his calamitous policies toward Saudi Arabia, creating another power vacuum. Enter Xi.
Saudi Arabia for decades relied on the US for its security. Since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ascended to the second-most important position in the kingdom in 2017, he has expressed interest in loosening human right restrictions somewhat and seeking economic diversification. Then came Biden, campaigning for the presidency with the promise to make Saudi Arabia "pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are." He threw in gratuitously that there was "very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia."
Making matters worse, the Biden administration has continued relentlessly to try to revive the flawed 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal" with Iran -- which is the pinnacle of "social redeeming value?" The Trump Administration had withdrawn from the deal after mountains of evidence kept turning up that Iran had reportedly been cheating "since day one." Meanwhile the Biden Administration kept completely ignoring the legitimate fears that Saudi Arabia had of a nuclear Iran.
"Washington and the West have not been serious about the region's security since concluding the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2015," wrote Tariq Al-Homayed, a leading Saudi journalist and former newspaper editor following the Chinese-brokered deal.
As recently as January, when International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi made it clear that "only countries making bombs" are enriching uranium at Iran's level, Saudi Arabia's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir repeated the Saudi concerns:
"I believe that Iran has an obligation to give up its nuclear program. I believe that Iran must be in compliance with the terms of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, if it wants to be a member in good standing of the international community needs to respect international law, needs to respect international order."
In addition to ignoring Saudi security concerns about Iran's escalating nuclear weapons program, Biden also let Iran's terrorist proxies off the hook. He removed Yemen's Iranian-sponsored Houthi terrorist group from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in February 2021, and refused to put it back even after the Houthis resumed missile and drone attacks on the United Arab Emirates, as well as more attacks on the Saudi Arabia (here and here).
"Providing ballistic missiles to terrorist groups," Saudi Minister al-Jubeir recently noted, "is not acceptable... Providing drones to the Houthis in Yemen is also unacceptable."
Is it any wonder, then, that in the vacuum the US created, the Saudis felt pushed towards China and Iran? What, after all, was their alternative?
The Saudis had given the Biden Administration plenty of hints about the extent to which relations have soured.
The entire world witnessed how Saudi Arabia's low-key reception of Biden in July 2022, complete with awkward fist bump, contrasted with the lavish welcome reception that was bestowed on China's Xi Jinping when he visited the kingdom in December 2022. Yet the Biden administration was at a complete loss as to how to reassert itself and reengage with Saudi Arabia to restore relations and bring back at least a trace of American influence. It is likely that the Saudis were hoping that the Americans, even at the last minute, would pledge completely to terminate their negotiations with Iran over the nuclear deal, which permits Iran unlimited nuclear weapons.
According to Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution:
"What is notable of course is the decision to hand the Chinese a huge public relations victory — a photo op that is intended to demonstrate China's newfound stature in the region. In that sense, it would appear to be yet another Saudi slap in the face to the Biden administration."
The harmful effects of the China-brokered agreement, however, amount to much more than a mere "Saudi slap" to the Biden Administration -- especially after the US surrender to a terrorist group, the Taliban, in 2021; the disastrous retreat from the Bagram Air Base; and the Chinese spy balloon hovering for a full week over the most strategic US military sites. They add up to an even more diminished international standing for the US.
China can now boast that it is able to rearrange the pieces on the global chessboard, upend alliances that have dominated the international world order for decades, and make peace between enemies. If China can do all that, what else can it do?
China and other aggressors also cannot avoid seeing America's non-stop ineptitude, whether the focus in the US military on teaching critical race theory and "climate change" rather than on how to win or deter wars; billions for "climate change," which must give China, which is building "six times more coal plants than other countries," a good laugh, while the US military budget has been in a steady net-decline, outpaced by Biden's 6% inflation. Someone has not been minding the store.
Above all, the new agreement has unmistakably signaled to the world that the US is a power whose best days are behind it. That impression could only have been reinforced by White House Spokesman John Kirby's lame comment made after Saudi-Iranian agreement: "We support any effort to de-escalate tensions there."
The Middle East region, apart from Israel, consists of more-or-less authoritarian states that share China's views on state sovereignty, non-interference, and evidently not all that much interest in human rights. Will more countries be willing to reject an international order based on democratic values -- not to mention the world's reserve currency -- of the US?
Dominating the world and replacing the US as the world's dominant superpower by 2049 -- militarily, economically, technologically and geopolitically -- is what China has coveted for decades.
The deal "proves that Chinese medicine can solve problems that western medicine cannot solve," announced Wang Yiwei, the director of the Institute of International Affairs at China's Renmin University.
Most tragically, all the US decisions, from blocking US energy production to closing down the "China Initiative" to prevent further espionage, and including those above, that led to this juncture appear totally unnecessary own-goals.
"This is a battle of narratives for the future of the international order," said Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based research institute. "China is saying the world is in chaos because U.S. leadership has failed."
Again.
**Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 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.

Kataib Babiliyoun pretends to be a local Christian unit, but its members have been recruited from Shia Muslim communities in southern Iraq with the goal of dominating Iraq's strategic Nineveh Plains region.
Michael Knights and Yaqoub Beth-Addai/The Washington Institute/March 17/2023
Name: Kataib Babiliyoun (KB); 50th Brigade of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)
Type of movement: Tier 3 fasail (armed group). Local auxiliary unit linked to Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH). Kinetic military operations against U.S., Kurdish, Turkish, and Iraqi Christian targets.
