English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For May 24/2023
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
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15 آذار/2023

Bible Quotations For today
Jesus said to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going
John 12/31-36: “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. The crowd answered him, ‘We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains for ever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.’ After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 23-24/2023
Israeli army chief: A new war would be 7 times harder for Lebanon
Israel: Nasrallah close to making mistake that could lead to major war
US backs Mikati's stance on Hezbollah's military drill
Lebanon Informed by Germany of Arrest Warrant for Central Bank Governor
Salameh to appear before Lebanese judiciary over Interpol warrant
European Observatory urges Salameh’s removal, says Lebanon will bear the consequences
Salameh to appeal Interpol warrant today, cabinet to convene Friday
Sami Gemayel urges FPM to return to 'pre-2005 rhetoric'
Opposition awaits Bassil reply, Hezbollah seeks to sway him on Franjieh
Geagea says Hezbollah, FPM 'irresponsible' in dealing with Salameh case
Bou Saab efforts may lead to presidential dialogue at parliament
Italy contributes €2M to support most vulnerable Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
PM Mikati agrees to dollarize cash financial aid allocated to Syrian refugees
Foreign Minister says Syrians in Lebanon are considered economic refugees, not political ones

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 23-23/2023
UN: World is failing to protect millions of civilians caught in conflicts
Israeli National Security Chief: New Iranian Nuclear Facility Not Immune from Attack
Emirati leaders invite Netanyahu, Herzog, to climate conference in Dubai
Israel says military more than doubled strikes on Iranian targets in Syria
Israel Demolishes Home of Palestinian Behind Tel Aviv Attack that Killed 1
Top Israeli general says 'action' is on horizon over Iran nuclear work
Sudan Ceasefire Brings Some Respite after Weeks of Heavy Battles
Western Arms for Ukraine Make ‘Nuclear Apocalypse’ More Likely, Warns Russia’s Medvedev
Russia Says It Crushes Cross-Border Incursion from Ukraine
Ukraine’s Zelenskiy Visits Front Line to Meet Marines
Russian interior minister visits Saudi Arabia in Zelenskyy's wake
Turkish FM: We will Not Deport All Syrians
Syria’s Assad Should Be Put on Trial, Says French Foreign Minister

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 22-24/2023
The Road to Israel-Saudi Normalization Runs Through Washington/Richard Goldberg/Mosaic/May 23/2023
Israel-Saudi normalization requires concessions for Palestinians/Ben Caspit/Al Monitor/May 23, 2023
Diplomacy With a Vision: The Jeddah Summit and Questions of Supremacy!/Yousef Al-Dayni/Asharq Al Awsat/May 23/2023
Why Journalists Have More Freedom Than Professors/Ross Douthat/The New York Times/May 23/2023
Kata’ib Hezbollah a perennial rebel against the Iraqi government/Hassan Al-Mustafa/Arab News/May 23, 2023
Improved regional ties can help soothe Iran’s demographic crisis/Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab News/May 23, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 23-24/2023
Israeli army chief: A new war would be 7 times harder for Lebanon
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi on Tuesday announced that Hezbollah is “very deterred from an all-out war against Israel.”“It thinks it understands how we think. This thought brings it to dare and challenge us where it is sure it will not lead to war. I see this as a good way to create surprises if necessary,” Halevi said.“We have good preparedness in the northern arena. A campaign in the northern arena will be difficult on the home front. We will know how to deal with it, but it will be difficult. It will be seven times harder for Lebanon, and even more so for Hezbollah,” Halevi added.

Israel: Nasrallah close to making mistake that could lead to major war
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva has noted that Israel’s confrontation with Iran's proxies has become a “direct” confrontation with the Islamic republic itself. He further stated that the probability of an escalation that could degenerate into a full-scale war is not low. "Exercising measured and calculated force, as part of Israel's national interest, is the way to deal with this while strengthening alliances in the region," he said. Haliva also warned that Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah "is close to making a mistake that could lead to a major war. ""The fact that he allows the launching of drones from Syria, all of this creates a high potential for escalation in the region and we need to be prepared. Don't get us wrong. We are ready to use force,'' Haliva said. His remarks came a day after Hezbollah put on a show of force in south Lebanon, where the group extended a rare media invitation to one of its training sites. During the event, Hezbollah fighters simulated cross-border raids into Israel, using live ammunition and an attack drone. Around 200 Hezbollah fighters took part in the mock raids, part of large-scale military exercise in Aaramta, around 20 kilometers north of the Israeli border. Dozens of journalists were invited to the event which took place ahead of the anniversary next week of Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. One simulated raid involved a drone attack against a target inside Israel, while in another, fighters attacked vehicles across a mock border, retrieved a dummy's body from one of the cars and whisked it back across the "frontier." Hezbollah also put on display heavy and light arms, including anti-aircraft weapons and rocket launchers as well as rocket-propelled grenades. "If some people in the Zionist entity (Israel) dream of doing something foolish... we will rain down our precision missiles and all the weapons at our disposal," senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine said at the event. Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in 2006 after the group captured two Israeli soldiers.

US backs Mikati's stance on Hezbollah's military drill
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
The United States has voiced support for caretaker PM Najib Mikati’s criticism of the military drill that Hezbollah has staged in south Lebanon. “Hezbollah is more concerned with its own interests and those of its patron Iran than what is best for the Lebanese people. And I just want to note something that the prime minister of Lebanon said, which is the event constituted a diminution of Lebanon’s authority and sovereignty, and add that moreover, it threatens Lebanon’s security and stability,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a press briefing. The Lebanese government “rejects any act that infringes on the state’s authority and sovereignty, but the issue of Hezbollah’s arms requires comprehensive national consensus,” Mikati said on Monday. “This should be among the priorities of the coming stage,” Mikati told U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Joanna Wronecka. “At the current time, the government stresses the need to preserve security across Lebanon and not to carry out any act that might undermine it,” Mikati added. Hezbollah put on a show of force on Sunday, extending a rare media invitation to one of its training sites in southern Lebanon, where its forces staged a simulated military exercise. Masked fighters jumped through flaming hoops, fired from the backs of motorcycles, and blew up Israeli flags posted in the hills above and a wall simulating the one at the border between Lebanon and Israel. Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine said in a speech Sunday that the exercise was meant to "confirm our complete readiness to confront any aggression" by Israel.

Lebanon Informed by Germany of Arrest Warrant for Central Bank Governor
Reuters/May 23/ 2023.
Lebanon has been verbally informed by Germany of an arrest warrant against Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh "on charges of corruption, forgery... and money laundry and embezzlement", a senior judicial source told Reuters on Tuesday. A second source familiar with the matter confirmed the arrest warrant to Reuters. Salameh has denied any wrongdoing. The warrant is the second foreign arrest warrant issued for Salameh within the span of a week. Salameh, 72, is being investigated in Lebanon and at least five European countries for taking hundreds of millions of dollars from Lebanon's central bank to the detriment of the Lebanese state. No one at the German federal prosecution was immediately available to comment. The Munich public prosecutor’s office said it was involved in the case but declined to comment on the arrest warrant. "We never comment on arrest warrants," a spokesperson for the office told Reuters. Salameh, who has been central bank governor for 30 years, is facing growing calls to resign ahead of his latest term ending in July.

Salameh to appear before Lebanese judiciary over Interpol warrant
Najia Houssari/Arab News/May 23/2023
BEIRUT: Lebanon Central Bank Gov. Riad Salameh will appear before General Prosecutor Imad Qabalan on Wednesday to be informed of the Interpol warrant issued against him by the French judiciary. It is part of an investigation into Salameh surrounding charges of “corruption, forgery, money laundering and embezzlement,” a judicial source said. Salameh had failed to appear before a Paris court on May 16 for questioning, prompting French financial investigating judge Aude Buresi to issue an Interpol arrest warrant. The governor’s brother, Raja Salameh, and his assistant, Marian Howayek, were told on Tuesday to appear before the Paris criminal investigation department of the Public Prosecution, on the scheduled dates of May 31 and June 13, respectively. The Internal Security Forces, which were previously tasked with notifying the governor of his court hearing, reported to the judiciary that they were “unable to locate” Salameh. The judicial source said Qabalan “will inform Salameh of the red notice on Wednesday, confiscate his passport and leave him subject to investigation.” Qabalan is expected to request “the file for Salameh’s extradition from France, with a request for his surrender along with evidence against him.” Meanwhile, a judicial source denied to Arab News that Lebanon had received an arrest warrant from the German judiciary against Riad Salameh, similar to the Interpol warrant. The source said: “No one has contacted the public prosecutor, Judge Ghassan Oueidat, to inform him orally about the warrant.”
The source added that he believes “there is a unification of judicial procedures in Europe, and therefore the notification of the German side about the French warrant is part of these procedures between France and Germany.”The Lebanese judiciary refuses to extradite Lebaneses citizen based on foreign requests, except under specific conditions according to the penal code.
If the French judiciary sends Salameh’s file to the Lebanese judiciary, “the request will be studied to determine the extent of the availability of the French charges against Salameh, after which the public prosecutor will submit a report to the justice minister, who will, in turn, submit the extradition request to the Cabinet for consideration,” the source added. There is no judicial treaty between Lebanon and France for the exchange of wanted individuals, though the idea has previously been floated. In the case of the governor, who is also being pursued in Lebanon for a financial case, “he is being prosecuted for both cases before the Lebanese judiciary due to their connection to each other,” the source added. The arrest warrant against the governor was discussed during a joint parliamentary committee meeting on Tuesday.After the session, Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab said: “We did not accept the presence of a representative of the governor during the session. There are arrest warrants against him, and there is frustration among MPs about what we have reached. “There is a wish that the governor resigns from his position, as the government will not take any action. The situation is not good, and Lebanon cannot continue like this. This becomes a precedent.”Salameh’s term ends at the end of July, but the Lebanese government cannot dismiss a Central Bank governor. Other parliamentary blocs have refrained from expressing their opinion on Salameh, and are waiting for “the judicial decision and the government's decision, away from political bidding.”Parliamentary committees permitted the Central Bank to print currency notes of larger denominations, with a higher value than the current 100,000 Lebanese pound note. As a result of the Salameh case, there are rumors that Lebanon could be placed on the gray list of countries failing to combat money laundering. A ministerial source said that such a move “would be a major new blow to Lebanon, which has been suffering from a financial deterioration since 2019 and has not yet reached a final agreement with the International Monetary Fund.”

European Observatory urges Salameh’s removal, says Lebanon will bear the consequences
LBCI/May 23, 2023
The European Observatory for the Integrity of Lebanon considered that "the issuance by the German prosecution of an international arrest warrant against the Governor of Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, is a message that judges and politicians must receive and that he be removed from office; otherwise Lebanon will bear the consequences." The Observatory pointed out that the issue of correspondent banks stopping dealing with Lebanon, if Salameh remains, is serious, and its consequences are dangerous for Lebanon, the most important of which is the inability to open credits, the inability to import, and others. The European Observatory asked about "the direction that Lebanon's politicians are taking, are they more afraid for themselves or the country?"

Salameh to appeal Interpol warrant today, cabinet to convene Friday
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh will file Tuesday an appeal against an Interpol red notice issued against him in France over corruption charges. Public prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat on Monday summoned Salameh for questioning following the international arrest warrant.
Also on Monday, ministers debated Salameh's case in a consultative meeting, as local media reports said that some ministers asked for the dismissal of Salameh while others preferred to keep him in his post until a judicial decision is taken. In a cabinet session on Friday, ministers will decide whether or not to dismiss Salameh from his post. Salameh has held his post for almost 30 years and intends to step down after his current term ends in July. He said in an interview with Saudi-owned TV station Al-Hadath last week that he would resign only if he was convicted of a crime but dismissed the accusations against him as "not a judicial case, but a political case.” Officials in Beirut said that Oueidat will formally ask France to hand over the governor's case files to decide on future measures against Salameh. Asked whether it is possible to hand the former governor over to France, the officials — who spoke on condition of anonymity — said Lebanon does not hand its citizens to foreign countries and the case will be overseen in Lebanon. They added that once Oueidat receives the case files from France, he will decide whether Salameh should face justice in Lebanon or elsewhere. In 2020, the Lebanese prosecution received two Interpol red notices for tycoon Carlos Ghosn, who faced financial misconduct charges in Japan. Ghosn remains in Lebanon.

