Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 29-30/2023
Western countries are watching with a dead conscious a new massacre committed against the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh/Elias Bejjani/September30, 2023
Release from Amer Fakhoury Foundation
Joint security force occupies Lebanon refugee camp
Report: Doha initiative gains momentum after Saudi-French talks
Syrians in Lebanon ‘economically displaced,’ not ‘refugees’: Justice minister
Gunmen vacate Ain el-Helweh schools as joint force deploys
Report: US won't renew financial aid plan for Lebanese Army, ISF
ISF stops bus carrying Syrian migrants in Hamat
US embassy shooter deported by Poland, shot at General Security 3 times
Lebanese children 'miss out' on education as crisis takes toll
Unveiling the Zod Cave: A masterpiece of nature for sale
Moawad meets US Ambassador Shea, urges presidential election
Mansouri: The central bank cannot replace entire state to solve Lebanon’s crisis
OEIL: Absence of accountability led to further collapse in all sectors of Lebanese state
Uniting worlds through words: Amin Maalouf elected new perpetual secretary of French Academy
Government departments face power cut-off over unpaid bills

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 29-30/2023
The fall of 'Artsakh' stuns Armenians in Lebanon and around the world
Red Cross requests 20 mln euros to meet growing needs in Armenia
Iran-backed Houthi Strike in Saudi Arabia Kills Three
Exclusive-US-Saudi defence pact tied to Israel deal, Palestinian demands put aside
Syrian President Al-Assad says war in Syria is not over
Leaders of EU's Mediterranean nations huddle in Malta to discuss migration
Iran protesters mark anniversary of bloody crackdown in southeast
Putin has been ignoring his generals and directing the war himself, analysts say — and has been surprisingly cautious
Russia is scaling back its use of the feared Ka-52 attack helicopter after Ukraine got good at taking them out: ISW
Russia hosts the Taliban for talks on regional threats and says it will keep funding Afghanistan
Putin orders former Wagner commander to take charge of 'volunteer units' in Ukraine
Ukrainian civilians are turning busted and salvaged vehicles into mobile rocket launchers with scavenged military hardware
Israeli troops kill Hamas man who army says attacked post in West Bank
Germany, Israel sign agreement for Berlin to buy US-Israeli missile defense system
UAE, Egypt agree to currency swap deal as Cairo's economy struggles
Dozens dead after blast in southwestern Pakistan at a rally celebrating birthday of Islam's prophet
US quietly acknowledges Iran satellite successfully reached orbit
Cardin eyes changes on Egypt, Turkey as he takes powerful Senate foreign post

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 29-30/2023
US and Europe put the screws to Iran’s drone program - analysis/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/September 29/2023
US quietly acknowledges Iran satellite successfully reached orbit as tensions remain high/Jon Gambrell/AP/September 29, 2023
The Monetary Value of Relaxed Oil Sanctions Enforcement by the Biden Administration/Saeed Ghasseminejad/FDD-Insight/September 29, 2023
How US taxpayer dollars line the pockets of Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad/David Adesnik/ New York Post/September 29, 2023
The two sides of Iran’s diplomacy/Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/September 29, 2023
Due diligence is a must as global conflict threatens our region/Khalaf Ahmad Al-Habtoor/Arab News/September 29, 2023

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on September 29-30/2023
Western countries are watching with a dead conscious a new massacre committed against the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh
Elias Bejjani/September30, 2023
What a disgrace, and hypocrisy is unfolding.
The Western countries that laud civilization, Freedom, human right, democracy and take pride in raising the banners of the international covenant of human rights, have lost everything that is humanity, conscience, self respect, credibility and morals.
These countries, due to their secularism, selfishness, atheism, ingratitude, and regression to the original sinful human nature, have become completely estranged from all their values, history, national and humanitarian obligations and commitments.
Yes, unfortunately, all these countries, cloaked satanic competition, corrupt and secularism, have sunk up to their ears in everything that sadistic and commercial priorities.  They have abandoned their previous conception and assessment of everything that is human, faith-filled  and of eternal values.
These countries, led by Russia are stupidly, dead in their conscience, faith, and hope, are watching a new massacre of a horrific ethnic cleansing committed by Azerbaijan and its ally, Turkey, against the Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh
The Armenian people in Nagorno-Karabakh are killed, abused, tortured, displaced from the land of their ancestors, uprooted from their history roots by force, and ethnically cleansed.
Meanwhile Russia in particular, and the countries of the West in general, without a single exception, are not lifting a finger, but rather blessing the massacre, allying themselves with its perpetrators, and cheering for them.
What a shame, these satanic secular regimes are worshiping earthly riches, abandoning all values, principles, human rights and the Armenians' destiny of freedom.
What is sad and painful at the same time, is that the Armenian people, whom the Turkish Ottoman Empire exposed to the most horrific crime in history between the years 1914-1915, have once again been left prey to the predatory human monsters represented by Azerbaijan's dictator Ilham Aliyevnt, and his Islamic fundamentalist Turkish ally, President Erdogan, who are both drowning in the mire of hatred, fanaticism, historical hatred and deeply rooted sickening grudges.
What is totally condemned is this ungrateful West has allowed the Azerbaijan’s corrupt, blustering dictator Ilham Aliyev, and his ally, the traitorous and hateful Turkish, President Erdogan, to repeat the brutal massacres committed by their Ottoman ancestors against the Armenian people.
In conclusion, the West has blessed Aliyev's - Erdogan's brutality, and their thirst to shed Armenian blood, despite the fact that Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, that is supposed to protect peace, freedoms and democracy.
It remains that the West's satanic and inhumane shameful silence in regards to the massacres  perpetrated against the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is fully denounced and condemned
Background
The Armenian Genocide, Armenian Massacres, or Armenian Holocaust (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանութիւն) (Turkish: Ermeni Soykırımı) was the systematic mass killing and expulsion of Armenians that took place in the territories of the Ottoman Empire by the government of the Society of Union and Progress during World War I. Although separate massacres have been committed against Armenians since the middle of the year 1914 AD, it is agreed that the date of the beginning of the genocide is April 24, 1915 AD, which is the day on which the Ottoman authorities gathered hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and notables, arrested them, and deported them from Constantinople (Istanbul today) to the province of Ankara, where they were killed. Most of them died.