History and objectives:
Founded by Chaldean Christian militiaman Rayan al-Kildani after the battle for the Nineveh Plains in 2017, the brigade is presented as a local Christian force but has been recruited largely from Shia Muslim communities in Baghdad’s Sadr City, al-Muthanna, and Dhi Qar.
In July 2017, KB members were caught stealing ancient artifacts from the Mar Behnam Monastery and looting nearby homes. In response to the incident, the Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office and the PMF command expelled the militia from Hamdaniya district.
Rayan al-Kildani was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department on July 18, 2019, for "serious human rights abuses." The designation notes: "Al-Kildani is the leader of the 50th Brigade militia. In May 2018, a video circulated among Iraqi human rights civil society organizations in which al-Kildani cut off the ear of a handcuffed detainee. The 50th Brigade is reportedly the primary impediment to the return of internally displaced persons to the Nineveh Plain. The 50th Brigade has systematically looted homes in Batnaya, which is struggling to recover from ISIS’s brutal rule. The 50th Brigade has reportedly illegally seized and sold agricultural land, and the local population has accused the group of intimidation, extortion, and harassment of women."
Open imageiconRayan al-Khaldani and UN Secretary General
Figure 2: Designated human rights abuser Rayan al-Kildani (far right) with UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres on March 2, 2023. Also flanking Guterres is designated terrorist and human rights abuser Qais al-Khazali, the leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
KB's area of control has since been limited to parts of the outer northeastern edge of Mosul city, plus Tal Kayf and Batnaya. Numerous rocket attacks and two drone strikes on Iraqi Kurdistan and U.S. and Turkish forces have originated from the brigade's areas of control in the northwestern Nineveh Plains. Many of these attacks were claimed by Liwa Ahrar al-Iraq (Free People of Iraq Brigade, or LAI). LAI made primary use of longer-range 122 mm rockets and claimed (without evidence) to have used an Iranian-designed Murad-6 (Shahed-136-type delta-wing) drone against the Turkish base at Zilkan.
On March 11, 2023, KB tried to return to Hamdaniya district but was driven away by local citizens and the Nineveh Plains Protection Units.
Chain of command:
KB nominally answers to Iraq's prime minister in his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and thereafter to the Joint Operations Command and the PMF command. In reality, however, the brigade has proven to be one of the least controllable units in the Iraqi security forces. It has been ordered to withdraw its checkpoints from parts of the Nineveh Plains on multiple occasions: in July 2017 (under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi), August 2018 (under Executive Order 1388 issued by Prime Minister Adil Abdulmahdi), and July-August 2019 (again under Abdulmahdi). In response, KB leader Rayan al-Kildani reached out for help to Iran's ambassador in Iraq, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer named Iraj Masjedi, who informed the brigade to ignore the prime minister. In the end, KB did not withdraw. On October 17, 2020, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi ordered the Nineveh Operations Command to deploy army forces alongside KB forces at certain checkpoints.
In 2019, Rayan al-Kildani was nominally replaced by his brother Osama al-Kildani (see Figure 2) as the leader of KB. Yet Rayan still wields effective command over his brother and the unit.
Open imageiconOsama al-Kildani, the head of the Kataib Babiliyoun
Figure 3 Osama al-Kildani, the nominal commander of Kataib Babiliyoun
Affiliate relationships:
Rayan al-Kildani is closely affiliated with U.S.-designated terrorist and human rights abuser Qais al-Khazali and the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization AAH. A Christian fighter from Baghdad, he originally joined Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM), then moved over to AAH when Khazali left JAM. Kildani is also close to Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba leader and U.S.-designated terrorist Akram Kaabi, another transplant from JAM to AAH.
Rayan al-Kildani is strongly affiliated with Iranian security agencies. He was a supporter of the IRGC-Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani and PMF deputy chairman Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, both designated terrorists killed by a U.S. strike in 2020.
Rayan al-Kildani runs KB's political branch, the Babylon Movement, which controls four of the five seats reserved for Christians in Iraq's parliament. Like the KB rank and file, the voter base for the Babylon Movement is mainly southern Iraqi Shia.
Subordinate elements:
KB operates four regiments, including a small Kakai sub-unit.
KB operates Facebook and Telegram accounts, and leader Rayan al-Kildani is prominent on Twitter, Snapchat, and other platforms. KB media is promoted via numerous accounts affiliated with Iran-aligned militias.
*Michael Knights is the Jill and Jay Bernstein Fellow of The Washington Institute, specializing in the military and security affairs of Iraq, Iran, and the Persian Gulf states. He is a co-founder of the Militia Spotlight platform, which offers in-depth analysis of developments related to the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria.
*Yaqoub Beth-Addai is an Iraqi expert on Iraqi militias active in the Nineveh Plains and Mosul.

Turkey’s Opposition, Straining at the Seams
M. Bahadırhan Dinçaslan/The Washington Institute/March 17/2023
The opposition in Turkey face numerous difficulties in the lead up to elections, as internal disputes may undermine their success.
The forthcoming elections in Turkey are going to be of a highly symbolic value: 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the republic, and the first time the opposition is somewhat united and self-confident against more than two decades of Erdoğan’s rule. “The Table of Six,” as they have been called for a while by the media, managed to come up with a single, joint candidate against Erdoğan—a feat deserving recognition considering the very heterogeneous nature of the alliance. Meanwhile, Erdoğan is marking the 100th anniversary as a renewal date for his party and his vision of a “New Turkey,” a discourse that also has tacit references to religious resistance against the proclamation of the republic and introduction of secular law.