Sami Gemayel urges FPM to return to 'pre-2005 rhetoric'
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
Kataeb leader Sami Gemayel called Tuesday the Free Patriotic Movement to go back to what it was before 2005. "On March 14, 2005, you resisted the Syrian occupation and fought for the implementation of international resolutions," Gemayel said to the FPM. "It is time to go back to the pre-2005 rhetoric, because this is what will save the country," the lawmaker added. Gemayel went on to say that submission and trying to please Hezbollah will lead to further control and collapse.

Opposition awaits Bassil reply, Hezbollah seeks to sway him on Franjieh
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
Presidential negotiations between the opposition and Free Patriotic Movement chief Jebran Bassil are “temporarily frozen,” media reports said. “The opposition forces are awaiting Bassil’s response, after they proposed a number of presidential candidates,” the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported.
“Hezbollah is meanwhile trying to convince its strategic ally, Bassil, of the importance of endorsing Franjieh in return for getting the needed gains,” the daily added.

Geagea says Hezbollah, FPM 'irresponsible' in dealing with Salameh case
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea accused Tuesday the Shiite Duo and the Free Patriotic Movement of "irresponsibility" in dealing with public affairs. Geagea blamed the FPM and the Axis of Defiance for the crisis, the banking and monetary collapse, and for the resulting dire living conditions.
"They are responsible for what would happen in the banking, monetary, and living situations," Geagea said. Lebanon on Friday received an Interpol red notice issued against Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh in France over corruption charges. On Monday, ministers debated Salameh's case in a consultative meeting, as local media reports said that some ministers asked for the dismissal of Salameh while others preferred to keep him in his post until a judicial decision is taken. In a cabinet session on Friday, ministers will decide whether or not to dismiss Salameh from his post. "They're dealing with the situation with the same mentality and approach that have led us to hell," Geagea said.

Bou Saab efforts may lead to presidential dialogue at parliament
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
The current efforts that are being exerted by Deputy Speaker Elias Bou Saab might lead to calling for dialogue in parliament within a week or 10 days, MTV reported. “Representatives of all blocs would take part in the consultations to discuss a basket and a roadmap,” the TV network said. “The results that have been achieved by his visits would represent an alternative plan should there be failure to agree on a president,” MTV added. Speaker Nabih Berri might call for “an electoral session before June 15 should the picture become clear,” MTV said.

Italy contributes €2M to support most vulnerable Palestinian refugees in Lebanon
Naharnet/May 23, 2023
The Ambassador of Italy to Lebanon, Nicoletta Bombardiere, and the Director of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Affairs in Lebanon, Dr. Dorothee Klaus, have signed a one year agreement for an additional contribution of EUR 2 million to support the most vulnerable Palestine Refugees in Lebanon, in particular persons with disabilities, whose dire situation and difficult access to services was further compounded by the socio-economic crisis hitting Lebanon since 2019, UNRWA said. “This additional vital funding will enable UNRWA to continue the provision of inclusive education services to Palestinian Refugees children, in particular children with disabilities. It will also strengthen UNRWA holistic approach on disability inclusion through the provision of cash assistance and enhanced access to mobility and assistive devices,” the Agency said in a statement.
Dr. Klaus said: “UNRWA welcomes all students within its own schools and acknowledges their diversity in ways of learning. It is committed to removing obstacles to the effective inclusion of students with disabilities. With this grant from the Italian government, UNRWA will be able to better identify children with disabilities and provide them and our teachers with the necessary support to create an inclusive learning and teaching environment.”Ambassador Bombardiere said: “Italy’s support to Lebanon has been constantly focusing on strengthening the resilience of the most vulnerable, in particular children and persons with disabilities. With this new contribution, Italy reaffirms its support to UNRWA’s work in providing crucial services for Palestinian refugees at risk, such as access to inclusive education, child protection and multipurpose cash assistance.”Director of Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), Alessandra Piermattei, said: “We are glad to strengthen and renew the partnership between the Italian Cooperation and UNRWA with the objective to support the most vulnerable Palestinian refugees in Lebanon with adequate means and environment to learn, develop and become an active part of a more equitable society.” “Italy has long been one of the Agency’s most reliable donors. In 2022, Italy’s overall contribution to UNRWA amounted to EUR 14 million, including EUR 7 million for the Agency’s core programs and services. Italy continuous support is of critical importance in view of the particularly dramatic conditions in which the Palestine Refugees in Lebanon are living,” UNRWA added.

PM Mikati agrees to dollarize cash financial aid allocated to Syrian refugees
LBCI/May 23, 2023
Well-informed sources revealed to LBCI that caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati agreed to dollarize the cash financial aid allocated to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon at the request of the UNHCR. When asked, the Grand Serail circles made it clear that it was Banque du Liban that approved the Commission’s request, and the decision entered into force.

Foreign Minister says Syrians in Lebanon are considered economic refugees, not political ones
LBCI/May 23, 2023
Caretaker Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Abdallah Bou Habib said, "Syrians in Lebanon do not qualify as political refugees, as most of them are in Lebanon for economic reasons," according to the Italian Nova News Agency. During a panel discussion at the Italian Society for International Organization in Rome, Bou Habib confirmed that "Lebanon has two million Syrians, and this number threatens the structure of the Lebanese entity, as there has always been a balance between Christians and Muslims, as they feel that they are equal and not superior to one over the other," referring to "Jordan also hosts Syrian refugees, but their situation is better managed there." He called for "resolving the refugee issue," pointing out that "until now, there is no clear road map for their future fate, as they have been living in Lebanon for 12 years, awaiting a solution. This is what the Palestinians in Lebanon have been waiting for, for more than 75 years now, and yet the Palestinians cannot return." He affirmed that "the Syrian refugee is now considered an economic refugee, and the internal situation in Lebanon does not tolerate that at all, and the money paid to support them in Lebanon must be paid to them in Syria according to the same conditions." Bou Habib said, "I spoke with President Bashar al-Assad and Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad to reassure them of their safe return, and I reported that Syria has 40 laws to ensure that refugees, including opponents and dissidents, are not punished in any way."

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 23-24/2023
UN: World is failing to protect millions of civilians caught in conflicts
UNITED NATIONS (AP)/Tue, May 23, 2023
The U.N. chief on Tuesday decried the “terrible truth” that the world is failing to live up to its commitments to protect a growing number of civilians caught in conflicts. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian of treaties enshrining those commitments, lamented that countless civilians are experiencing “a living hell.” From Ukraine and Sudan to Africa’s Sahel and the Mideast, civilians are scrambling to evade missiles and explosives and to find food and medicine — and the humanitarian situation is deteriorating.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the Security Council should urge countries to respect the rules of war. “Governments with influence over warring parties should engage in political dialogue and train forces on protecting civilians,” he said. “And countries that export weapons should refuse to do business with any party that fails to comply with international humanitarian law.” His recent report on the protection of civilians in conflicts in 2022 points to over 100 conflicts worldwide and an average duration of more than 30 years. Last year, though, saw new highs for the number of people forcibly displaced and a 53% increase in U.N. recorded civilian deaths to nearly 17,000, including almost 8,000 in Ukraine. Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said during recent visits to Africa, Europe and the Mideast she saw a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation with “entire regions trapped in cycles of conflict without an end in sight.” Spoljaric said many of the conflicts are compounded by climate shocks, food insecurity and economic hardship. She issued an urgent call to countries to protect civilians and critical infrastructure in urban areas, pointing to large-scale destruction in Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. She also urged that food be provided to all civilians in conflict areas and for access to be given to humanitarian workers. “We need to break the pattern of violations, and this can be done through strong political will and sustained action,” she said. Switzerland, which is serving its first two-year term on the Security Council, chose the protection of civilians in conflict as its showcase event. Representatives from over 80 countries were scheduled to speak, a reflection of widespread concern. Swiss President Alain Berset, who chaired Tuesday's meeting, said that as the depository state for the Geneva Conventions and the home of the Geneva-based ICRC, respect for international humanitarian law was a long-standing priority for the country. The number of people facing acute food insecurity rose to 258 million last year, which he noted was "30 times the population of New York City. More than two-thirds of them live in conflict zones, including in Congo, Sudan, the Sahel, Somalia, Myanmar and Afghanistan, or in countries where violence is widespread such as Haiti, Berset said.
He urged all countries to implement a 2018 Security Council resolution against the use of starvation as a method of warfare and unlawfully denying humanitarian access and life-saving supplies to civilians, and a 2021 resolution condemning unlawful attacks that deprive civilians of essential services. The meeting saw clashes between Ukraine’s Western supporters and Russia, as the council has seen at many sessions since Moscow’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of its neighbor. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the increase in civilian deaths shows the human toll of the war. She also accused Russia of pushing millions of people in Africa and the Middle East into food insecurity by using “food as a weapon of war in Ukraine,” including blocking Ukrainian grain shipments for months. She said the agreement allowing the shipment of Ukrainian grain from Black Sea ports, which was extended for two months on May 17, was a “beacon of hope to the world.” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia claimed very little of the more than 30 million tons of grain shipped under the Black Sea deal has gone to developing countries, and that the shipment from Russia of ammonia — a key ingredient of fertilizer — that was supposed to be part of the July 2022 deal “has effectively not even begun.”

Israeli National Security Chief: New Iranian Nuclear Facility Not Immune from Attack
Reuters/May 23/ 2023.
The Israeli government’s national security adviser on Tuesday said a new nuclear facility being built by Iran would not be immune from attack, despite assessments by experts it will be beyond the reach of last-ditch US bunker-busting bombs. Tzachi Hanegbi made the comments in response to an Associated Press report that said the new facility appears to be as deep as 100 meters (328 feet) below ground. Hanegbi, speaking at a security conference near Tel Aviv, said he was not surprised by the report, noting that Iran has other underground facilities. While he acknowledged the location would complicate any potential military strike on the facility, he said there are still solutions to the challenge.“What is possible to say about this matter is that there is no place that can’t be reached,” he said. He declined to say whether Israel had the ability to do this on its own. “We hope we won’t get to a situation where the solution to the story of a nuclear weapon in Iran is a kinetic solution, a solution involving an attack,” he said, adding that Israel prefers to see the international standoff with Iran resolved through diplomatic means. Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. He has said international diplomacy should be accompanied by a serious military option and hinted that Israel would be prepared to strike Iran on its own if necessary. Photos and videos of Iran’s new facility from Planet Labs PBC show Iran has been digging tunnels near the Natanz nuclear site, which has come under repeated sabotage attacks over the years. Excavation mounds at the site suggest the facility could be between 80 meters (260 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet) under the ground, according to experts and AP’s analysis. Tehran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons, though Iranian officials now openly discuss their ability to pursue one. With Iran now producing uranium close to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers, the installation complicates the West’s efforts to halt Iran from potentially developing an atomic bomb as diplomacy over its nuclear program remains stalled. The construction comes five years after then-President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the nuclear accord. Since then, Iran has stepped up its uranium enrichment far beyond the limits of the accord. Experts believe it is just a short step from reaching the 90% enrichment threshold of weapons-grade uranium. Uranium enrichment is a key element of producing a nuclear bomb. Israeli experts believe Iran would need additional time, up to two years, to develop the means to deliver and detonate a warhead. Addressing the same conference, Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said Israel is closely monitoring Iran’s nuclear program and reiterated that the military is prepared to take action. “There are possible negative developments on the horizon and that can bring about action,” he said. “We have capabilities. Others have capabilities, and this is a very significant and important matter.”