Release from Amer Fakhoury Foundation
September 29/2023
For the past few months now we have been working with the Human Rights Foundation on human rights abuse occurring in Lebanon and recently we had the privilege of attending the Oslo Freedom Forum in New York. The event, organized by the Human Rights Foundation, was a vibrant mix of theater talks and performances. Two powerful narratives that profoundly impacted us were shared by Sanaa Seif and Nazanin Boniadi. Seif, a British-Egyptian filmmaker and political activist, spoke candidly about her experiences of unjust imprisonment under the Sisi regime, sharing the heart-wrenching story of her attempts to deliver a letter to her imprisoned brother. Boniadi, an Iranian-born actress and activist, used her platform to shed light on the harrowing injustices faced by Iranian youth, women, and prisoners of conscience. Her long-standing partnership with Amnesty International and tireless advocacy for disenfranchised populations across the world reminded us of the dire need for continued activism in this area. We left the event stirred by the courage and resilience of these freedom fighters, and more committed than ever to our mission to contribute to a more free, open, and peaceful world. Thank you for your work Human Rights Foundation!

Joint security force occupies Lebanon refugee camp
Arab News/September 29/2023
BEIRUT: A Palestinian joint security force on Friday took control of a school complex in Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp after gunmen who had occupied the site since late July withdrew.The deployment was part of the second phase of a cease-fire agreement between the Fatah movement and extremist groups in mid-September. Clashes between the rival Lebanese factions in late July left more than 30 people dead. The force entered the UNRWA school complex, which became a battleground between the rival groups, as gunmen vacated the site.
The deployment raises hopes that the truce will hold and further ease tensions inside Ain Al-Hilweh, the largest of 12 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. More than 75,000 refugees, including Palestinians who fled the Yarmouk camp in Syria, are housed in Ain Al-Hilweh in southern Lebanon.
The joint force consists of officers and military personnel from various Palestinian factions in the camp, including Hamas. However, the security force and UNRWA now face a major clean-up, with the extent of damage becoming evident after the militants’ withdrawal from the school complex.
Unexploded grenades were found on the site and empty bullet casings littered the school playgrounds. Rockets used in the clashes have left gaping holes in school walls. The joint security force was divided into two groups. One entered the schools complex from the Al-Barakasat area, controlled by the Fatah movement, while the other entered from the Al-Tawarek-Al-Taameer area, controlled by the extremist groups, most prominently Al-Shabab Al-Muslim. Representatives of the Palestinian Joint Action Committee in the Sidon area accompanied the force. Maj. Gen. Mahmoud Al-Ajouri, who was commanding the force, gave the signal for the deployment, while Maj. Gen. Subhi Abu Arab, Palestinian national security commander, accompanied the operation. UNRWA, which is monitoring the cease-fire, postponed the start of the new academic year in the Ain Al-Hilweh camp until further notice.
Schools in the rest of the region will resume teaching on Oct. 2. More than 11,000 students attend schools in the camp, with the damaged school complex providing education to 5,900 students. Dorothee Klaus, director of UNRWA affairs in Lebanon, said the safety of schools in the vicinity of Ain Al-Hilweh “is our top priority, and we are striving in every possible way to achieve that as soon as conditions permit.”The agency is working to find alternatives so that children from the camp and surrounding areas can return to school as soon as possible, she said. A preparatory meeting ahead of Friday’s deployment took place in the Sidon office of Sheikh Maher Hammoud, president of the International Union of Resistance Scholars, who is believed to be close to Hezbollah. Representatives of Hamas and the Amal movement, an ally of Hezbollah, also attended. Discussions took place on the possible handing over of eight suspects wanted for the assassination of Fatah leader Mohammed Al-Armoushi. Representatives of Hamas and the Amal movement, an ally of Hezbollah, also attended. As part of the cease-fire deal, the joint security force will prepare the way for those displaced by the fighting to return to their homes. The final phase of the agreement involves the handover of wanted suspects. A source dismissed rumors on social media on Thursday night that some of the wanted suspects had left the camp. “There is an agreement that has been reached and it is fundamental, and the essential point is handing over wanted people,” the source said.
Hamas representative Ahmed Abdel Hadi described Friday’s deployment as “a step in the right direction,” adding that it stemmed from Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri’s initiatives to end the clashes. Berri joined Palestine Liberation Organization leader Azzam Al-Ahmad and Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk in pushing for a cease-fire.