The Erdoğan-led alliance, at least at first glance, seems to have no inner conflicts, but the opposition has hardly been so. The initial alliance between the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and “the Good Party” (İYİ), consisting of a wide secularist voter base, saw the success of electing opposition candidates for two important cities as mayors, which was interpreted by many as the herald of Erdoğan’s decline. Erdoğan himself had risen to prominence as mayor of İstanbul. The alliance expanded, however, including minor parties led by disgruntled ex-AKP ministers and a former prime minister, and launching an effort to designate a joint candidate to contest Erdoğan.
It was not an easy task—party leaders, especially the center-left CHP President, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, saw the popularity of the two mayors, Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, as a threat to his authority within the party. Kılıçdaroğlu also felt that the minor parties were demanding too many places on MP lists and in potential minister posts in return for their support. When Meral Akşener, the leader of moderate-Nationalist İYİ Party, eventually voiced support for either of the mayors as candidates, the Table experienced its first crisis. Akşener denounced the alliance and publicly announced that the İYİ Party was no longer able to negotiate. Many were shocked as the previous subterranean disputes within the alliance were not made public. The timing was also challenging; Akşener announced the split on March 3 when the official elections were scheduled to begin on March 10, and the election date being May 14. Acting as middlemen, İmamoğlu and Yavaş managed to find common ground between the parties, and Akşener returned to the Table. Soon after, the alliance made a public announcement of Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy.
Although this crisis was quickly resolved, it probably will not be the last for the Table of Six. Indeed, another crisis looms on the horizon: the question of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP). The HDP voter base is mostly Kurdish and their agenda differs from that of the parties in the alliance. Their demands are almost always dictated by Kurdish nationalism and as one might expect, this does not bode well if they are expected to cooperate with Turkish nationalists. Kılıçdaroğlu views the 10% vote that can be provided by the HDP base as crucial, but the potential involvement of the HDP could also mean losing voters from the pre-existing base—mostly from the İYİ Party but also from CHP. Hawkish statements from prominent HDP members like Hasip Kaplan, who said “The Kurds will put you in your place,” only make matters worse. Kılıçdaroğlu also faces another issue: many in the traditional opposition base do not like the idea of voting for any ex-AKP members, who had continued supporting the AKP during and after the referendum. Kılıçdaroğlu is facing a multivariable equation, and has little means to solve it as there is not much time left before the elections.
The HDP issue is one which has played out before in Turkish politics, especially in the case of the HDP’s previous alliance with the AKP. In many ways, the HDP was the cornerstone of Erdoğan’s equation for ensuring his rule—collaborating with the HDP during the so-called “Solution Process” strengthened the HDP’s position in Kurdish populated areas significantly. But the HDP’s ten percent has no natural allies in the rest of the political environment, and this often estranges any of its allies from the rest of the populace. Whoever is perceived as being too close to the HDP is somehow punished by the voters. Case in point, the AKP itself was punished in 2015, failing to win a sufficient majority to form the government for the first time, after which it ended the Solution Process. Even during Gezi Protests, many protesters decided to leave the movement after organizations affiliated with the HDP and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) appeared on the streets. Considering the HDP’s polarizing effect, the already-divided Table of Six could experience even more turbulence if the HDP is brought too close. Even the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP), an ally of HDP, is now having a mild crisis with HDP after the former managed to gain some media coverage independent of HDP thanks to its young and innovative leadership. The supporters of once-allied parties now accuse each other of racism.
Meanwhile, many polls show that due to poor economic management, AKP voters are demonstrating a slow but consistent drift away from the party—a trend accelerated by the disastrous mismanagement of the catastrophic earthquake that hit southeastern Turkey in early February. However, the AKP still controls a wide and efficient propaganda machine led by Fahrettin Altun, the Director of Communications for the Presidential Office, who Kılıçdaroğlu has dubbed a “vitamin deficient Goebbels.” Mainstream media is almost nonexistent in Turkey, as all big media outlets are either owned by AKP supporters or tied to the government via financial means. Altun has already managed to successfully portray Kılıçdaroğlu as the scape-goat for the misfortunes in Turkey, at least in rural and less developed areas, despite the fact that Kılıçdaroğlu has virtually no authority to intervene in any decision-making.
The “outsider forces” discourse spun by Altun has managed to catch many estranged AKP supporters, causing them to give Erdogan’s government a second chance lest the “outsider forces” get what they want. But this seems to be the only card left to play in Erdoğan’s hand—he can no longer promise a change in attitude towards religion and he can no longer promise liberalization of the economy. This lack of tangible political promises is now compensated by narratives aimed mostly at uneducated and impoverished masses. In order to gain traction, Kılıçdaroğlu must reach out to such audiences and prove himself not to be the ”agent of the outsider forces” as he is portrayed. Again, he only has two months to do so.