Emirati leaders invite Netanyahu, Herzog, to climate conference in Dubai
Associated Press/May 23/ 2023.
Emirati leaders extended a long-sought invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the U.N climate conference, known as COP28, in November. The United Arab Emirates' President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum also invited Israel's figurehead President Isaac Herzog and dozens of other leaders including Syrian President Bashar Assad to COP28, in Dubai. The Israelis did not immediately accept the invitation, but Netanyahu thanked the Emiratis for the gesture. The invitation falls short of the high-profile bilateral visit Netanyahu has sought. But a trip to the Gulf Arab country would nonetheless give an important boost to the Israeli leader who has established official ties with the UAE as part of the 2020 Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between the two countries. Netanyahu has repeatedly called for closer ties with Arab countries across the region, but has yet to pay the UAE an official visit since the accords were signed. Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, has sought to return to the world stage. to the world stage. Since returning to office late last year, he has made official visits to Italy, Germany and Britain.
He had hoped to visit the UAE shortly after his right-wing government took office, but the plan was postponed after national security minister and ultranationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir last January visited the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The same site is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound to Muslims. Such visits are widely viewed as provocations that could lead to new clashes between the Israelis and Palestinians. The UAE condemned Ben-Gvir's actions at the time. He visited the site again on Sunday, declaring Israel "in charge" and drawing renewed criticism from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt and the United States. Netanyahu's alliance with far-right figures like Ben-Gvir has drawn repeated criticism from close allies. He remains uninvited to visit U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington, which some interpret as a White House snub. The U.S. administration has criticized Israel's settlement policies in the occupied West Bank, Ben-Gvir's visits to the disputed compound and the government's push to overhaul Israel's judiciary system. The administration has said he's likely to receive an invitation at some point. Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has been internationally ostracized during his country's civil war, has also been invited after returning to the Arab League following a 12-year suspension. The annual U.N. climate talks are designed to keep countries accountable to their pledges to cut down on carbon emissions. In November, the talks in Dubai will be hosted by Sultan al-Jaber, the chief executive officer of the Emirates' state oil company. Choosing the oil-rich emirate as well as al-Jaber to host the climate conference has drawn criticism from various environmental groups and activists.

Israel says military more than doubled strikes on Iranian targets in Syria
Associated Press/ May 23, 2023
Israel's defense minister has said that Israel's new government has greatly increased the number of strikes on Iranian targets since taking office late last year. Yoav Gallant did not provide an exact number of airstrikes. But the address, delivered at a security conference, marked rare public comments on Israeli military activity in Syria. "Since I took office, the number of Israeli strikes against the Iranians in Syria have doubled," Gallant said. "As part of this campaign, we are working methodically to strike the Iranian intelligence capabilities in Syria," he said. "These strikes inflict significant damage to the attempts by the Revolutionary Guard to establish a foothold a few kilometers from the Israeli border."Gallant also accused Iran of converting civilian ships into military vessels armed with weapons such as drones, missiles and intelligence-gathering capabilities. He said Iran hopes to station these ships at long distances from Iran. "Iran aims to expand its reach to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and even the shores of the Mediterranean," he said. "This is a structured plan designed to threaten trade and flight routes — both military and civilian — and to create a permanent threat in the maritime arena."
Israel considers Iran to be its greatest enemy, citing its calls for Israel's destruction and its support for anti-Israel militant groups across the region. It also accuses Iran of trying to develop a nuclear bomb — a charge Iran denies. Israeli officials have acknowledged carrying out hundreds of strikes on Iranian targets in neighboring Syria — where Iran has sent advisers and forces to assist President Bashar Assad in a 12-year civil war. But officials have given few details over the years and almost never comment on specific operations.

Israel Demolishes Home of Palestinian Behind Tel Aviv Attack that Killed 1
Reuters/May 23/ 2023.
The Israeli army said on Tuesday it demolished the home of a Palestinian involved in an attack in Tel Aviv that killed one and wounded two others last March.Video footage of the attack shows a man the army says was Moataz Khawaja, 23, shooting three men from behind, including one in the head — in one of Tel Aviv's busiest streets — before being shot and killed by Israeli police. Hamas claimed him as a member of its armed wing. On Tuesday, the army destroyed Khawaja's home in the town of Naalin, northwest of Ramallah. The army said people burned tires, threw stones and shot fireworks at Israeli forces who were razing the site. Israel demolishes the homes of attackers in an attempt to deter others, a tactic critics say amounts to collective punishment. Khawaja's attack came after months of relentless violence in the West Bank, where the Israeli military has been conducting near-nightly raids in response to Palestinian attacks against Israelis. The demolition follows a deadly five-day burst of fighting between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip.

Top Israeli general says 'action' is on horizon over Iran nuclear work
JERUSALEM (Reuters)/Tue, May 23, 2023
The top Israeli general raised the prospect of "action" against Iran on Tuesday even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's national security adviser played down any immediate threat posed by a new underground nuclear facility being dug by Tehran. World powers' efforts to negotiate new curbs to Iranian uranium enrichment and other projects with bomb-making potential have been fruitless so far, fanning long-bruited threats by Israel to resort to force if it deems diplomacy a dead end. "Iran has advanced with uranium enrichment further than ever before ... There are negative developments on the horizon that could bring about (military) action," Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi, chief of Israel's armed forces, said in a speech. He did not detail what those developments might be, nor what action might be taken and by whom. "We have capabilities, and others also have capabilities," Halevi told the Herzliya Conference, an international security forum, in an apparent allusion to Israel's U.S. ally. Experts are divided over whether the Israeli military has the clout to deal lasting damage to Iranian nuclear facilities that are distant, dispersed and defended. Iran denies seeking the bomb and has vowed devastating reprisals for any attack. There has been speculation Israel might use countries on Iran's borders as springboards for strikes. One such country, Azerbaijan, dismissed that idea despite its strong Israel ties. "We refrain from interfering in the disputes or problems (of other countries), including by allowing or giving our territory for some operations or adventures," Deputy Azeri Foreign Minister Fariz Rzayev said at the conference. The Associated Press on Monday reported Iran was building a new underground site in the Zagros Mountains to replace an exposed uranium centrifuge manufacturing center at nearby Natanz that was struck by an explosion and fire in July 2020. "This of course limits the capacity to carry out an attack, relative to above-ground facilities, which is of course easier. But what can be said about this matter is that there is nowhere that cannot be reached," Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi told the conference. Following the 2020 incident, Iran announced in 2021 that it was working to move some of its centrifuge manufacturing halls into the "heart of the mountain near Natanz", an area where Iranian engineers have long carried out excavation work. Hanegbi declined to threaten an explicit Israeli attack and even suggested the onus would be on the United States by noting that it has massive GBU-43/B bombs which are not in Israel's arsenal. In any event, Hanegbi added, "this (underground facility near Natanz) is years away from being completed".Though Washington prefers to pursue diplomacy with Iran, the allies see "eye to eye" and have no significant difference on potential "red lines" for last-resort military action, he said.

Sudan Ceasefire Brings Some Respite after Weeks of Heavy Battles
Reuters/Tue, May 23, 2023
Artillery fire could be heard in parts of Khartoum and warplanes flew overhead on Tuesday, residents said, though an internationally-monitored ceasefire appeared to have brought some respite from heavy fighting in the Sudanese capital. Night-time airstrikes were reported in at least one area after the ceasefire started late on Monday, but residents otherwise reported relative calm. The truce was agreed at talks in Jeddah on Saturday after five weeks of fierce battles between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). It is being tracked by Saudi Arabia and the United States and is meant to allow for the delivery of humanitarian relief. Sudanese activists wrote to the United Nations envoy to Sudan welcoming the ceasefire agreement but complaining of severe human rights abuses against civilians that they said took place as the fighting raged and should be investigated. Neighborhood committees that have been at the forefront of local aid efforts in the capital were preparing to receive supplies, though much of the aid that has arrived in Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast is yet to be distributed as agencies wait for security clearance, activists and aid workers said. The ceasefire deal has raised hopes of a pause in a war that has driven nearly 1.1 million people from their homes, including more than 250,000 who have fled to neighboring countries. "Our only hope is that the truce succeeds, so that we can return to our normal life, feel safe, and go back to work again," said Khartoum resident Atef Salah El-Din, 42. Although fighting has continued through previous ceasefires, this was the first to be formally agreed following negotiations. The ceasefire deal includes for the first time a monitoring mechanism involving the army and RSF as well as representatives from Saudi Arabia and the United States, which brokered the agreement after talks in Jeddah. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the monitoring mechanism would be "remote", without giving details.
Activists’ letter
"If the ceasefire is violated, we'll know, and we will hold violators accountable through our sanctions and other tools at our disposal," he said in a video message. "The Jeddah talks have had a narrow focus. Ending violence and bringing assistance to the Sudanese people. A permanent resolution of this conflict will require much more," he added. Shortly before the ceasefire was due to take effect, the RSF released an audio message from its commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, in which he thanked Saudi Arabia and the US but urged his men on to victory. "We will not retreat until we end this coup," he said. Both sides accused each other of an attempted power grab at the start of the conflict on April 15. The United Nations envoy to Sudan warned on Monday of the increasing "ethnicization" of the military conflict. "The growing ethnicization of the conflict risks to expand and prolong it, with implications for the region," Volker Perthes told a briefing at the UN Security Council. Sudanese activists have written a letter to Perthes complaining of indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes against residential areas as well as the taking of civilians as human shields, extrajudicial killings, torture and sexual violence. The crisis is putting pressure on Sudan's neighbors. Sudanese refugees are streaming into Chad so quickly that it will be impossible to relocate them all to safer places before the start of the rainy season in late June, a senior Red Cross official said on Tuesday, flagging the risk of a disaster. Some 60,000-90,000 people have fled into neighboring Chad, the UN refugee agency said this week.

Western Arms for Ukraine Make ‘Nuclear Apocalypse’ More Likely, Warns Russia’s Medvedev
Reuters/3 May 2023
A member of Russian President Vladimir Putin's powerful Security Council on Tuesday warned that the more destructive the weapons that the West supplied to Ukraine, the higher the risk of "nuclear apocalypse". Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than any other state, has repeatedly said the West is engaged in a proxy war with Russia over Ukraine that could escalate into a much bigger conflict. The United States has committed $37 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February last year. US President Joe Biden told fellow G7 leaders on Friday that he backed a joint effort with allies to train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets, according to a senior US Administration official, though there is no commitment as yet to supply the jets themselves. "The more weapons are supplied, the more dangerous the world will be," former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Security Council, told the Russian state news agencies TASS and RIA while on a trip to Vietnam and Laos. "And the more destructive these weapons are, the more likely the scenario becomes of what is commonly called a nuclear apocalypse," Medvedev was quoted as saying. The West says it wants to help Ukraine defeat Russia but has repeatedly insisted it does not want to trigger a direct confrontation between the US-backed NATO military alliance and Russia. But Medvedev said NATO did not appear to be taking the possibility of nuclear conflict seriously. "They are wrong. And at some point, events can move in a completely unpredictable scenario. And the responsibility will lie entirely with the North Atlantic Alliance," RIA quoted him as saying. The Russian military said on Tuesday it had routed militants who had penetrated the Belgorod region from Ukraine, killing more than 70 "Ukrainian nationalists". Medvedev said the attackers were "scumbags" who should be exterminated "like rats". "Responsibility ... is carried by the Kyiv regime, and ultimately by its sponsors overseas - that is, Washington and the countries of the European Union, along with affiliated states like Britain and others," Medvedev said, according to TASS. "This is their responsibility, direct and immediate."