Report: Doha initiative gains momentum after Saudi-French talks
Naharnet/September 29, 2023
The efforts of Qatari envoy Abou Fahad Jassem Al-Thani gained momentum after the Saudi meetings with French Special Presidential Envoy for Lebanon Jean-Yves Le Drian, a media report said. “The Qatari envoy will have a second round of meetings with the political parties who have influence in the presidential file, but so far he has failed to find a common denominator between the Free Patriotic Movement and the Lebanese Forces and has failed to unite them over one of the three names that he has proposed,” al-Jadeed TV quoted unnamed sources as saying. Al-Akhbar newspaper meanwhile reported that the Saudi side expressed relief in the meeting with Le Drian that “Paris has endorsed the Saudi viewpoint regarding the Lebanese crisis as to electing a president who does not belong to any side.”“The conferees stressed that the page has been turned on the previous French initiative and that consensual formats will be proposed in coordination with the five nations and based on the results of the first five-nation meeting in Paris and the second meeting in Doha,” the daily quoted sources as saying. “The Riyadh meeting (between Le Drian and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan) provided a new atmosphere and overcame the differences that emerged in the latest New York meeting,” the sources added. The sources also said that “Paris is not happy with the idea that Qatar replace it as a mediator” and that “the French want Saudi Arabia’s cover to continue the mission in coordination with the five nations, seeing as France wants to preserve its role in the region through Lebanon.”

Syrians in Lebanon ‘economically displaced,’ not ‘refugees’: Justice minister
Arab News/September 29, 2023
ROME: Lebanese Justice Minister Henry Khoury told his Italian counterpart Carlo Nordio that Syrians fleeing to his country should no longer be considered as “refugees” but as “economically displaced.”During a meeting in Rome to discuss enhancing judicial cooperation, Khoury said: “The massive influx of Syrians to Lebanon is an issue that will have negative impacts on Europe. For them, Lebanon is only a temporary destination, while their actual goal is to reach Europe.”Since 2011, more than a million Syrians have taken refuge in Lebanon, whose population is just under 4 million people.
Lebanon never signed the Geneva Convention on refugees, and does not recognize the refugee status of Palestinians or Syrians who are in the country. Khoury told Nordio that the bad conditions in Lebanese prisons are caused by the “transgressions” of displaced Syrians “that raise the crime rate and the number of prisoners in the country.”He added: “The prison infrastructure in Lebanon cannot withstand the overcrowding resulting from the high number of prisoners.”Nordio pledged “every possible cooperation though specific programs to help the judicial system in Lebanon in order to perform its regular activities.”

Gunmen vacate Ain el-Helweh schools as joint force deploys
Naharnet/September 29, 2023
Gunmen withdrew Friday from the schools they were occupying in the Ain el-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp, as a joint Palestinian force started deploying in the camp’s al-Taamir area. The National News Agency said a “positive atmosphere” was engulfing the deployment process and that the Palestinian force was supposed to enter into the camp’s schools. The schools had been occupied during days of deadly fighting between hardline Islamist groups and the mainstream Fatah Movement. The occupation forced the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, to postpone the start of the school year.
“More than 11,000 Palestine Refugees children in South Lebanon will not be able to join their peers at the beginning of the school year on 2 October,” an UNRWA statement said. “UNRWA was forced to take this decision given all our eight schools inside the camp have been taken over by armed groups. They have sustained significant destruction and damage. Other schools – outside the camp- are currently being used by displaced families,” said Dorothée Klaus, Director of UNRWA Affairs in Lebanon. At least 4,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in Ain el-Helweh. Many sought refuge in UNRWA facilities while others are staying with relatives and friends. Meanwhile, UNRWA has been providing safe spaces and some education material for children and activities so they can have some learning and be able to reconnect with their childhood.

Report: US won't renew financial aid plan for Lebanese Army, ISF
Naharnet/September 29, 2023
A U.S. plan providing monthly financial aid to the personnel of the Lebanese Army and the Internal Security Forces will not be renewed when its six-month period expires in November, a U.S. Embassy source has been quoted as saying. “The plan will not be renewed due to the failure to approve reforms and elect a president,” media reports quoted the source as saying. French President Emmanuel Macron's special envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian warned Wednesday that France and its allies were losing patience after almost a year of deadlock and are now reviewing their financial aid. Lebanon has been without a president for almost a year after ex-head of state Michel Aoun's mandate expired, with its feuding factions repeatedly failing in parliament to elect a new leader as an unprecedented economic crisis escalates in the multi-confessional former French colony. Faced with what he described as a "denial of reality" from Lebanese officials, France and its allies the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt, are losing patience and could review their financial support for Lebanon, Le Drian said.

ISF stops bus carrying Syrian migrants in Hamat
Naharnet/September 29, 2023
A bus carrying illegal Syrian migrants has been stopped by security forces in the coastal area of Hamat. “A patrol from the Intelligence Branch (of the Internal Security Forces) managed at 1am to stop a bus driven by a Lebanese national and carrying 12 Syrians who had entered Lebanon illegally via an illegal border crossing in Wadi Khaled,” the state-run National News Agency said. “They were arrested in Hamat on the seaside road leading to Beirut and were handed over to the Batroun police station,” NNA added.