For the opposition, forcing a second round in the elections—meaning none of the candidates reach the 50%+1 threshold in the first run—seems to be the only possible route to victory. I expect many of the disillusioned AKP supporters to vote for Erdoğan in the presidential election, but support other parties in the National Assembly. In such a scenario, there could be a rally effect in the fragmented components of the opposition, allowing it to gain confidence, which it has lacked for some time. New negotiations might persuade the masses and appease their fears, and a second run for Kılıçdaroğlu could be portrayed as the return of Atatürk’s party on the 100th anniversary. But this is all dependent on two conditions—whether or not the HDP runs with its own candidate, and the possibility of an independent candidate vying for votes from the disillusioned Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) base who are still enraged by the assassination of the former Grey Wolves President Sinan Ateş. Indeed, after the media exposed the MHP’s many ties to the police department and drug cartels in the aftermath of the assassination, there was great public outcry which could translate into some election support.
The emergence of an independent nationalist candidate in this context might have a large impact disproportionate to the percentage of votes he or she might get—even a few percentage points could make a big difference. If an independent nationalist candidate took several percentage points from the MHP base, neither Kılıçdaroğlu nor Erdoğan would win in the first round. In the second round, the atmosphere would be much more in favor of the opposition.
*Editorial note: The HDP has not yet stated its official support for Kılıçdaroğlu, but has given signals that could be interpreted in this manner. Another important factor is that the HDP has stated they will run the campaign under the list of the Green Left Party, due to the possibility of the judicial branch outlawing the HDP at any time on the grounds of terrorist ties.

Shattering the UN’s Many ‘Islamophobia’ Lies
Raymond Ibrahim/American Thinker/March 17/2023
According to the UN’s website,
The United Nations on Friday [3/10/2023] commemorated the first-ever International Day to Combat Islamophobia with a special event in the General Assembly Hall, where speakers upheld the need for concrete action in the face of rising hatred, discrimination and violence against Muslims.
António Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN, delivered the keynote address, “focusing attention—and calling for action—to stamp out the poison of Islamophobia.” Below are key excerpts followed by correctives:
The world’s nearly 2 billion Muslims reflect humanity in all its magnificent diversity. They hail from all corners of the world. They are Arabs, Africans, Europeans, Americans and Asians. But they often face bigotry and prejudice for no other reason than their faith.
Think about what he’s saying here: Muslims “face bigotry and prejudice for no other reason than their faith.” In other words, Western peoples—the world’s most liberal and tolerant people by leaps and bounds—supposedly hate and mistreat Muslims simply and only because the latter have a different belief system. In the real world, of course, it is precisely the West that developed the very idea of religious freedom (which is sorely lacking in Islam). Moreover, if anything, the West is the only civilization that looks more favorable on all other belief systems than its own founding faith, Christianity.
The truth is, if there is any “bigotry and prejudice” against Muslims, it is not because Western people are so hostile against those who believe differently than they—a position better exemplified by Muslims—but due to any number of Islam’s problematic teachings, including terrorizing non-Muslims into subjugation (jihad), executing apostates and blasphemers, treating women as chattel, and legitimizing child marriage (pedophilia), to name a few.
Perhaps aware of his silly position, the secretary-general went on to declare that “The growing hate that Muslims face … is an inexorable part of the resurgence of ethno-nationalism, neo-Nazi white supremacist ideologies…”
Here one wonders: If the West is so plagued by “neo-Nazi white supremacist ideologies,” as is everywhere preached, why were “people of color,” including Muslims, ever invited to immigrate into the West in the first place? How did blacks in America achieve freedom? In both cases, it certainly wasn’t due to force or coercion. It was because whites collectively agreed to and promoted racial equality and diversity—something no other world civilization has done for the “other.”
But perhaps the secretary-general means that whites have become more racist than their forefathers of the 1960s? On the surface, this sounds absurd: the West is obscenely more liberal today—children are openly indoctrinated in sexual deviancy—than it was several generations ago. On the other hand, if there is a growing dislike of Islam, perhaps that is a product of recent and actual experiences on the ground. Remember, back in the 1960s, there were virtually no Muslims in the West, and those who were there were quick to assimilate. Today, Westerners—especially West Europeans—know all too well what living alongside Muslims entails, and that may have “soured” them.
As one example, forty years after formerly homogenous Sweden opened its doors to “multiculturalism”—which has meant taking in mostly male Muslim “refugees”—violent crime has surged by 300% and rapes by 1,472%, making the formerly tranquil Scandinavian nation the rape capital of the West. The UK and Germany—which also have significant Muslim populations—are not far behind.
Unfazed by reality, the secretary-general continues:
Muslims suffer personal attacks, hateful rhetoric and stereotyping. Many such acts of intolerance and suspicion may not be reflected in official statistics, but they degrade people’s dignity and our common humanity.
Here is an interesting admission: for all of the UN’s whining about “Islamophobia,” the “official statistics” do not reflect any special mistreatment of Muslims.
Meanwhile, statistics do show what the UN will never talk about—Islamic violence against non-Muslims. In just the last 30 days of this writing (3/14/23), there were 61 Islamic terror attacks that killed a total of 486 people in 20 nations.
Continues the secretary-general of the UN:
The linkages between anti-Muslim hatred and gender inequality are unmistakable. We see some of the worst impacts in the triple discrimination against Muslim women because of their gender, ethnicity and faith.
Not only is this a bizarre comparison, the claim that Muslim women suffer some form of “compounded” discrimination that is in dire need of rectification is beyond hypocritical, as this description perfectly fits the experiences of Christian women in Muslim nations. In the words of one report dealing with the Muslim persecution of Christians, “The most significant findings were that Christian women are among the most violated in the world, in maybe a way that we haven’t seen before.” Six women were raped every day simply for being Christian, the report found.