Russia Says It Crushes Cross-Border Incursion from Ukraine
Reuters/May 23/2023
Russia said on Tuesday it had routed fighters who crossed the border from Ukraine after two days of combat, in what appeared to be one of the biggest incursions of its kind of the 15-month-old war. There was no immediate independent confirmation that the fighting had ended, although one of two groups claiming to be behind the raid said in a post on social media: "One day we will return to stay." The fighting forced Russia to evacuate towns along the Ukrainian border. Russia has blamed Ukraine for the attack, which Kyiv denied. The two groups that claimed responsibility describe themselves as Russian armed dissidents. The Russian military said it had killed more than 70 "Ukrainian nationalists" and destroyed four armored vehicles. There was no independent confirmation of those losses. Russian forces had surrounded the enemy fighters and defeated them with "air strikes, artillery fire and active action by border units", the defense ministry said. "The remnants of the nationalists were pushed back to Ukrainian territory, where they continued to be hit by gunfire until they were completely eliminated," it added. Earlier on Tuesday, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov had told residents who fled the fighting the previous day that it was not yet safe to return. Gladkov said one elderly woman had died during the evacuation. On Monday, he said at least eight people had been wounded, several buildings damaged and many residents had left. The two groups who claimed responsibility, the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC), both say they comprise armed Russian fighters seeking to overthrow President Vladimir Putin. The Legion says it is recognized by Ukraine and its members have fought there against Russia. The RVC has claimed responsibility for previous attacks inside Russia, including a cross-border raid in the neighboring Bryansk region in March. "Good morning everybody, except Putin's henchmen. We have met the dawn on liberated territory, and are moving further on," the Legion said on Telegram. "Once again, the myth that the citizens of the Russian Federation are safe and the Russian Federation is strong has been destroyed," it said in a later post. The RVC said: "One day we will come to stay. Meanwhile, the partisan movement is not bound by the framework of traditional combat operations."
Militants ‘not independent’
Mark Galeotti, head of the London-based Mayak Intelligence consultancy, said the militant groups covered a variety of political perspectives united by wanting to see Putin's downfall. "But at the same time, we have to realize that these are not independent forces... They are controlled by Ukrainian military intelligence. They rely on the Ukrainians for weapons and support." Kyiv publicly denied blame for the raid, though some of its denials were pitched with apparent irony, to mimic past Russian denials of a role in separatist movements in Ukraine. Kyiv "has nothing to do with it", tweeted Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. "As you know, tanks are sold at any Russian military store, and underground guerrilla groups are composed of Russian citizens."Moscow, which portrays its invasion of Ukraine last year as a response to a security threat from Kyiv, said the attackers were Ukrainian saboteurs, seeking to deflect attention from Russia's capture of the city of Bakhmut three days ago, after the bloodiest land battle in Europe since World War Two. "This once again confirms that Ukrainian militants are continuing their activities against our country. This requires a great deal of effort from us, and these efforts are continuing," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Asked about reports that the attackers were ethnic Russians, he said: "They are Ukrainian fighters from Ukraine. There are many ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. But they are still Ukrainian militants."
The RVC released video of a fighter with what it said was a captured armored vehicle, putting a sticker with the group's logo over the "Z" symbol used to identify Russian forces. Other videos posted on Russian and Ukrainian social media channels showed pictures and video of what were described as captured Russian servicemen and their identity documents. Mash, a Russian news channel on Telegram, said drones had struck the roof of the Russian FSB security service building in Belgorod city overnight, nearly 80 km (50 miles) from the district where the raid took place. It posted a picture of emergency vehicles outside the building. Inside Ukraine, Russian forces are celebrating their first major victory in 10 months with the capture of Bakhmut, where thousands of troops died in months of fighting both sides call a meatgrinder. Kyiv says its forces have been making their own gains on the outskirts of the city to the north and south. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar claimed Kyiv still held positions on the city's southwestern outskirts. Independent analysts say Russia's claim to have captured it on Saturday is probably accurate.

Ukraine’s Zelenskiy Visits Front Line to Meet Marines
Asharq Al Awsat/May 23/2023
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he had visited marines on the eastern front line to thank them for their role in resisting Russia's invasion. Video footage posted on social media showed Zelenskiy, dressed in a military khaki sweatshirt and khaki trousers, handing out awards to dozens of male and female marines in combat gear on the national Day of the Ukrainian Marines. "Happy Marines Day, especially to such strong people who are in one of the hottest but also one of the strongest ... sectors - the Vuhledar-Marinka direction," Zelenskiy said. Ukraine's military said in a daily update that its forces had repelled numerous enemy attacks on the city of Marinka, which lies in the eastern region of Donetsk. Fighting has been fierce in Donetsk, one of four regions that Russia proclaimed as its own last September after what Ukraine and its allies denounced as a "sham" referendum following Moscow's full-scale invasion. Zelenskiy also handed out decorations to commanders of several marine units. He said the Ukrainian government would create a specialized marines corps and promised to provide new weapons and equipment.

Russian interior minister visits Saudi Arabia in Zelenskyy's wake
Adam Lucente/Al Monitor/May 23, 2023
The Ukrainian president criticized the Russian invasion during his surprise trip to Saudi Arabia to attend the Arab League summit. The Russian and Saudi interior ministers met in Riyadh on Tuesday. The meeting follows Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelenskyy visiting Saudi Arabia last week as the kingdom seeks to maintain friendly relations with both Ukraine and Russia. Saudi Interior Minister Prince Abdulaziz hosted his Russian counterpart Vladimir Kolokoltsev. The two discussed ways of enhancing security cooperation between their respective ministries. The Russian ambassador in Riyadh and Saudi security and military officials were present during the meeting, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. Why it matters: The timing of Kolokoltsev’s trip to Saudi Arabia is noteworthy due to its proximity to the Ukrainian leader’s visit. On Friday, Zelenskyy attended the Arab League summit in the Saudi city of Jeddah. The trip was Zelenskyy’s first to Saudi Arabia, and he tweeted that enhancing ties with the Arab world and discussing the war with Russia were his priorities. n his speech at the summit, Zelenskyy thanked Saudi Arabia for helping mediate the release of Ukrainian soldiers from Russian detention last September. He also criticized unnamed regional states of “turning a blind eye” to Russia’s invasion. Know more: Saudi Arabia, though traditionally aligned with the United States, is improving its relations with Russia. The two cooperate on oil production matters via the OPEC+ alliance. At the same time, the kingdom also maintains friendly relations with Ukraine. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal visited Ukraine in February and Russia a month later. After the latter meeting, he offered to mediate between the two warring eastern European states.

Turkish FM: We will Not Deport All Syrians
Ankara: Saeed Abdelrazek/Asharq Al Awsat/May 23/2023
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu ruled out the return of all Syrian refugees to their country, even if Ankara normalizes relations with Damascus, citing Türkiye's need for manpower in certain sectors, especially the agricultural and industrial sectors. Cavusoglu said it wouldn't be accurate to claim that Türkiye will return all Syrians to the country. "Türkiye currently needs laborers in sectors like agriculture, industry, and retail."Hundreds of thousands of Syrians work in many sectors in Türkiye at less than the minimum wage without additional costs such as social and health insurance. Many factory and business owners have opposed the Syrians' departure because they are a less expensive alternative for the Turks. Syrian businessmen contributed to revitalizing the economy of some Turkish regions, especially border states, such as Gaziantep, where they established factories and workshops. Cavusoglu said in a televised interview that Türkiye had taken the necessary measures on its borders with Syria and Iran and that the immigration problem could not be solved by "hate speeches or populism." "Around 550,000 Syrians have returned to their country, which is not enough," he explained. "More of them must return. We have entered into a dialogue with the Damascus regime in this regard and decided to establish the infrastructure for this return."More Syrians must be returned to the safe areas and areas under Assad's control, added Cavusoglu. "We are determined to send (Syrians) back, but we need to do it honorably," he stressed. "We are developing a roadmap that also includes reviving the political process, cleansing Syria from terrorism, and ensuring the safe return of refugees. Syrians do not want to return to areas where terrorism exists, such as areas controlled by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)," said the official. Türkiye is heading for a decisive runoff vote on Sunday after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could not win the presidential race in the first round. He will face the leader of the main opposition CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in the runoff. Ahead of the runoff, Kilicdaroglu stated that Türkiye would deport 10 million refugees and immigrants immediately if he wins the polls. He had adopted a less harsh tone before the first round of the elections, saying the Syrians would be returned to their country within two years through negotiations with the Syrian government, European Union, and United Nations to ensure their voluntary and safe return. Studies have indicated that 75 percent of Turkish people oppose the presence of refugees and foreigners in the country. Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu have exploited the Syrian refugee file throughout their electoral campaigns. Erdogan spoke a few days ago about the return of more than a million refugees to the areas controlled by Türkiye and its allied factions of the Syrian National Army (SNA) in northern Syria.