US embassy shooter deported by Poland, shot at General Security 3 times
Associated Press/September 29, 2023
The Internal Security Forces has confirmed that a food delivery driver who opened fire outside the U.S. Embassy in Beirut last week allegedly did so because of a personal grudge against the guards at the compound. The ISF said they had arrested the suspected shooter on Monday, identifying him only by his initials M.K. and that he later confessed to the shooting. They cited an alleged confession by him saying he was upset as the guards had insulted him two months earlier, when he came to deliver an order. The Associated Press could not independently verify that claim. No one was hurt in the shooting in Beirut's northeastern Christian suburb of Aukar, which left at least five bullet holes in the wall next to the embassy entrance. The ISF said that during the arrest, security forces confiscated an AK-47, a knife and the shooter's food delivery motorcycle. The rifle was was allegedly hidden in a food delivery bag and the shooter changed his route to reach the U.S. Embassy compound to avoid Lebanese army checkpoints on the main road. According to the ISF statement, the man visited Poland in 2021 in a bid to obtain asylum there. “During his presence these, a dispute erupted between him and a Polish officer, who beat him up and insulted him, before he was deported to Lebanon.”“Upon his return, he requested a new passport from the General Directorate of General Security, and after it refrained from granting him a passport according to his testimony, he opened fire on the building of the General Directorate of General Security in Adliyeh three times -- on Nov. 5, 2022, Nov. 28, 2022 and Dec. 9, 2022,” the statement said. Lebanon has a long history of attacks against Americans. The deadliest one took place in October 1983, when a suicide truck bomber drove into a four-story building, killing 241 American service members at the U.S. Marine barracks at the Beirut airport. On April 18, 1983, a bombing attack on the U.S. Embassy killed 63 people, including at least 17 Americans. Top CIA officials were among those who died. U.S. officials blamed the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. After that attack, the embassy was moved from central Beirut to Aukar. A year later, on Sept. 20, 1984, a suicide bomber struck the embassy compound in Awkar, killing himself and 14 others, prompting the embassy to close. The United States withdrew all diplomats from Beirut in September 1989 and did not reopen its embassy until 1991. In 2008, an explosion targeted a U.S. Embassy vehicle in northern Beirut, killing at least three Lebanese who happened to be near the car and wounding its Lebanese driver. An American passerby was also wounded. In 1976, U.S. Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr. and an aide, Robert O. Waring, were abducted and killed in Beirut. In 1984, William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was abducted and killed by the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad group.

Lebanese children 'miss out' on education as crisis takes toll
Associated Press/September 29, 2023
Rana Hariri doesn't know when she'll be able to send her children back to school, as Lebanon's grinding economic crisis thrusts the fate of public education into uncertainty. Lack of funding for the school system has precipitated repeated teachers' strikes and school closures, resulting in children being increasingly pulled out of the formal learning system, and in some cases being forced to work. Hariri, 51, says her nine-year-old daughter Aya "repeatedly asks me: 'When will I go back to school?' But I do not know what to tell her." Lebanon's public institutions have been crumbling since the economy collapsed in late 2019, pushing most of the population into poverty and dealing a heavy blow to state schools. Public sector workers, including teachers, have repeatedly gone on strike as the value of their salaries crashed after the Lebanese pound lost more than 98 percent of its worth against the dollar. "My children stayed at home for three months last year due to the strikes," said Hariri. She had hopes that her 14-year-old daughter Menna would someday become a doctor. But now, "I just hope she'll be able to go to school in the first place," she said, sitting at her friend's house surrounded by her four children.
"For the past four years, teachers have failed to secure their rights, while our children miss out on basic education." Public sector teachers earn the equivalent of $150 to $300 per month, while the education ministry has sounded the alarm over lack of funding.
Hariri took her anger to the streets, protesting alongside teachers who demanded better wages at a sit-in in September. The school year is due to begin in early October, but amid uncertainty over the start date, her two sons, aged 13 and 17, have taken up work with their father, a plumber. Her daughters have meanwhile been forced to wait at home. "I want them to have a degree... but this country is killing their future," she said with a sigh.
Public education 'in danger'
Since 2019, children have "experienced devastating disruption to their education", according to the United Nations' children's agency. The disruptions were attributed to the economic crisis, the coronavirus epidemic, a deadly 2020 blast that rocked Beirut's port and strikes that forced school closures.
"A growing number of families" can no longer afford "the cost of education including transport to school, food, textbooks, stationery, and clothes", UNICEF Lebanon said. At least 15 percent of households have pulled their children out of schools, UNICEF found in a June report, up from 10 percent a year ago. And one in 10 families have been forced to send children, sometimes as young as six years old, to work to make ends meet, the report said. "Being out of school exposes children... to violence,... poverty," and increases risks of child marriage in girls, said Atif Rafique, chief of education at UNICEF Lebanon. Education Minister Abbas Halabi has repeatedly complained of funding problems, warning in September that "public education is in danger". "The most urgent problem today is financial," he said, adding that his ministry was still working on securing funding for the upcoming school year. The education ministry mostly relies on government credit lines and donor funding, mainly from the World Bank and the U.N., to educate the more than 260,000 Lebanese pupils and over 152,000 Syrians enrolled in public schools. But Halabi said donors had informed him they could not afford to give more money to public school employees.
'Catastrophic'
According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, the education ministry has slashed the number of teaching days from 180 in 2016 to about 60 in the past two years, "citing financial constraints". Year after year, the ministry has had "no plan" to secure the funds needed for schools to remain open without interruption, said Ramzi Kaiss, HRW's Lebanon researcher. "If we're going to have a fifth year that is lost or interrupted, it's going to be catastrophic," he told AFP. But despite the setbacks, more pupils have poured into Lebanon's public schools as families can no longer afford private education.
Homemaker Farah Koubar, 35, said she fears she one day won't even be able to afford sending her three young children to public school. "I'm afraid they will miss out on their education," she told AFP from her small home in Beirut. "Every year life becomes more difficult," she said, holding back tears as she recalled how she has had to ask acquaintances for financial help to secure her family's survival. "Everything is expensive, food, water, gasoline -- even bread."