As closely discussed here, if uber-patriarchic Islam is misogynistic towards its own Muslim women, “infidel” women are at best “meant for one thing, the pleasure of the Muslim man,” as one Muslim told a group of teenage Christian girls before terrorizing and murdering one in Pakistan.
Speaking of Pakistan, which co-convened the “Islamophobia” conference that the secretary-general recently spoke at, every year in that nation, some 700 underage Christian girls are kidnapped, raped, forced to convert and marry their abductor—with the police and courts almost always siding with the rapists. After a 9-year-old Christian girl was raped by a Muslim man who boasted of having “done the same service to other young Christian girls,” local residents explained: Such incidents occur frequently. Christian girls are considered goods to be damaged at leisure. Abusing them is a right. According to the [Muslim] community’s mentality it is not even a crime. Muslims regard them as spoils of war.
In short, the UN’s song and dance about “Islamophobia” is, like the UN itself, a farce. That the one demographic most predisposed to “Islamophobic” tendencies in the United States consists of Muslims themselves should alone make this abundantly clear.

What Divides The Syrian People and What Unites Them!
Akram Bunni//Asharq Al-Awsat/March, 17/2023
Compassion and solidarity took hold of the Syrians in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake. Overcoming the barriers of their divergent political positions and religious and sectarian affiliations, the Syrian people did not merely speak of their fraternity and send messages of support online.
They went further, forming civic committees to collect financial and in-kind donations for those who had been affected and in need of shelter… Some like to see this as an “internal” attempt to save face after unprecedented “external” support for the victims poured in, while others see it as a reflection of the “kind heartedness” of Syrian society. However, this was all before the interests of the oppressive and corrupt cliques running the country blemished this image, failing to prioritize humanitarian concerns over politics as those in charge usually do after national calamities.
The length of the conflict and the fact that it veered from being a political battle for human rights to becoming an ultraviolent religious, sectarian and ethnic war waged by fanatics, have created broad social rifts that left communities divided on the basis of their political alignments and geographic location. Most consequentially, the people of Syria are ruled by an array of different powers with competing political and military projects. This has created a kind of connection between the residents of different areas and the powers that have imposed their rule on them, forcing them to comply with the dictates and priorities of these powers and to accept their living conditions.
This turned what used to be a single homeland into a group of disparate blocks of people with conflicting objectives, concerns, fears, problems, and ways of life. One bloc is living in areas controlled by the regime; another resides in the areas where Türkiye has established a presence; a third is in the city of Idlib and is ruled by extremist Islamist groups; and a fourth lives under the control of Kurdish forces. One could add another bloc found in the governorates of Suwayda and Daraa, and another that includes the millions of Syrians who have become refugees in different countries. This displacement and the schisms that arose during the conflict have been exacerbated by the diversity and multiplicity of foreign powers intervening in the Syrian conflict, as well as the failure of the international community to end the violence and impose a political solution that opens the door to a solution.
On the other hand, despite the nation’s fragmentation, commonalities among Syrians of divergent alignments and loyalties have, in fact, crystallized. Regardless of talk about attempts at “face-saving” or the “kind heartedness” of Syrians, there are material reasons that explain the emergence of the broad sense of solidarity that we have seen since the earthquake.
Firstly, all the people of Syria are suffering similar plights. The suffocating economic crisis has wreaked havoc across every region in the country, regardless of who is in control. The most prominent ramifications of this crisis are the deterioration of services and skyrocketing prices, which have left the majority of Syrians living in extreme destitution.
These conditions have created a broad sense among the majority of Syrians that all the authorities reigning over them have failed in developing their regions and managing their economies, as well as failing to provide basic services and needs. Worst of all is the greed, corruption, extortion, and squandering of national wealth that we have seen across the country at this time.
It is not unusual to see years of war take an economic toll, and it has hit all Syrians. Indeed, their suffering has been exacerbated on several levels, and plummeting living standards forced them to prioritize finding ways to alleviate their pain and give themselves a chance to survive. This is true whether they were displaced and made homeless or stayed in their homes and tried to adapt to the cycle of extreme violence and extortion.
Secondly, the Syrian people have all been subjected to similar forms of repression. Despite differences in the intensity and breadth of repression between this and that authority, they have all left ordinary citizens, wherever they may be, aware that these dominant powers are all prepared to kill and destroy for the sake of perpetuating their domination and maintaining privileges.
None of them have hesitated to call on additional tools of repression from foreign military forces, who do not care about the fate of the country nor bat an eye when they see anyone opposed to their plans and interests clamped down on. That is, all the sectarian elites and their allies have imposed similar conditions on the residents of their regions. They have taken people’s property and wealth, shamelessly taken their lives, and robbed them of their most basic political, social and legal rights - be it freedom of opinion and expression, the right to education and healthcare, or the right to an impartial and independent judiciary.
As a result, all Syrians have become aware that the authorities imposing de facto control share a disregard for universal rights and national objectives, sovereignty, and wealth. They are all ready to call on the support of foreign forces, international and regional, without a second thought if it helps them survive, even if this means submitting to the dictates of those powers and turning the country into an arena of conflict where deals are made. Their behavior has stripped all of these ruling authorities of the right to call themselves national. It attests to the fact that they only care about safeguarding their own interests and privileges, come what may, even if it means crises and tragedies for present and future generations.