Syria’s Assad Should Be Put on Trial, Says French Foreign Minister
AP/23 May 2023
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be put on trial following "hundreds of thousands of deaths" and "chemical arms use" during the country's civil war, the French foreign minister said on Tuesday. Asked during a television interview if she wanted Assad to be tried, Catherine Colonna said "the answer is yes", adding that "the battle against crime, against impunity is part of French diplomacy."Assad last week returned to the regional scene with an appearance at a summit of the Arab League, where he had been banned from for a decade. Colonna nevertheless said Paris would not be changing its policy towards the Syrian ruler. "We have to remember who Bashar al-Assad is. He's a leader who has been the enemy of his own people for more than 10 years," she said. A lifting of European Union sanctions on the Syrian regime was "certainly not" planned, she added. "So long as he doesn't change, so long as he doesn't commit to reconciliation, to the fight against terrorism, the fight against drugs... so long as he doesn't fulfil his commitments, there's no reason to change our attitude towards him," Colonna said. "I think it's up to him to change, it's not up to France to change our attitude," she added.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on May 23-24/2023
The Road to Israel-Saudi Normalization Runs Through Washington
Richard Goldberg/Mosaic/May 23/2023
Open ties between the two nations are in everyone’s interest, but it will take serious intent and deft maneuvering from America to get there. Is the administration up to it?
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince reportedly told senior U.S. officials earlier this month that he is prepared to normalize the kingdom’s relations with Israel as part of a broader reset in relations between Riyadh and Washington. That’s welcome news for a White House scrambling to repair a rupture in U.S.-Saudi ties, as Riyadh appears to be inching toward the exit from its historic relationship with the United States.
For two years, President Joe Biden found every opportunity to distance the U.S. from its decades-long Arab partner in the Gulf. And as a result, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman went shopping for new allies—with China, already his country’s largest trading partner, at the top of the list.
Without a change in course, the United States and Saudi Arabia are headed toward a strategic divorce. Were that to happen, sensitive military and dual-use commercial relationships between Riyadh and Beijing would preclude Washington from sharing certain military hardware, intelligence, and high-tech systems with the kingdom. And as the Chinese-Saudi partnership grows, Israel will also find itself under pressure to keep its distance, although normalization with the Saudis remains a coveted strategic prize for its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Any exposure and vulnerability to China inside Israel’s defense and high-tech sectors inevitably causes problems for U.S.-Israel defense and high-tech cooperation; in effect, were the Saudis to leave the American alliance structure and integrate into China’s, Israel would be forced to choose between its most important benefactor and diplomatic relations with the most significant kingdom in the Arab world.
All of this is great news for China and its most natural ally in the Middle East, Iran. As the U.S. pulls back further from the region and Saudi-Israel normalization gets put on hold, China will fill the vacuum—using its influence on both Iran and on America’s erstwhile Gulf allies to play the kind of global energy politics the U.S. mastered during the cold war. What is now a primarily commercial partnership between Beijing and Riyadh will take on increasing strategic significance, and Saudi Arabia (along with Iran) will become one of several oil-producing friends China can rely upon during moments of confrontation with the United States.
Tehran, for its part, will score a major victory by blocking the development of an integrated U.S.-Israel-Arab security architecture that could contain it, and perhaps even defeat it. Instead, it will use its Palestinian terror proxies to provoke clashes with Israel that stir emotions in the Arabic-language press and refocus Middle Eastern attention on the Israel-Palestinian conflict instead of on its own role in fomenting chaos and bloodshed around the region. For the Saudis, normalization with the Jewish state will lose its appeal, becoming a risky move in support of an alliance with the U.S. that no longer appears worthwhile.
If Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known in the Western media as MBS) intended to send Washington a wake-up call by cozying up to Beijing, he succeeded. After nearly a year of inaction, the White House leaned on the Senate to confirm a new U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Michael Ratney, who presented his credentials in Riyadh in late April. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited the kingdom in early May, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to follow in June. These are important steps, but healing the relationship’s open wounds and brokering Israeli-Saudi normalization will take more than promises and platitudes; it will require creative reimagination from both capitals and a commitment not merely to maintain, but to upgrade, the alliance.
Since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt,the United States and Saudi Arabia have been through a lot to together—for better and for worse. This relationship has weathered no small number of tensions and crises, despite having no formal agreements or official documents that would give it a binding status. The story begins with Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz, who fueled the United States to victory over Germany and Japan in World War II. After the war, the kingdom emerged as a major cold-war ally in the Middle East. But the Saudi-led oil embargo of 1973—retaliation for U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War—sent the American economy into a tailspin.
Yet the relationship recovered from this particular low point. By 1975, Riyadh agreed to make the dollar the standard currency for the global sale of oil—a decision that would help establish the dollar’s primacy in international trade, and thus the primacy of the American financial system. And in the 1980s, Abdulaziz’s son, King Fahd, helped Ronald Reagan win the cold war by covertly funding Afghan mujahideen attacks against the USSR while increasing oil production to drive down prices, thereby drying up resources for an oil revenue-dependent Kremlin.
By 1990, ties were stronger than ever. President George H.W. Bush ordered more than 500,000 U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia to defend the kingdom and drive the forces of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Yet just ten years later, things took another dramatic turn for the worse with the September 11 attacks. Of the nineteen hijackers, fifteen were Saudi nationals. The Saudi government was not behind the attacks—but the episode exposed the royal court’s decades-long strategy of appeasing radical voices within the kingdom at the expense of U.S. national security.
But even this setback did not prove sufficient to break the U.S-Saudi alliance. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both made multiple visits to the kingdom, while the Saudis took a dramatic turn away from their terror- and Islamism-supporting ways. It seems that with each crisis, the strategic paradigm of “oil for security”—that Saudi Arabia would rely on the United States for its physical security while the United States would rely on Saudi Arabia for its energy and economic security—has in the end reasserted itself.
Until now.
In Riyadh, a generation of leaders whose worldviews were molded by the cold war is being replaced by a younger generation raised in a more interconnected era, with the thirty-seven-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the helm. In Washington, after decades of hard-power presence in the Middle East and an invasion of Iraq that fundamentally altered the region, the United States is pulling back, responding to populist campaign rhetoric, shifting attention and resources to the Indo-Pacific, and ceding great-power influence in the region to China and Russia.
At the same time, the last decade ushered in geopolitical and economic transformations that called into question the doctrine of oil for security. Wounds first opened by President Obama have turned gangrenous under President Biden.
Obama’s perceived abandonment of the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood sent shockwaves through the Arab world—as did Obama’s decision to walk away from a threat to use force against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Add in the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran—an attempt to rebalance power in the Gulf between Saudi Arabia, an American ally, and Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism—while declaring an American “pivot to Asia,” and the U.S.-Saudi relationship found itself on thin ice.
President Donald Trump’s embrace of MBS and reimposition of tough sanctions on Iran appeared at first to be another iteration of the cycle, with reconciliation again following crisis. In reality, it may have done little more than buy time. Trump treated Saudi Arabia transactionally and talked condescendingly. He spoke often of ending “endless wars” in the Middle East, and his precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria, which left Kurdish allies unprotected from Turkish air power, and his desperation for a peace agreement with the Taliban, which fundamentally weakened the Afghan government, continued the Obama policy of ceding the region to great-power competitors.
For Riyadh, the question of whether the United States would ever again come to Saudi Arabia’s military aid, as it did during the first Gulf War, was tested in 2019 when Iran launched a drone and cruise-missile strike against Saudi Aramco—immediately taking 5 percent of the global oil supply offline and exposing a catastrophic vulnerability in Saudi air defense. President Trump opted against a military response, fearing that American use of force in retaliation for an attack on foreign interests would meet with a backlash that could upend his maximum-pressure campaign on Iran and spur bipartisan calls to lift sanctions on Tehran. Trump reportedly ordered a cyberattack instead and later sent more U.S. troops and missile-defense assets to the region to placate an outraged Saudi leadership.
While not directly connected to the attack on Aramco, Trump’s decision months later to kill Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite paramilitary Quds Force and architect of regional mayhem and sponsorship of terrorism, demonstrated America’s capacity to be a more valuable, albeit sometimes unreliable, military ally than either China or Russia. So too did Trump’s reported interest in exploring a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But Joe Biden’s decision while running for president to placate pro-Tehran sentiment inside the Democratic party’s progressive base—vowing to make MBS a “pariah” and to return the United States to the nuclear deal—made it all but impossible to slow the erosion of America’s ongoing commitment in Riyadh. Worse still, Biden governed as he campaigned, attempting to weaken Saudi Arabia’s regional power while elevating Iran’s and declaring economic war on oil, the lifeblood of the Saudi economy. Upon assuming office, he removed the Iran-sponsored Yemeni Houthis from the official list of foreign terrorist organizations, prompting an uptick in missile and drone attacks against the kingdom. He followed up with an order to end U.S. military sales and intelligence support that could help Saudi Arabia target the Iran- and Hizballah-trained Houthis inside Yemen—and then withdrew the extra U.S. missile-defense assets Trump had provided. In short, he drove a stake through the heart of oil-for-security.
Biden appointed Robert Malley—a veteran left-wing think tanker and former Obama administration official known for his advocacy of warmer American relations with Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas—special envoy for Iran with a mandate to loosen enforcement of U.S. sanctions while pleading with Tehran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal. And then, making good on his pledge to isolate MBS, Biden made him persona non grata in the White House and declassified an intelligence assessment about the crown prince’s involvement in the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi—an assessment that added no new information to existing public reporting but which was evidently intended to cause the crown prince personal embarrassment.
Then reality set in.Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine sent oil prices skyrocketing. Biden scrambled. Washington called Saudi Arabia to help stabilize the market. But MBS was in no mood to do Biden any favors—the higher price of oil, after all, would help finance his massive economic development program, dubbed Vision 2030.
Suspecting MBS was merely playing “hard to get,” Biden reluctantly scheduled a visit to Saudi Arabia under cover of a multilateral forum and agreed to meet the crown prince on one condition: no shaking hands. It was the height of disrespect on MBS’s home turf—and the last straw. MBS welcomed the president and began to shop around for new patrons. Hedging against the U.S., and betting on the emergence of a multipolar world, he pursued several security partnerships simultaneously. He reportedly also put a price on normalization with Israel: NATO-like security guarantees from the United States, a vast expansion of U.S. arm sales, domestic defense production, and a civilian nuclear program that included uranium enrichment on Saudi soil.
Sensing an opening, China’s President Xi Jinping wasted little time in offering Riyadh an alternative strategic framework. China, already Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner, could offer MBS something new: political and economic influence over Tehran in exchange for expanding relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). MBS welcomed Xi to Saudi Arabia in December for a China-GCC summit that ended with a joint communique committing Beijing to the strategic interests of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the rest of the GCC—explicitly pledging to pursue a regional framework that would address Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, missile proliferation, and nuclear ambitions.
By March, a deal was hatched. Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic ties and to end all direct or indirect attempts to inflict harm on one another. Saudi Arabia—for a price still unknown—bought a period of relative calm along its borders, aiming to halt Iran-sponsored missile and drone attacks that threaten Vision 2030. Iran, facing a collapsing currency, hyperinflation, and domestic unrest, struck back at U.S.-led efforts to isolate it—while increasing its military support to Russia, launching a multi-front attack on Israel, and racing toward the nuclear threshold.
The Saudis claim they had nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Iran, they argue, is the weaker party, suing for peace in Yemen to conserve its resources. If China can use its influence to advance Saudi security interests at a time the United States either cannot or will not, so be it. The door is still open to discuss the terms of an upgraded U.S.-Saudi partnership, but Saudi Arabia will do what it must to defend its interests in the meantime.
Washington should hold no illusions. Should China prove itself a more reliable powerbroker than the United States, a more permanent Saudi-China strategic partnership will likely ensue—one that could include military, nuclear, and other elements that threaten American interests. Indeed, Riyadh has already announced it will apply to become a “dialogue partner” (a status beneath both “member” and “observer”) in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Sino-Russian attempt at a counterweight to the U.S.-led order in Europe and Asia.
The looming threat of losing Saudi Arabia entirely to its main international rivals should focus Washington’s attention. This is more than the latest rough patch in what might seem like a never-ending series of highs and lows that is the U.S.-Saudi relationship. The fact is that the oil-for-security paradigm no longer makes sense in the 21st century, at least not in its historic form, and restoring the alliance will entail rethinking its underlying assumptions.
From social media to artificial intelligenceto environmental concerns to new military technologies to the Abraham Accords, the world today is profoundly different than the one discussed by President Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz aboard the USS Quincy in 1945. The Saudi Arabia of MBS is lightyears apart from the desert kingdom of his grandfather. Attempts to create an innovation economy, the government-led campaign against Islamic extremism, the extension of new rights to millions of Saudi women, the open discussion of normalizing relations with Israel, and the liberalization of sports and entertainment amount to the beginning of a new era.
Reinvigorating U.S.-Saudi relations must begin with a re-evaluation of what the United States needs from Saudi Arabia and what Saudi Arabia needs from the United States. For the United States, the role of oil in the relationship remains critical in two ways. First, despite the dramatic growth in American energy production in the last decade, Saudi Arabia still has unparalleled influence over the global petroleum trade. Thus in 2011 and 2012, Riyadh helped Washington stabilize the oil market when Congress enacted sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran. Washington asked for help again when, in both 2018 and 2019, President Trump reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil and worked to bring Tehran’s revenues to near-zero. Riyadh again complied. And as last year’s oil price spike reminded the White House, the American economy pays a steep price when Riyadh is alienated and refuses to help.
But Saudi Arabia’s ability to contribute to American economic security goes beyond its ability to stabilize oil markets. U.S. economic supremacy depends in part on the kingdom continuing to trade oil in dollars. The primacy of the dollar as a global currency benefits Riyadh as well, since U.S. sanctions—the very same sanctions that weakened Iran’s economy and enabled Saudi Arabia’s recent de-escalation agreement—rely heavily on the dominance of the American financial system.
Important as such assistance is, there is more that Saudi Arabia can do to help the United States—and that the United States is within its rights to ask for. More than twenty years after the September 11 attacks, America has learned a few things. One of the most important: the U.S. military can accomplish much, but it cannot win a war against a religious ideology. For that, Washington must support independent nations whose interests and aspirations align with its own and that have the means and will to counter extremism in the Middle East and around the world. No country is better positioned to do that than Saudi Arabia, which has an unrivaled status in the Muslim world as the birthplace of Islam and home of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The crown prince’s commitment to combating radical Islam should form a core pillar of a U.S.-Saudi framework—a combination of Saudi soft power with American hard power—alongside continued intelligence and counterterrorism cooperation.
In the same vein, long-term regional security and stability will only arrive when the United States and its allies build an integrated political, economic, and security architecture. That is, American allies in the Middle East should, with U.S. leadership, take responsibility in a systematic and reliable way for maintaining some semblance of regional order. Such an architecture would demoralize common enemies—isolating the Islamic Republic of Iran and drying up resources and support for its regional proxies. It would of course entail cooperation among the Gulf states, Jordan, Egypt—and Israel. So long as its neighbors continue to shun the Jewish state, this sort of regional comity will remain impossible. The steps taken by the UAE and Bahrain following the Abraham Accords are historic and rightly celebrated, but only Saudi Arabia can complete the process of normalization.
A Middle East security partnership led jointly by Israel and Saudi Arabia, and backed by the United States, would enable multinational military exercises in or near the Gulf, regional integrated air defenses to counter Iranian missile threats, and enhanced intelligence cooperation to combat Iran-backed terrorist groups. Over time, these and similar arrangements will reduce the demand for U.S. defense resources that are sorely needed in the Indo-Pacific as American military planners prepare for a possible war with China.
For Israel, normalization with Saudi Arabia will bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and create a domino effect of diplomatic ties with Muslim countries throughout the world, dramatically undermining the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign (BDS). New markets will open to Israeli firms and new security partnerships will be formed. And the ideological impact on a generation of young Muslims that will grow up seeing Israel as just another Middle Eastern country will pay dividends for decades to come.
Saudi-Israel normalization is in the kingdom’s interest, too. Some believe Riyadh already reaps the benefits of diplomatic relations with Israel without risking a backlash from its own people or from the Arab and Muslim worlds. After all, Israel already maintains clandestine security ties with the kingdom and Israelis with dual passports increasingly fly back and forth for business. What more would Saudi Arabia get by making these ties public and thus risking instability inside its borders?
Quite a lot, in fact. While it’s true that Riyadh already enjoys many of the security and intelligence benefits of normalization at minimal political cost, the kind of real-time coordination and military technology transfers that come with normalization would be a game-changer for Saudi Arabia’s defense posture. Whatever Saudi Arabia thinks it’s getting from Israel in the security domain is a highly diluted version of what it would get from full, public, and friendly diplomatic relations.
Perhaps more importantly, however, MBS knows that the success of his Vision 2030 economic program hinges on the kingdom establishing itself as high-tech hub—and no matter how many American, Asian, or European executives visit, he is unlikely to achieve the vision’s lofty goals without integration into Tel Aviv’s high-tech ecosystem. Normalization would unlock the “start-up nation” to Saudi entrepreneurs and investors, providing the injection of dynamism and innovation that MBS needs to establish his own start-up kingdom.
Likewise, there is much that Saudi Arabia will want from the United States in order to achieve its own national priorities. Riyadh desires a stable and secure Middle East as much, if not more, than Washington does. It, too, wants energy security, including the defense of its energy infrastructure as well as of the sea lanes in and around the Gulf. The kingdom wants attacks from Iran and its proxies to stop. And it wants the offensive and defensive military capabilities to defeat active threats to its national security.
All those objectives are in line with U.S. national interests—as detailed at length last July in the U.S.-Saudi “Jeddah Communique”—though Riyadh might conclude that such objectives fall in line with Beijing’s interests as well. What sets Washington apart, however, aside from its superior military technology, is that only the United States is an enemy of Saudi Arabia’s primary antagonist, the Islamic Republic of Iran. America may not be consistent in its use of military force, but it is the only great power that might ever use it against Tehran. China and Russia, by contrast, are both deepening their investments in Iran. While there’s no guarantee the United States will attack Iran, there is a guarantee that China and Russia never will. Rather than drive the U.S. military away with closer Chinese relations, MBS should consider what an upgraded defense arrangement with the United States could offer.
A recent report from Brad Bowman, Orde Kittrie, and Ryan Brobst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies outlines a range of options for such an enhancement with two notably topping the list: designating Saudi Arabia a major defense partner—a designation currently only given to India—and adding the kingdom to the list of major non-NATO allies. Both would be within the president’s authority to approve and would provide such tangible benefits as domestic defense production and forward-stationed arms depots.
Beyond security and defense guarantees, the kingdom also wants its Vision 2030 economic program to succeed. The American private sector is already lined up to take part in the investment bonanza, but the White House could bring the public sector along by establishing a Vision 2030 cabinet-level working group to provide technical assistance. Vision 2030 focuses on issues like housing, healthcare, education, sustainability, art, cultural diversity, and women’s empowerment—all of which the Biden administration should naturally support. The plan is intrinsically linked to Saudi Arabia’s continued progress on social liberalization and countering extremism. It should be a cornerstone of any strategic partnership.
Finally, Saudi officials say that in a world increasingly pressing for an oil-free future, the kingdom needs to diversify its energy production—including by tapping into Saudi uranium as part of a domestic nuclear-energy program. The crown prince, however, reportedly wants to enrich that uranium on Saudi soil rather than importing already-enriched nuclear fuel from outside the country—the latter being the gold standard of American nonproliferation policy adopted by other partners like the UAE and the former raising concerns that Saudi Arabia wants to build a nuclear-weapons capability in response to Iran’s.
Under U.S. law, transfers of nuclear technology require a written “123 agreement” detailing how such technology will be used. That agreement must be submitted to Congress for review. To the extent Saudi Arabia can find proven uranium deposits, the U.S. could consider support for joint exploration, mining, milling, and even exporting Saudi uranium. That would elevate Saudi stature as a uranium supplier on the world stage.
But any administration, Democratic or Republican, will be hard-pressed to approve the sale of nuclear technology without an express commitment to forego domestic enrichment—not least because other countries, including the UAE, would immediately demand their own enrichment programs. The Saudis, of course, have an easy retort to a Biden administration that still supports the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which legitimizes an Iranian enrichment program born out of illicit nuclear weapons-related activities. “How,” the Saudis would rightly ask, “can you approve domestic enrichment under the nuclear deal for an enemy like Iran, and not approve domestic enrichment for a strategic partner like us?”
For the majority of the U.S. Congress that opposed the Iran deal, the answer is easy: we absolutely reject Iran having any enrichment program. Even for those who support the deal, it amounts only to tolerating temporarily an illicit program. Riyadh shouldn’t want a nuclear program viewed as illicit, suspect, or merely tolerated—casting a shadow over the rest of Vision 2030 and potentially threatening investment.
Meanwhile, there is a decision point coming for the Biden administration this fall when a UN missile embargo on Iran is scheduled to expire unless the original parties to the nuclear deal “snap back” sanctions and restrictions on Iran. The snapback would not only keep the missile embargo and restore a conventional arms embargo that expired in 2020, it would also restore the international standard of zero enrichment for Iran. Trading the snapback for a Saudi commitment to forgo enrichment would be the most obvious way to cut what could otherwise become a Gordian knot preventing not only an upgraded U.S.-Saudi alliance but normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, too.
President Biden and his counterparts in Europe are afraid of triggering the snapback for fear Tehran would retaliate by enriching uranium at weapons-grade levels. That makes a compromise harder to reach, but not impossible. Earlier this year, John Hannah of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs claimed that MBS had another solution in mind: establishing an Arabian American Nuclear Company to oversee and safeguard enrichment, on the model of the Arabian American Oil Company, Aramco.
This sort of partnership sounds appealing at first. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine accelerated the U.S. government’s push to diversify its own nuclear-fuel supply. In 2021, America imported 14 percent of its nuclear fuel from Russia, and a bill banning such imports is moving through Congress. The prospects for Saudi Arabia to contribute to a Western-oriented nuclear fuel supply chain should be fully explored.
The Aramco model, however, has its limitations. Saudi Arabia eventually took control of Aramco; such a move in the nuclear case would eliminate U.S. oversight of Saudi enrichment. The White House would need to find an arrangement under permanent U.S. control, potentially in cooperation with a close European nuclear power, secured on a U.S. military base with only American or authorized European personnel. And even then, the plan would prove a hard sell to skeptics in Washington and Jerusalem, which has its own longstanding policy of denying its neighbors potential pathways to nuclear weapons. Far better would be to keep enrichment off the table and explore other avenues of advanced nuclear-energy research and development involving the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia that could establish the kingdom as a global leader in the civil nuclear arena.
Still, when reviewing the list of mutual needs in totality, one thing becomes clear: a relationship based on oil for security no longer makes sense for the United States and Saudi Arabia. Instead, this must be a security-for-security framework—diplomatic security, military security, economic security, energy security—and an alliance based not only on mutual respect and historic ties, but on the defense of vital interests. A closer relationship, rather than a separation, serves the interests of both countries. Anything that drives them apart will undermine those interests.
China, of course, will loom large over any such negotiation. The Saudi royal court has made expanding international partnerships a strategic priority. That’s understandable for a rising mid-sized power. Changes are taking place rapidly in the kingdom and interested investors are lining up from every corner of the earth. But Riyadh should also consider the difference between trade partnerships and security architectures.
China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner. But the United States remains heavily dependent on China for imports, too, and oftentimes relies on Saudi Arabia to sell more oil to China to prevent U.S. oil sanctions from throwing off the market. While the U.S. is taking steps to reduce its dependency on China when it comes to critical supply chains, unwinding all trade is not under discussion.
Although Washington does not seek conflict, it must take Beijing at its word and deed and prepare for potential clashes in the years ahead. That means the question to all allies of the United States—from Great Britain to Israel to Saudi Arabia—is what kind of ties with China can and cannot coexist in the context of the emerging great-power competition. In the case of U.S.-Saudi relations, given China’s close ties to Iran, defending against the transfer of sensitive technology and information not only protects U.S. national security but Saudi Arabis’s, too.
Washington’s goal vis-à-vis Beijing is not to limit Riyadh’s diplomatic relations or wide range of economic interests; it is to ensure that the United States can confidently open the keys to its own proverbial kingdom without letting China’s top military adversary inside the gates. This is a conversation that can be conducted thoughtfully, respectfully, and quietly—as it already has with a wide range of U.S. allies.
Two parties that wish to form an upgraded alliance based on mutual vital interests can conclude an agreement relatively quickly. The question is whether they want that or not. The Biden administration will need to persuade MBS that it recognizes its own missteps, and make clear that it believes that U.S. national security is stronger when it is allied with Saudi Arabia. At the same time, because power attracts power, and to make the American alliance more attractive than its Chinese rival, the United States will need to project a renewed self-confidence in its conduct in the region. For his part, MBS will need to persuade Washington that Saudi Arabia’s move toward China can be walked back, and that in the coming hour of decision that every such nation will face, Saudi Arabia’s trade and bilateral cooperation with China will not hamper a U.S.-Saudi security architecture. Both countries have much to gain, and perhaps even more to lose if they miss the opportunity. If they find a way forward, normalization with Israel won’t be a Saudi concession, but a prize.
*Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has served on Capitol Hill, on the U.S. National Security Council, as the chief of staff for Illinois’s governor, and as a Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer.