Unveiling the Zod Cave: A masterpiece of nature for sale
LBCI/September 29, 2023
"For sale... and you can transform it into anything you want, from a luxurious residence to a unique work of art... the possibilities are endless." This advertisement is not about a piece of land or a building for sale. It is an advertisement for the sale of one of the most beautiful, massive, and significant caves that nature has carved in Lebanon, according to French experts who visited the cave in 2001. A natural wonder offered for sale like any commodity. It is the 'Zod Cave' in Bqaa Safrin in Danniyeh. The cave was formed over thousands of years as groundwater froze in the form of limestone. It grows one centimeter every hundred years. The area of this cave is 2525 square meters and consists of three underground floors, with a spring of drinking water licensed by a ministerial decree. The Zod Cave was discovered in 1997 on privately owned land belonging to the Zod family during excavation work carried out by one of the town's residents to build a water reservoir. As a result, it is now registered as private property. The cave is currently abandoned and not yet qualified to receive visitors. It requires a significant amount of investment for rehabilitation, which prompted the landowners to put it up for sale. Where does the government's responsibility lie with such a natural treasure offered for sale? The Environment Ministry explained that the matter falls under the Ministries of Culture and Tourism jurisdiction. Culture Ministry asserted that its role begins after the Ministry of Tourism acquires and prepares such sites. At that point, the Culture Ministry manages them as it does with all tourist sites in Lebanon.Sources from the Tourism Ministry clarified to LBCI that according to the law, the state has the right to acquire any discovery, even if it is on private land with national heritage and touristic importance. However, the ministry also pointed out that it lacks the funds to do so. Therefore, the focus is on finding an investor who can manage the tourist site under state supervision, especially since Lebanon has many similar caves to the Zod Cave. While waiting for an investor, the cave is up for sale. What if it is sold to someone who does not understand its natural value and heritage? What if such a heritage is destroyed, which could bring significant money into Lebanon and boost tourism in the region? The Zod Cave is in danger, and it is the responsibility of the state to act as the savior this time, unlike any other time, and do so quickly."

Moawad meets US Ambassador Shea, urges presidential election
LBCI/September 29, 2023
The head of the Independence Movement, Deputy Michel Moawad, met on Friday with the US Ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, whereby he emphasized the "necessity of electing a new president, away from the logic of dominance and obstruction, a president capable of restoring governance to the constitution, sovereignty to the state, and regularity to institutions. He also underlined the need for "implementing international decisions, demarcating borders, lifting Lebanon's isolation, and reclaiming its leading role in the Arab and international arena, and undertaking the structural reforms required to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund that safeguards depositors' rights and enhances economic growth." During their meeting, Moawad stressed the "need to avoid two extremes in this sensitive issue: first, the racist discourse against refugees, and second, leaving things as they are, which constitutes a significant burden on the economy and a serious threat to Lebanese security." Additionally, Moawad urged the Lebanese government to "take the necessary steps and decisions to address this vital issue practically and effectively instead of hiding behind empty populist slogans." Moreover, he urged the international community "to assume responsibilities and adopt different approaches to prevent Lebanon from sinking under the inevitable catastrophe of displacement, for which everyone will pay the price."They then discussed the development and social projects the Rene Moawad Foundation implemented in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other international donor organizations. Furthermore, they tackled ways to enhance and develop this partnership to stand by the Lebanese people in the face of the unprecedented economic and social collapse.

Mansouri: The central bank cannot replace entire state to solve Lebanon’s crisis
LBCI/September 29, 2023
Acting Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, Wassim Mansouri, spoke about the conditions of banks and the haircut. He clarified that "the Central Bank of Lebanon has today Circular 158, which is practically effective, and he issued a clarification about this circular recently to explain the mechanism of withdrawals for depositors." He noted that this circular, like all circulars, is not ideal, and there are certainly criticisms from various sides, based on the reviews he has received. Mansouri’s comments were made after meeting with Joseph al-Kosseifi, the head of the Lebanese Press Editors Syndicate, and members of the syndicate's council, whereby he noted that "the central bank cannot replace the entire state to solve a crisis the size of the financial crisis Lebanon is going through. The World Bank says that the crisis in Lebanon has not been witnessed by the world in 150 years.”

OEIL: Absence of accountability led to further collapse in all sectors of Lebanese state
LBCI/September 29, 2023
The European Observatory for Integrity in Lebanon said on Friday that the absence of accountability has led to further collapse in all sectors of the Lebanese state, causing complete paralysis in the institutions. It considered that "what happened after the end of the term of the governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon, Riad Salameh, is suspicious. The man who truly deserves two arrest warrants, and during his days, the major collapse occurred, billions were transferred abroad, and he is accused of money laundering, illegal enrichment, forgery, and using counterfeit, and everyone, including the judiciary and the Lebanese media, seems to have forgotten about it as if it were a passed stage." The Observatory questioned, "Is it reasonable to close the chapter of 30 years in the Central Bank of Lebanon without knowing what happened there?"
It emphasized that "it is the right of the Lebanese to know what led them to this point and who stole the earnings of their lives," stating, "It is not permissible to continue in this manner in the Lebanese state, closing files under the pretext of forgiving the past. Where is the investigation into the Beirut port explosion? What has the investigation into the case of Riad Salameh concluded? What about the forensic audit?"It stressed that "the Lebanese judiciary has a role that it must play for the benefit of the Lebanese people, but it does not seem, until now, that it is fulfilling it."