True, Syrians have become more divided and splintered because of this war’s repercussions and the trenches imposed on them. This has given rise to apprehensions about the prospects of these divisions becoming permanent, making the foreign forces occupying the country even more covetous of its resources.
Despite all of the ugliness and fragmentation that we have seen, however, the solidarity engendered among the various components of the Syrian nation in the aftermath of the earthquake has been incredible. It has, let us say, sparked hope for the revival of national convergence and increased unity. It has created hope that their shared suffering and pain might encourage the Syrian people to prioritize solidarity and compassion over division and discrimination.
Indeed, have the vast majority of Syrians not undergone similar crises and hardships? Does their shared suffering not demand finding a real way of this misery for all? After the immense sacrifices they had made, have they failed to come together and make a comprehensive national decision to avoid perpetuating genocide, authoritarianism, and tyranny? Has it not become evident that they must refuse to be fodder used in global battles that have nothing to do with them? Is there not a broad need felt by the majority of Syrians to rid their society of these tyrants’ “evil” and hold all perpetrators accountable, wherever they are?

Do Babies Still Win Wars?
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al-Awsat/March, 17/2023
Since the Chinese sage Sun-Tzu tried authored his “Art of War” almost 3,000 years ago almost all writers on military affairs have asserted that a rapid rate of population growth is the sine qua non for a nation’s decision to go to war.
More recently, theory was elaborated by the Swiss mercenary general Antoine Henri Jomini in a series of books that have been “must read” in most military academies since the 18th century. Echoes of the same theory are present in “On War”, the military “bible” written by Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military historian, in the 19th century.
Thus, the Indo-European tribes left their ancestral homeland in Central Asia the Russian steppes because they could no longer feed a rapidly growing population. Seeking more fertile land and pastures for their herds, they embarked on invasions to their west and south to find the resources they coveted.
The ancient Romans and Persians were also pushed towards conquest because of high birth rates that made the seizure of new lands a life-and-death necessity.
The Arab invasion of the Persian and Byzantine empires in the Middle East and Asia Minor also came when the peninsula could no longer feed its rising population. The same analysis has been applied to the Mongol invasion that brought hungry tribes form far away Mongolia to the heart of Europe and the Middle East. Rapid population growth was also a key factor in pushing the British on a path of empire building from the 16th century onwards. In fact, the ability to export large numbers of peoples to new lands is often cited as one of the key factors in empire-building since time immemorial.
Finally, the Nazis claimed that post-Weimar Germany needed to invade Europe in search of “lebensraum (living space) to secure agricultural and energy resources needed to be a big power.
Conquering nations always needed a high birth-rate to provide the fighters or the cannon-fodder every conqueror worth his salt needs. France’s massive losses in the First World War prompted Georges Clemenceau, the war-time premier known as “The Tiger”, to quip that “babies win wars, not generals”.
But what if that old theory is no longer operative? In fact, what if the opposite is true; and that some nations are driven towards war because of declining populations?
Right now three nations are actively or implicitly on a war path against their neighbors: Russia, Communist China and the Islamic Republic in Iran. All three suffer from low birth rates, high death rates and a steadily growing number of old people.
In fact, in the past decade Russia’s population fell from almost 147 million to 141 million in 2022.
A decade ago, Russia was the world’s ninth most populated country. It is slated to fall to number 22 within the current decade.
Its average birth-rate puts it at number 213, close to the bottom of world rankings. Worse still, the youngest portion of its population, aged from zero to 14 is the same as the portion of the oldest aged 65 and over.
At the same time the portion of the gross domestic product (GDP) that the federation spends on the military is almost twice what is allocated to health services.
In other words, Russia could end up having lots of guns but not enough people to carry them. Things have gotten even worse since President Vladimir Putin launched its “Special Operation” against Ukraine. According to best estimates during the last 12 months, almost one million Russians in war-making age have left the country to dodge the “voluntary draft” Putin has ordered.
Russia is also facing a growing labor shortage. In fact, without net immigration, mostly from Central Asia and Belarus, Russia may have faced even more biting shortages. Having list over 100,000 men in the first year of the Ukraine war, Putin may need to import, not to say press-gang people from neighboring countries.A massive intake of Chinese “temporary workers” has helped along with the addition of 100,000 “new citizens” from South Ossetia, part of Georgia that Putin annexed in 2008, and some 2.1 million Russophile Ukrainians shanghaied from Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk. Those intakes have made Russia the second biggest host of immigrants in the world, after the United States. China is facing a similar demographic perfect storm. For the first time in more than six decades China has experienced an actual fall in its population, set to lose its ranking as the world’s most populated nation to India. Worse still, China is experiencing a rising trend towards emigration, mostly to North America and Western Europe especially among the young highly-educated strata of society.
The need to tackle the demographic deficit may be present, at least in filigree, Beijing’s increasingly belligerent discourse about Taiwan.
The Islamic Republic in Iran, too, is facing a demographic challenge that its leaders try hard to gauge.
Unlike Russia and China, The Islamic Republic isn’t yet facing an actual fall in its population partly thanks to an inflow of Afghan refugees which, although slowing down in the past year or so, compensates for a growing outflow of young Iranians who immigrate to Western Europe and North America. Plan to settle over 100,000 “volunteers for martyrdom” from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq and Lebanon, now stationed in Syria, in different parts of Iran is being finalized in Tehran.