Israel-Saudi normalization requires concessions for Palestinians
Ben Caspit/Al Monitor/May 23, 2023
Diplomatic sources estimate that the chances of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepting Saudi normalization conditions, such as a settlement freeze or more Muslim autonomy on the Temple Mount, are close to nil.
TEL AVIV — US-mediated talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia on normalization are indeed ongoing, but Israel will have to pay a real price in terms of concessions to the Palestinians for such a move to take place, a senior Israeli official told Al-Monitor this week.
The same optimistic-yet-pessimistic assessment was also expressed on Sunday by a senior US official, who spoke with Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "The desire exists; the administration understands that an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia will serve the interests of all sides and also the interests of the Middle East. There were many difficulties between the Biden administration and the Saudi leadership, but at this moment it seems to me that the sides have overcome this and there is an aspiration to try to bring about this historic agreement that will change the face of the Middle East," the official said.At the same time, the official clarified that talks on such a move are in the initial stages, and while prospects exist of a breakthrough, they are not high and it is too soon to celebrate.
These Israeli and American statements came against the backdrop of recent reports by the Mako news site and The Jerusalem Post, among others, about accelerated contacts on this issue between the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke on the phone twice in recent weeks, with Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani facilitating the calls, according to an unnamed foreign diplomatic source cited by The Jerusalem Post. "Bahrain is the most positive element," a former senior Israeli diplomatic source told Al-Monitor. "They are a quiet but ultra-positive factor; they are connected to Saudi Arabia and have good relations with Israel; they have a US Fifth Fleet base so they are also connected to Washington; and there is nothing they want more than a square axis that starts in Washington, passes through Jerusalem, Riyadh and ends with them, on the verge of the Persian Gulf vis-a-vis Iran."
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told Al-Monitor on Saturday that he believes some kind of breakthrough in normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia could well occur by the end of the year.
Cohen also confirmed Al-Monitor's report that the Negev Forum is scheduled to hold its second annual conference in Morocco in about one month, with its previous participants — Israel, the United States, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt — and "other countries that are not yet parties to the Abraham Accords." The issue also came up in meetings held by Foreign Ministry Director General Ronen Levy in Washington last week.
Is a historic Israeli-Saudi breakthrough indeed feasible? Probably, but in the Middle East, everything that can go wrong usually does. The motivation is there with all sides having much to gain; the political will and ability to implement such a move is less certain. This question is more complicated in 2023 than ever before, given Netanyahu's mutual chokehold coalition with hard-line nationalist extremists.
Reports in The Times of Israel and elsewhere according to which former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro is being considered as an official administration point person on the Abraham Accords underscore the Biden administration’s determination to exhaust the Israeli-Saudi effort.
Shapiro, who served in Israel for six years under President Barack Obama, is considered one of the most effective American ambassadors of the current era. He maintained excellent relations with all Netanyahu government officials, although much of his time in office was characterized by tensions, and sometimes even open hostility between Obama and Netanyahu. Shapiro is a veteran Middle East hand who has held senior posts in Congress and the National Security Council, he knows the Israeli side well, and is also accepted and liked in Arab states.
"If there's anyone who can promote this event and the effort between Israel and Saudi Arabia, it's Shapiro," a senior Israeli diplomatic source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.
The prospects of a Shapiro appointment are bolstered by the surprise planned departure from office of US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides this summer.
"It will take at least six months for the administration to choose a new ambassador and go through the hearing and appointment procedures in Washington, at which time Shapiro can be a worthy replacement, especially if we are talking about historically important contacts, such as the effort to make peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia," said the senior Israeli diplomatic source.
However, prospects of a historic Israeli-Saudi agreement do not necessarily depend on personal appointments. This is a complex move that will require concessions from two of the three sides: The United States will have to provide the Saudis with the items on their shopping list, which include technology for nuclear power reactors, upgraded weapons and a defense alliance, while Israel will have to concede to such an upgrade of Saudi military capabilities and make significant concessions toward the Palestinians, as per the Arab world’s demands, most recently at this month’s Arab League summit.
"This will be a clear demand of Riyadh. They will not settle for symbolic gestures, only real moves, such as renewing the peace process, maybe even freezing settlements, real commitments on [Muslim control of] the Temple Mount, and more. It is not certain that Netanyahu is capable of delivering these goods,” said the senior Israeli diplomatic source.
This begs the ultimate question of whether Netanyahu could accept the Saudi demands given his position as head of the most right-wing coalition in Israeli history. Judging by statements and acts of Netanyahu’s coalition partners to increase tensions with the Palestinians, the answer is probably "no."
Can Netanyahu replace the coalition with political parties more amenable to concessions to the Saudis? Again, probably not. Centrist opposition leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid are firmly ensconced on the political fence.
"Gantz and Lapid don't believe a word Netanyahu says; Gantz has already tried it and got burned, he barely survived. … Lapid is more stubborn than Gantz," said an Israeli political source on condition of anonymity.
Still, if the US administration throws all its weight behind this initiative, and Israel deploys its lobby in Washington to help the Democrats push through congressional approval of the controversial Saudi demands, Gantz and Lapid will face a harsh dilemma. Should they join Netanyahu's coalition to replace the extremists and become signatories to the most important historic peace agreement since the 1979 treaty with Egypt? Will they refuse even in the face of such an unprecedented opportunity? Most political commentators believe they will, but that's just a guess.