Uniting worlds through words: Amin Maalouf elected new perpetual secretary of French Academy
LBCI/September 29, 2023
For the Lebanese-French writer Amin Maalouf to become the first non-French origin to assume the position of Permanent Secretary of the French Academy is extraordinary news for the small country he hails from. However, the celebration of Amin Maalouf was not limited to the Lebanese or the French. Both the Arab and Western worlds came together to give congratulations. Why? Because it reaffirms that thought, culture, and literature once again prove that they have no boundaries. The books "The Rock of Tanios" and "Leo Africanus," which left an indelible mark on the memory of Saudi Entertainment Authority Chairman Turki Al Al-Sheikh, prompted him to write a congratulatory message not only to the Lebanese but to all Arabs, describing Amin Maalouf as a bridge between the greatest of cultures. The French Minister of Culture of Lebanese origin, Rima Abdul-Malak, also read these same books congratulating the Lebanese and French on Amin Maalouf's election. Amin Maalouf's writings on the Crusades, as seen by the Arab world, have remained consistent across different worlds. Maalouf has retained his unique voice through his pen and writings, which have garnered admiration from a wide array of individuals, including French Senate member Nathalie Goulet, former French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, and the Cultural Advisor to the President of the UAE, Zaki Nusseibeh, among many others. No matter how politics and national borders may divide, culture remains a bridge between all civilizations—a bridge carried by every intellectual who contributes a line of knowledge to the world.

Government departments face power cut-off over unpaid bills
LBCI/September 29, 2023
This is not the first time the Electricité du Liban (EDL) has threatened to cut off power to public administrations that do not pay. However, this time, things are different as the decision came following a recommendation from the Ministerial Committee for Electricity and the approval of the Central Council of EDL. In a final warning, the EDL informed all government departments of the necessity to settle their electricity consumption bills with the EDL in Lebanese Lira, not through zero-interest transfers to the EDL's account at the Central Bank of Lebanon, whether for overdue bills or new bills.The EDL has given the government departments only one month to settle their accounts. However, according to LBCI, no concerned departments have contacted the EDL to schedule payments or installments. Nevertheless, this does not diminish Electricité du Liban's determination to implement the decision this time. They consider electricity a commodity whose cost must be paid; the company cannot provide it for free. The total amount due is over 900 billion Lebanese Lira or 17 million US dollars at the exchange rate of LBP 52,320 per dollar. Notably, government departments do not include these bills in their budgets. Today, the EDL needs every Lebanese Lira and every US dollar of these funds. So, will the campaign to collect these bills from institutions that once believed they were above the law succeed at the expense of the people?