However, low birthrate, less than one percent, and the growing number of older citizens, reduces the number of men that the mullahs could send to war.
All profess different shades of hostility to the present world order which they see as slanted in favor of “the West” led by the United States.
All three nation spend almost twice as much on the military as they do on health and well-being of their citizens. Their military expenditure is more than twice the average of OECD counties while their health service budget is less than half of their average.
The Ukraine war lay show whether an authoritarian state with a declining and ageing population can win a war as did older authoritarian states with galloping demography- in fact answering the question: Do babies still win wars?

The Silicon Valley Bank Rescue Just Changed Capitalism
Roger Lowenstein/The New York Times/March, 17/2023
After a career of writing about bank failures, I wound up in the middle of one when my bank, Silicon Valley Bank, was seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. On Saturday, when I tried to pay a bill online, I was greeted by this not very reassuring missive:
“This page will be unavailable throughout the weekend, but will resume next week in accordance with the guidance provided by the F.D.I.C.” I wasn’t truly worried; small depositors like me had long ago internalized the rule that it made no sense to worry about your bank’s condition, since the risks of failure were borne by the F.D.I.C.
Federal deposit insurance was introduced 90 years ago during the heart of the Great Depression. Ever since then, small depositors within the F.D.I.C. limit of coverage have slept soundly. Now, in light of the bank failures of the last few days and the F.D.I.C.’s extension of coverage, why will any depositor worry about risk? Having bailed out depositors of two banks in full, how will the government refuse others?
Established as part of the landmark Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation initially provided deposit insurance up to $2,500, supported by premiums from member banks. The act was written by two Democrats, Senator Carter Glass of Virginia and Representative Henry Steagall of Alabama. Steagall wanted to protect rural banks, which had many small depositors, from contagious panics.
In that era, banking “progressives” were centered in the heartland. During the 1920s, low farm prices led to waves of bank failures. Various states adopted insurance, but the statewide systems failed. Scores of bills for federal insurance were also introduced.
The idea was controversial. The president of the American Bankers Association protested that insuring deposits was “unsound, unscientific and dangerous.” It was opposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and by his Treasury secretary, William H. Woodin. Roosevelt opposed insurance because he thought it would be costly and also encourage bad behavior. If there was no need to mollify depositors, then banks would be free to take all sorts of risks. Today we call this “moral hazard.”
In 1933, an estimated 4,000 banks failed. Roosevelt took office in March, and declared a national bank holiday to prevent more failures. After a pointed debate, in June Roosevelt signed the Glass-Steagall Act.
The F.D.I.C. definitely prevented panics. From its creation until America’s entry into World War II, banks failed at a rate of close to 50 per year, not bad considering the economic depression in most of that period. And most of the banks that failed were small.
By the postwar period, deposit insurance seemed to have been created for an era that no longer existed. Bankers schooled in the 1930s tended toward prudence, and the industry was risk averse. The failure rate was exceptionally low. That all changed in the 1970s and ’80s. A combination of financial deregulation, revived animal spirits on Wall Street, and rising inflation led to financial instability and swings in interest rates. Voilà — bank failures returned.
In recent days, many have been reminded of 2008 and ’09 (165 banks failed in those two years alone). But for the most part, that crisis was not the result of depositors pulling funds. Bear Stearns, Lehman and others failed or sought bailouts because overnight funding from professional investors disappeared. It dried up for two good reasons: Banks like Lehman had too much leverage, and they were overexposed to a very weak and widely held asset, mortgage securities.
This panic was a classic bank run, and it bears an echo to a different historical episode. In the 1980s, lenders known as savings and loans had invested their funds in long-term mortgages paying a fixed rate of interest. When the Federal Reserve, under pressure of rising inflation, began to jack up rates, S.&L.s had to pay higher rates to attract deposits.
The mismatch between the cost of their money and the (lower) rate that their mortgages earned sank the industry. Many switched to riskier assets to juice their returns, but as these investments soured, their problems worsened. Roughly a third, or about 1,000, S.&L.s failed. The F.D.I.C. was not (luckily for it) involved, because the S.&L.s were covered by a separate federal insurer. This agency, known as F.S.L.I.C., became insolvent, and the subsequent bailout was estimated to have cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.
Silicon Valley Bank’s failure looks a bit like an S.&L. crisis in miniature. Like its 1980s counterparts, S.V.B. grew extremely rapidly, had many assets parked in fixed, long-term bonds, and was done in when inflation caused the Fed to raise interest rates, raising the cost of keeping deposits.
Like the S.&L.s, Silicon Valley Bank was heavily concentrated. It catered to start-ups for whom an S.V.B. account was a matter of status. One tech savant who had recently changed jobs (aren’t they always switching jobs?) told me that in his experience, roughly two thirds of start-ups banked with S.V.B. (the bank claimed that nearly half the country’s venture capital-backed technology and life science companies were customers).
These crises provoked a widening of the federal safety net. Until the 1970s, the F.D.I.C. limit on deposit coverage increased only slowly. But in 1980, as banks came under pressure from soaring inflation, Congress raised the cap to $100,000, over the objections of the F.D.I.C. itself. In the 2008 crisis, the limit was raised to $250,000. And after the failure of IndyMac in 2008, the F.D.I.C., when possible, quietly protected uninsured depositors.