Diplomacy With a Vision: The Jeddah Summit and Questions of Supremacy!
Yousef Al-Dayni/Asharq Al Awsat/May 23/2023
In the many recent discussions I’ve had with journalist friends from Europe and the US, or even some from the Arab world who have not visited Saudi Arabia before, our conversations have centered around understanding the secret of Saudi Arabia’s rise. These discussions were especially focused on the new approach the Kingdom has taken to its role as a leading player in diplomacy, the economy, and the management of issues in the region and the world.
The same question about the secret to this turnaround, which has left the country making decisions that diverge sharply from everything we had come to expect, repeats itself with every summit organized by Saudi Arabia since the visits of President Biden and the Chinese President. And it was posed again after the recent Jeddah Summit, which I see as culminating the successes of what I call “diplomacy with a vision.”
Initially embodied by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, it is now embodied by a large number of Saudi citizens. Their international successes and institutional efforts reflect this clear vision and a solid identity. While this vision does not claim or seek perfection, all objective and fair observers have noted that it reflects a profound preoccupation with competitiveness, the future, hard figures, and technology that goes beyond “doing one’s duty.”
In explaining the secret to this success, it is difficult to avoid an overview of what has happened over the past few years since the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman ascended the throne and the subsequent rise of the “vision” and the man behind it, Crown Prince Mohammed. He changed the equation through his embodiment of state authority, the state’s values, and its ideals.
According to Charles Herman, foreign policy takes after decision-makers. In this sense, it is not an abstraction but a dynamic process in which national interests and global circumstances are accounted for. In other words, foreign policy is a process through which national interests are turned into precise and clear objectives that are pursued by all state functionaries, who are inspired by the “vision” maker who sets the agenda. Though the major shifts underway in the country are obvious to local Saudis, who have witnessed them firsthand over the past few years, the scale and pace of the achievements defy logic.
The remarkable success achieved by Saudi Arabia has garnered the attention of foreign observers as well. Former skeptics are now trying to understand what is happening, especially since the country’s transition has become the subject of extensive research and expert analysis.
Indeed, these specialists have concluded that a new Saudi Arabia is being born, and it should be understood and assessed based on these changes.
Saudi foreign policy has a very rich history. Despite the complexity of the terrain it has been operating on, with its sharp twists and turns, Saudi Arabia managed to strike a strategic balance between the two vital foreign policy tracks. One was swiftly and rationally responding to crises - this was evident during the Gulf War, after 9/11, and then with the so-called “Arab Spring.”
The other was isolationism, in the diplomatic sense of the term that suggests neutrality, which the Kingdom pursued and complemented with a diplomatic engagement at other historical junctures when it was busy with domestic development. This approach translated into an emphasis on national security, preserving social and cultural consistency and cohesion, and preventing external developments from impacting the country to the greatest extent possible.
Today, Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy seems different. Everything - from what is said in statements, conferences, and meetings with foreign officials to the manner in which foreign policy is embodied by the decision maker, the Saudi Crown Prince, and his “vision” - has changed. He is an example of the charismatic leadership type identified by Max Weber, influencing his people by inspiring them.
Observers see this in his foreign policy. Two pillars of this policy, in my view, are sovereignty and the “virtue that is stability.” Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty is now clear for all to see. Even former skeptics recognize it, and it has become a source of pride domestically.
As for the “virtue that is stability,” it has clearly been the objective amid the massive challenges that have emerged over the past few years. The goal is for Saudi Arabia to render its pursuit of stability a template for replicating the achievements of the young Crown Prince and his “vision” that can be used by others in the Middle East. Indeed, cooperation in pursuing this vision could become a pillar of regional stability and mitigate the repercussions and threats of global political turbulence.
Most of my researcher friends who have not had the opportunity to visit the “new Saudi Arabia” are oblivious to an important matter regarding its “global image.” This image, manifested in media clips and the reports of visitors, fails to convey the magnitude of the country’s changes and the immense amount of work that has been put into making this success possible.
The confidence generated by this success has been reflected in foreign policy, economic programs, pivotal decisions that put an end to the squandering of public wealth and restructured the financial sector, and strategies for opening up to parallel markets, citizenship law, and redefining tourism, entertainment, health, and education in the Kingdom, which has invested in them heavily.
These robust domestic changes and the shift precipitated by this vision accommodate all youths. They believe in this vision and compete to further its agenda, which has transformed Saudi Arabia into the most pivotal player in the Middle East. While it does not claim that it is perfect, Saudi Arabia has always sought the kind of reasonable and balanced strategy demanded by its position, its pursuit of more success, and its awareness of the scale of the ongoing challenges facing a changing and turbulent world.

Why Journalists Have More Freedom Than Professors
Ross Douthat/The New York Times/May 23/2023
In recent months, there have been several instances of elite universities or their faculty members offering some kind of institutional pushback to a censorious progressivism. Prominent examples include Cornell’s refusal to create a trigger warning requirement demanded by the undergraduate student assembly, the formation of a Harvard faculty group defending academic freedom and Stanford’s official condemnation of the disruptions at a conservative judge’s law school talk.
These developments dovetail with the argument made earlier this year by Musa al-Gharbi at Columbia, a perceptive observer of the culture war, that the Great Awokening as a period of intense moral fervor may be winding down — that after “10 straight years of heightened unrest in knowledge-economy institutions and knowledge-economy hubs” we’re seeing a partial depoliticization, a diminishment of ideological policing and cancellation attempts. And they also dovetail, to some extent, with an essay this week from Matt Yglesias, the Vox co-founder turned Substacker, arguing that critics of wokeness risk creating a self-fulfilling prophecy if they constantly emphasize the obstacles to free speech and the professional penalties for heterodoxy, rather than simply encouraging journalists and academics to have courage and recognize that you can take a controversial position without being immediately professionally disappeared.
I agree with al-Gharbi that the recent intellectual trends within liberal institutions are somewhat more favorable to free debate, and I agree with Yglesias that intellectual courage is necessary and that the language of anti-wokeness sometimes encourages people to imagine a more Soviet situation than actually exists. But I also think that there are different ways that an era of “heightened unrest” and ideological revolution can give way to relative cultural peace.
In some situations, the revolution might be rolled back or resisted or collapse of its own accord. But in others, peace might arrive because the revolution feels confident in its path to ultimate victory and no longer feels an urgent need to make examples of its enemies; it can move comfortably to entrenchment, the institutional long march.
The latter scenario is suggested by the Canadian academic Eric Kaufmann’s response to the wokeness-has-peaked arguments. The current pendulum swing is real enough, he argues, but the ideological enforcers don’t need to win every near-term battle to win the institutional war:
... in the long run, liberalism is giving way to progressivism in elite spaces. The new cultural liberalism in the media reflects the views of senior staff members and is opposed by affinity groups and young employees. That’s important, because surveys consistently find that “woke” values are twice as prevalent among younger leftists than among older leftists. Over eight in 10 undergraduates at 150 leading US colleges say speakers who say B.L.M. is a hate group or transgenderism is a mental disorder should not be permitted to speak on campus. What’s more, seven in 10 think a professor who says something that students find offensive should be reported to their university. Young academics are twice as censorious as those over 50. These are the editorial teams and professoriate of tomorrow.
There’s a lot to say about this subject, but I want to focus on that last sentence, because I think it conflates two experiences that reality may substantially divide: the intellectual climate within media and journalism on the one hand and in academia on the other.
Both of these professions are subject to the pressures and ideas and incentives that gave rise to woke progressivism, and both have experienced various forms of internal tumult in recent years. But my sense is that their ideological paths have already diverged a bit and are likely to diverge further as the generational turnover Kaufmann describes continues.
To be clear, I’m discussing the media outlets that traditionally think of themselves as mainstream enterprises — ideologically neutral or center-left or small-l liberal, not explicitly political in their formal missions, with some room for diversity, even though their staffs vote mostly for Democrats. These organizations seem less likely to become as ideologically bunkered as similarly situated academic institutions because of several forces that limit the full entrenchment of progressive ideology.
First, the media is, by definition, an outward-facing, audience-driven enterprise, dependent on some kind of mass market for its viability. Mass audiences can make their own ideological demands and effectively capture some of the journalists who serve them; you can certainly see versions of this happening in explicitly right-wing media in the Trump era. But wokeness has often been more of an elite-driven ideology, with special influence in academia and professionalized activist organizations, and its rules and shibboleths tend to spread from inner circles outward, rather than being demanded by a mass public first.
Which means there will always be a large potential audience that doesn’t “get” the new ideological rules, or not yet, and for whom dissent or debate around the emergent order will seem much more normal and desirable than to true believers. And if normal debate seems poised to disappear from a given publication or broadcast channel, some readers, listeners and viewers will follow the argument elsewhere — to a rival, a start-up, a Joe Rogan-esque alternative or a platform like Substack, if necessary. And some of the commentators and journalists whom they follow, who choose to work in this terrain, may even end up much more richly rewarded than they were before.
This doesn’t create an outright veto on ideological uniformity, especially given the power of consolidation in, say, newspaper journalism, where this paper, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post all loom much larger relative to the diminished daily-newspaper competition than they did when I started out as a writer. But it still creates market-based checks on certain internal mechanisms of ideological enforcement. To take a television example, it’s not just up to internal opinion at Netflix or HBO whether to air a Dave Chappelle special or keep running Bill Maher’s show; the mass audience gets a pretty important vote as well.