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on September 29-30/2023
The fall of 'Artsakh' stuns Armenians in Lebanon and around the world
Naharnet/September 29/2023
The swift fall of the Armenian-majority enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani troops and exodus of much of its population has stunned the large Armenian diaspora around the world. Traumatized by genocide a century ago, they now fear the erasure of what they consider a central and beloved part of their historic homeland.
The separatist ethnic Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday announced that it was dissolving and that the unrecognized republic will cease to exist by year's end – a seeming death knell for its 30-year de-facto independence.
Azerbaijan, which routed the region's Armenian forces in a lightning offensive last week, has pledged to respect the rights of the territory's Armenian community. But by Thursday morning, 74,400 people – over 60% of Nagorno-Karabakh's population — had fled to Armenia, and the influx continues, according to Armenian officials.
Many in Armenia and the diaspora fear a centuries-long community in the territory they call Artsakh will disappear in what they call a new wave of ethnic cleansing. They accuse European countries, Russia and the United States – and the government of Armenia itself – of failing to protect ethnic Armenians during months of blockade of the territory by Azerbaijan's military and in the lightning blitz earlier this month that defeated separatist forces.
Armenians say the loss is a historic blow. Outside the modern country of Armenia itself, the mountainous land was one of the only surviving parts of a heartland that centuries ago stretched across what is now eastern Turkey, into the Caucasus region and western Iran.
Many in the diaspora had pinned dreams on it gaining independence or being joined to Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh was "a page of hope in Armenian history," Narod Seroujian, a Lebanese-Armenian university instructor in Beirut, said Thursday.
"It showed us that there is hope to gain back a land that is rightfully ours … For the diaspora, Nagorno-Karabakh was already part of Armenia."
Hundreds of Lebanese Armenians on Thursday protested outside the Azerbajani Embassy in Beirut. They waved flags of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and burned pictures of the Azerbaijani and Turkish presidents. Riot police lobbed tear gas when they threw firecrackers at the embassy.
Ethnic Armenians have communities around Europe and the Middle East and in the United States. Lebanon is home to one of the largest, with an estimated 120,000 of Armenian origin, 4% of the population.
Most are descendants of those who fled the 1915 campaign by Ottoman Turks in which some 1.5 million Armenians died in massacres, deportations and forced marches. The atrocities, which emptied many ethnic Armenian areas in eastern Turkey, are widely viewed by historians as genocide. Turkey rejects the description of genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest during World War I. In Bourj Hammoud, the main Armenian district in the capital Beirut, memories are still raw, with anti-Turkey graffiti common on the walls. The red-blue-and-orange Armenian flag flies from many buildings.
"This is the last migration for Armenians," said Harout Bshidikian, 55, sitting in front of an Armenian flag in a Bourj Hammoud cafe. "There is no other place left for us to migrate from."Azerbaijan says it is reuniting its territory, pointing out that even Armenia's prime minister recognized that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan. Though its population has been predominantly ethnic Armenian Christians, Turkish Muslim Azeris also have communities and cultural ties to the territory as well, particularly the city of Shusha, famed as a cradle of Azeri poetry.
Nagorno-Karabakh came under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian military in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. Azerbaijan took parts of the area in a 2020 war. Now after this month's defeat, separatist authorities surrendered their weapons and are holding talks with Azerbaijan on reintegration of the territory into Azerbaijan.
Thomas de Waal, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, said Nagorno-Karabakh had become "a kind of new cause" for an Armenian diaspora whose forebearers had suffered the genocide.
"It was a kind of new Armenian state, new Armenian land being born, which they projected lots of hopes on. Very unrealistic hopes, I would say," he said, adding that it encouraged Karabakh Armenians to hold out against Azerbaijan despite the lack of international recognition for their separatist government.
Armenians see the territory as a cradle of their culture, with monasteries dating back more than a millennium.
"Artsakh or Nagorno-Karabakh has been a land for Armenians for hundreds of years," said Lebanese legislator Hagop Pakradounian, head of Lebanon's largest Armenian group, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. "The people of Artsakh are being subjected to a new genocide, the first genocide in the 21st Century."
The fall of Nagorno-Karabakh is not just a reminder of the genocide, "it's reliving it," said Diran Guiliguian, an Armenian activist who is based in Madrid but holds Armenian, Lebanese and French citizenship.
He said his grandmother used to tell him stories of how she fled in 1915. The genocide "is actually not a thing of the past. It's not a thing that is a century old. It's actually still the case," he said.
Seroujian, the instructor in Beirut, said her great-grandparents were genocide survivors, and that stories of the atrocities and dispersal were talked about at home, school and in the community as she grew up, as was the cause of Nagorno-Karabakh.
She visited the territory several times, most recently in 2017. "We've grown with these ideas, whether they were romantic or not, of the country. We've grown to love it even when we didn't see it," she said. "I never thought about it as something separate" from Armenia the country.
A diaspora group called Europeans for Artsakh plans a rally in Brussels next week in front of European Union buildings to denounce what they say are ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses by Azerbaijan and to call for EU sanctions on Azerbaijani officials. The rally is timed ahead of a summit of European leaders in Spain on Oct. 5, where the Armenian prime minister and Azerbaijani president are scheduled to hold talks mediated by the French president, German chancellor and European Council president.
In the United States, the Armenian community in the Los Angeles area – one of the world's largest – has staged several protests trying to draw attention to the situation. On Sept. 19, they used a trailer truck to block a major freeway for several hours, causing major traffic jams.
Kim Kardashian, perhaps the most well known Armenian-American today, went on social media to urge President Joe Biden "to Stop Another Armenian Genocide."
Several groups in the diaspora are collecting money for Karabakh Armenians fleeing their home. But Seroujian said many feel helpless.
"There are moments where personally, the family, or among friends we just feel hopeless," she said. "And when we talk to each other we sort of lose our minds."

Red Cross requests 20 mln euros to meet growing needs in Armenia
LBCI/September 29, 2023
The Red Cross requested on Friday over twenty million euros to address the growing humanitarian needs resulting from the displacement of Armenians from the Nagorno-Karabakh region following the military operation by Azerbaijan.

Iran-backed Houthi Strike in Saudi Arabia Kills Three
FDD/September 29, 2023
Latest Developments
A third Bahraini soldier died on September 27 from injuries sustained in a Houthi drone strike in Saudi Arabia on September 25 that killed two Bahraini soldiers. At the time of the attack, the soldiers were patrolling the Saudi Arabia-Yemen border as part of the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Yemeni terrorist group since 2015. Saudi Brig. Gen. Turki al-Maliki, the coalition’s spokesman, warned that the coalition “reserves the right to respond at the appropriate place and time,” endangering the fragile ceasefire the opposing sides agreed to last year.
Expert Analysis
“A leading goal of Riyadh in the Beijing-brokered agreement with Tehran was to end Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. The idea was that Riyadh could enlist Beijing to exert pressure on Tehran to end Iranian and Iranian proxy attacks. Leaders in Riyadh may be starting to wonder whether Beijing is either unable or unwilling to deliver on its promises.” — Bradley Bowman, Senior Director of FDD’s Center on Military and Political Power
“The incident is unlikely to escalate into war but is a stark reminder that de-escalation and cease-fires can never replace comprehensive settlements. Militias, even when they behave, are ragtag armies whose behavior is unpredictable and whose violence often goes unpunished.” — Hussain Abdul-Hussain, FDD Research Fellow
A Fragile Truce
In March 2022, the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, announced that Yemen’s warring sides had agreed to a two-month cease-fire. The truce has largely held despite sporadic fighting. On August 30, Houthi President Mahdi al-Mashat threatened to attack U.S. Marines and British military personnel located in nearby governorates if they crossed a “red line.” In a statement to Reuters, Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam blamed the coalition for killing 12 Houthi soldiers along the Saudi border in the past month, calling it a truce violation.
China’s Growing Role in the Middle East
The attack comes as Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels’ primary supporter, Iran, reestablish diplomatic relations for the first time since 2016 after signing a deal brokered by Beijing. China is a major oil customer of both Iran and the Arab states and is interested in increasing its diplomatic, economic, and military clout in the region. Negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis followed the rapprochement with Iran, including a meeting last week after which the Saudi Foreign Ministry touted “positive results.”