In the rescue of S.V.B. on Friday and of Signature Bank in New York two days later, the F.D.I.C. overtly ignored the cap and rescued all depositors, irrespective of size. This is a breathtaking leap.
And the bailout does nothing to address the condition that fostered financial instability: inflation. It may even exacerbate it. This is not what Henry Steagall had in mind.

مايكل سينغ/واشنطن بوست: الاتفاق السعودي الإيراني حقيقة عالمية جديدة
The Saudi-Iran deal reflects a new global reality
Michael Singh/The washington Post/March 17/2023
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/116693/michael-singh-the-washington-post-the-saudi-iran-deal-reflects-a-new-global-reality-%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%8a%d9%83%d9%84-%d8%b3%d9%8a%d9%86%d8%ba-%d9%88%d8%a7%d8%b4%d9%86%d8%b7%d9%86-%d8%a8%d9%88%d8%b3/
The news that China brokered a rapprochement between bitter rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran came as a shock to many in Washington, stoking fears that Riyadh was defecting to Beijing’s camp after having been a key U.S. partner since the 1940s.
Such worries misapprehend how U.S. partners are responding to growing competition between the United States and China. Pushed to choose between the established order led by Washington and the alternative order proffered by Beijing, our partners are instead choosing “all of the above.” By and large, it is neither the United States nor China they see as most threatening, but the competition between them.
This is the new global reality U.S. policymakers need to accept — and adapt to — going forward.
Riyadh is far from the only U.S. partner to respond in this manner to great power competition. India, despite sharing democratic values with the United States and collaborating closely with Washington on security matters related to Asia via the Quad, has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations and has thrown Moscow an economic lifeline in the form of increased oil purchases. Likewise, Turkey, despite backing Ukraine militarily, has bolstered its economic ties with Russia over the past year through increased trade and tourism.
As frustrating as it may be, there is a method to U.S. partners’ madness. They face a world of tremendous uncertainty. They fret not only over the scope of Russia’s and China’s ambitions, but also about the United States’ own strategy for responding and commitment to its traditional partners.
U.S. officials warn their partners that relationships with Beijing are transactional, and that Beijing is therefore not to be trusted. Many of our partners understand this but fear the same may be true of a United States wrestling with its role in the world. Washington’s ambivalence and China’s ambitions have sparked a hedging impulse among our partners that has upended much conventional wisdom about the world. South Korean officials openly musing about acquiring nuclear weapons and Arab states embracing Israel are two of the most striking examples of the trend.
Riyadh’s decision to look to Beijing as a broker is simply the latest example. Arab officials often speak of Beijing as their primary economic partner and Washington as their preferred security partner. Yet, in reality, economics, politics and security are unavoidably intertwined, and China’s aspirations, unsurprisingly, are not limited to trade. As Beijing’s economic stake in the region has grown, so too has its diplomatic tempo: It has unleashed a fusillade of peace proposals, conferences and envoys on the region even as Washington has scaled back such activities. Riyadh turned to China not only because it has influence with Iran, but because Beijing has positioned itself to seize just this sort of opportunity.
But this does not mean Saudi Arabia is turning toward China or away from the United States. Indeed, even as it looks to China for mediation with Iran, Riyadh appears to be seeking a defense agreement with the United States and mulling a normalization deal with Israel. States that during the Cold War might have chosen to be nonaligned are, in the current iteration of great-power competition, electing instead to be “omni-aligned” — that is, they are opting to participate in the multilateral orders led by both Washington and Beijing rather than choosing between them. It’s an obvious hedging strategy, making them the object of competition between the great powers, while protecting their interests if one or the other draws back.
Our partners’ approach frustrates U.S. officials who like to think of global order in binary terms — democracy versus autocracy, or those upholding the international order versus those undermining it. Washington must adapt to a world skeptical of these formulations and hesitant to get caught in the U.S.-China crossfire.
To this end, Washington should first avoid overreacting to our partners’ dealings with China, lest our protests become background noise. Vigorous objections should be reserved for actions detrimental to U.S. security. Something like the Saudi-Iran normalization should be judged based on the deal’s content and impact, both in the Middle East and Asia. The Chinese role may rankle, but in itself is not central to U.S. interests.
Second, the United States should structure proposals to appeal to partners’ self-interest even as they advance U.S. strategy. So rather than continuing to pitch cosmic divisions of the world, Washington should build and strengthen smaller groupings centered on shared interests, such as the Abraham Accords in the Middle East and the Quad in the Pacific. And rather than only telling partners what business they shouldn’t do with Beijing, Washington must be prepared to propose what business they should consider with the United States. The United States might help Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for example, to develop the region’s critical mineral industry, which would help both states advance their goals of diversifying their economies. The value of such actions for countering China is obvious even if left unheralded.
Finally, the United States should be honest but resolute about its own commitments. U.S. credibility with partners boils down to two things — candor with partners about our strategy, and how, especially in the Middle East, it is changing on account of our increasing focus on competition with China and war in Europe. And, perhaps most important of all, we need to muster the will to back up our words with action.
*Michael Singh is the managing director and Lane-Swig Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near-East Policy, and a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/16/saudi-arabia-iran-china-deal/

https://jeanmarcmjbr.medium.com/the-maronite-anarchist-tradition-e4c74cafcdd5
The Maronite Anarchist Tradition/JeanMarc Moujabber/Nov 6, 2021