Kata’ib Hezbollah a perennial rebel against the Iraqi government
Hassan Al-Mustafa/Arab News/May 23, 2023
An Iraqi court this month handed down a death sentence to a former policeman who was convicted of killing prominent academic Hisham Al-Hashimi in a shooting that took place in July 2020, near the victim’s house in the capital Baghdad. The crime was documented by Al-Hashimi’s home security camera.
The convict, Ahmed Ouaid Al-Kinani, a police officer employed by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, confessed to killing Al-Hashimi in July 2021 in video footage aired on an Iraqi television channel.
Al-Kinani’s affiliation with the Ministry of Interior came as a shock to many but, more importantly, he was a member of Kata’ib Hezbollah, one of the country’s most radical militias and a Popular Mobilization Units faction.
During the years of following up on my friend Al-Hashimi’s assassination file, I communicated with figures in the Iraqi government headed by former Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi and other sources inside Iraq, all of whom confirmed to me Kata’ib Hezbollah was behind the attack. The Iraqi government and the judiciary did not indicate officially, however, that the people concerned with the case knew this perfectly well.
This highlights the importance of the death sentence issued against Al-Kinani. It not only condemns the perpetrator, but it also raises awareness that he belongs to a faction that has security, political and economic relations with partners in the Coordination Framework, a coalition of parties that brought Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani to power last year.
Thus, although the convict has the right to appeal, the verdict condemns — albeit without naming the group — the political-criminal behavior of Kata’ib Hezbollah, which certainly wished that the case had been settled without reaching the death penalty.
Last Monday, clashes took place between a group of gunmen and Iraqi security forces in the Al-Buaitha neighborhood, southwest of Baghdad. Local media sources indicated that the gunmen were members of Kata’ib Hezbollah. According to Asharq Al-Awsat, the clashes were the result of the insistence of a militiaman on owning some agricultural land in the area. In some other accounts, the police officers raided an oil smuggling site controlled by Kata’ib Hezbollah.
The Iraqi Prime Minister’s Office indicated on Twitter that the security services attempted to remove trespassers from public property, which resulted in clashes that saw two people sustain minor injuries. It added that “the security forces immediately endeavored to take legal measures to deal with and arrest these people, and put them under investigation, while removing the unlawful trespassers,” without indicating whether or not the gunmen belonged to Kata’ib Hezbollah.
According to several sources, two events in the same month related to Kata’ib Hezbollah have prompted questions about the nature of the relationship between the group and the Iraqi government. There are concerns about whether it will adhere to the general guidelines that its allies in the Coordination Framework follow or if it will show, in its own way, its distinction from the other factions and that it will not abide by all of Al-Sudani’s policies.
Two events in the same month have prompted questions about the nature of the relationship between Kata’ib Hezbollah and the Iraqi government.
Since assuming the reins last October, Al-Sudani has sought to mitigate the presence of armed military factions outside the authority of the state. And, although he is aware of the difficulty of the task at hand, he is seeking, as a candidate of the Coordination Framework and through his good relations with the political leadership in Iran, as well as with Iraqi politicians and prominent party leaders such as Nouri Al-Maliki, Qais Al-Khazali and Hadi Al-Amiri, to convince his partners that there should be no overt military activity without the permission of the state.
He has obtained relative cooperation in this matter, which in itself is a success, from parties such as Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, the Badr Brigade and Harakat Hezbollah Al-Nujaba. Hence, we notice that Al-Sudani “follows a path familiar to Iraqi governments, where he does the minimum necessary to prevent the deterioration of relations with Washington while meeting the aspirations of his partners supported by Iran,” according to David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute.
Al-Sudani, who appears to be taking quiet steps internally and opening up diplomatically and economically toward the Arab Gulf states, was apparently able — albeit temporarily — to convince some of his allies of the importance of mitigating the anti-American rhetoric. The Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, which took place under Chinese auspices, may have been in favor of Al-Sudani’s policies, prompting some party leaders to change their tone toward Washington.
Researchers Hamdi Malik and Michael Knights, in a January article for the Washington Institute titled “Militia Spokesmen Reflect on Sudani Inviting U.S. Forces to Remain,” wrote that Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq was adopting practical thinking, while Kata’ib Hezbollah was “contorting its arguments to allow it to play along, albeit without explicitly accepting a US military presence.” They referred to a “pragmatism” in the behavior shown by Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, more so than by Kata’ib Hezbollah. However, the efforts of the latter focus mainly on extremist work and security operations, which makes political and intellectual changes difficult for it due to a predetermined doctrinal vision.
This analysis could indicate that Al-Sudani manages, with great discipline, the government’s relationships with the armed factions. To date, this has been achieved without implying the possibility of a broader pass by Kata’ib Hezbollah. However, its abuses could accumulate and there may be repercussions from the implementation of the death sentence of Al-Kinani, if the final judgment is approved and applied. In that moment, it will become apparent to what degree the allies of Al-Sudani will stand by the rule of law and the success of the prime minister’s experiment with regards to the influence of the militias.
• Hassan Al-Mustafa is a Saudi writer and researcher interested in Islamic movements, the development of religious discourse and the relationship between the Gulf Cooperation Council states and Iran.
Twitter: @Halmustafa

Improved regional ties can help soothe Iran’s demographic crisis
Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami/Arab News/May 23, 2023
Official figures indicate that Iranian society is proceeding quickly toward becoming an aging society. As of March 2022, Iran’s population growth barely reached 0.6 percent. According to Mohammed Tabatabai, health affairs officer of Iran University of Medical Sciences, on May 13, 2023, the fertility rate dropped to 1.6 percent. The danger lies in the fact that population growth is expected to decline in the coming years.
If the current downward trend of fertility growth continues unabated, Iran’s population will fall to 82 million people by 2051, according to the Representative Concentration Pathways scenario. By 2060, Iran’s population will reach 77.6 million, and it will be 42 million by 2100. It is also expected that elders will make up 30 percent of the population by 2051. This was reiterated by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a statement, when he said: “The people today are becoming increasingly aging. This is bad and horrible news.” He added: “If this happens, the country will have no means to save itself.” Thus, he urged the Iranian government to find a solution to the problem of an aging society and work to double the country’s population.
Iran’s regime has reviewed its policy toward the population pyramid that has become increasingly marked by old age. The possibility that Iran’s population may decline in the future, according to the regime, will affect Iran’s regional standing and role, given that population is one of the elements of its national strength and an instrumental element in enhancing its regional clout, especially given the demographic competition with its neighbors. Figures show that population and fertility growth rates in these countries are higher than in Iran and the latter feels that this shift will endanger its existence in the future. Iran is situated in an extensively Sunni neighborhood, with loyalist ethnic groups also having a foothold. This means that population growth is not merely an internal issue, but one that also has geopolitical dimensions.
However, the disparity in population growth rates among the various ethnic and sectarian factions inside Iran deepens the concerns of Iran’s Shiite Persian population. This is because the population growth rates among Shiites are far lower than those of Sunnis, which poses a threat to the Shiites’ control over power in the future. Moreover, they threaten the existence of Iran as a Shiite state, as well as the Velayat-e Faqih political project, whose bedrock is the sectarian dimension. It is worth noting that official figures show that the scale is tipped in favor of Sunnis, who number between 20 and 25 million, including 1 million or more in Tehran alone.
The problem is that the Iranian regime itself is to blame for this demographic dilemma. Over the past four decades, the regime has adopted a volatile and populist population policy; a policy that has lacked any comprehensive strategic vision. It is a confused and inconsistent policy. It is a variety of time-dictated authoritative precautions, measures and decisions in response to certain circumstances and based on the interests of the ruling elite. The latter, at times, viewed the issue of population growth as one of the manifestations of the state’s strength and, at others, viewed it as a burden rather than an asset and a source of more crises for Iran. The Iranian elite is heedless of the fact that these crises are not a result of a large population, but rather they are an outcome of the regime’s ineffective policies.
Despite the supreme leader’s repeated pleas, official figures show a reduction in the willingness of Iranians to have children
Therefore, despite the regime intensifying its efforts to resolve the population crisis, it has found no response. And despite the supreme leader’s repeated pleas, official figures show a reduction in the willingness of Iranians to have children. This is because drastic changes in population policy have harmed the regime and its supreme leadership’s credibility, as well as its ideals, values and slogans. In other words, the regime’s population policy has always shifted based on the regime’s and senior officials’ interests and desires.
When the regime was in dire need of an increase in population growth, its leadership promoted a large population as a heavenly bounty and favor. Conversely, when the regime was hit with economic and developmental problems, it considered birth control to be a national, social and religious duty. When these programs resulted in an unbalanced drop in population growth and fertility rates — without a strategy to maintain balanced rates that preserve the society’s demographic balance in the long term, meaning Iran’s regional ambitions faced a future demographic threat — their mistake was recognized and the West was blamed for targeting Iran.
This policy has accordingly been altered yet again. This confused policy has surely eroded people’s trust in the regime, especially given the government’s failures on the political, economic and social fronts during the last four decades. Because of these failures, living conditions have deteriorated, leaving the youth in despair.
To conclude, it could be said that Iran has failed to strike a balance between population growth and economic development due to the regime’s disorganized population plans. This failure is also linked to Iran’s pursuance of a bellicose and expansionist foreign policy, which has led the country to come under pressures and extensive isolation. Additionally, this problem is also caused by consecutive Iranian governments’ failure to adopt an economic policy that is an alternative to the populist resistance economy policy. As a result, economic growth results have remained low, with the country failing to achieve a good level of governance or increase investments, thereby not elevating living standards or improving living conditions, as is the case with the Gulf states.
The only way for Iran to get out of its current demographic dilemma is to push up the wheel of economic development at home. But this will not be achieved without Iran settling its regional and global disputes. On the ground, there is a timely opportunity for Iran to do this after restoring ties with Saudi Arabia, increasing the likelihood of it ending its regional and global isolation and boosting ties with the region’s countries — including the badly needed economic relations.
• Dr. Mohammed Al-Sulami is president of the International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah). Twitter: @mohalsulami