Exclusive-US-Saudi defence pact tied to Israel deal, Palestinian demands put aside
Samia Nakhoul, James Mackenzie, Matt Spetalnick and Aziz El Yaakoubi
Reuters/September 29, 2023
-Saudi Arabia is determined to secure a military pact requiring the United States to defend the kingdom in return for opening ties with Israel and will not hold up a deal even if Israel does not offer major concessions to Palestinians in their bid for statehood, three regional sources familiar with the talks said.
A pact might fall short of the cast-iron, NATO-style defence guarantees the kingdom initially sought when the issue was first discussed between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Joe Biden during the U.S. president's visit to Saudi Arabia in July 2022.
Instead, a U.S. source said it could look like treaties Washington has with Asian states or, if that would not win U.S. Congress approval, it could be similar to a U.S. agreement with Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet is based. Such an agreement would not need congressional backing.
Washington could also sweeten any deal by designating Saudi Arabia a Major Non-NATO Ally, a status already given to Israel, the U.S. source said.
But all the sources said Saudi Arabia would not settle for less than binding assurances of U.S. protection if it faced attack, such as the Sept. 14, 2019 missile strikes on its oil sites that rattled world markets. Riyadh and Washington blamed Iran, the kingdom's regional rival, although Tehran denied having a role.
Agreements giving the world's biggest oil exporter U.S. protection in return for normalisation with Israel would reshape the Middle East by bringing together two longtime foes and binding Riyadh to Washington after China's inroads in the region. For Biden, it would be a diplomatic victory to vaunt before the 2024 U.S. election.
The Palestinians could get some Israeli restrictions eased but such moves would fall short of their aspirations for a state. As with other Arab-Israeli deals forged over the decades, the Palestinian core demand for statehood would take a back seat, the three regional sources familiar with the talks said.
"The normalisation will be between Israel and Saudi Arabia. If the Palestinians oppose it the kingdom will continue in its path," said one of the regional sources. "Saudi Arabia supports a peace plan for the Palestinians, but this time it wanted something for Saudi Arabia, not just for the Palestinians."
The Saudi government did not respond to emailed questions about this article.
'LESS THAN A FULL TREATY'
A U.S. official, who like others declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the parameters of a defence pact were still being worked out, adding that what was being discussed "would not be a treaty alliance or anything like that ... It would be a mutual defence understanding, less than a full treaty."The official said it would be more like the U.S. relationship with Israel, which receives the most advanced U.S. weapons and holds joint air force and missile defence drills.
A source in Washington familiar with the discussions said MbS had asked for a NATO-style treaty but said Washington was reluctant to go as far as NATO's Article 5 commitment that an attack on one ally is considered an attack on all.
The source said Biden's aides could consider a pact patterned on those with Japan and other Asian allies, under which the U.S. pledges military support but is less explicit about whether U.S. troops would be deployed. However, the source said some U.S. lawmakers might resist such a pact.
Another template, which would not need congressional approval, would be the agreement signed with Bahrain on Sept. 13, in which the U.S. pledged to "deter and confront any external aggression" but also said the two governments would consult to determine what, if any, action would be taken.
The source in Washington said Saudi Arabia could be designated a Major Non-NATO Ally, a step which had long been considered. This status, which several Arab states such as Egypt have, comes with a range of benefits, such as training.
The second of the regional sources said Riyadh was compromising in some demands to help secure a deal, including over its plans for civilian nuclear technology. The source said Saudi Arabia was ready to sign Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act, establishing a framework for U.S. peaceful nuclear cooperation, a move Riyadh previously refused to take. The Gulf source said the kingdom was prepared to accept a pact that did not match a NATO Article 5 guarantee but said the U.S. had to commit to protecting Saudi Arabia if its territory was attacked. The source also said a deal could be similar to Bahrain's agreement but with extra commitments.
'LOTS OF WORK TO DO'
In response to emailed questions about details in this article, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said: "Many of the key elements of a pathway towards normalisation are now on the table and there is a broad understanding of those elements, which we will not discuss publicly.""There's still lots of work to do, and we're working through it," the spokesperson added, saying there was not yet a formal framework and stakeholders were working on legal and other elements.
The spokesperson did not address specifics about the U.S.-Saudi defence pact in the response. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hailed the possibility of a "historic" peace with Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islam. But to secure the prize, Netanyahu has to win the approval of parties in his a far-right coalition which reject any concessions to the Palestinians.
MbS said in a Fox News interview this month that the kingdom was moving steadily closer to normalising ties with Israel. He spoke about the need for Israel to "ease the life of the Palestinians" but made no mention of Palestinian statehood.
Nevertheless, diplomats and the regional sources said MbS was insisting on some commitments from Israel to show he was not abandoning the Palestinians and that he was seeking to keep the door open to a two-state solution.
Those would include demanding Israel transfer some Israeli-controlled territory in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (PA), limit Jewish settlement activity and halt any steps to annex parts of the West Bank. Riyadh has also promised financial aid to the PA, the diplomats and sources said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said any bargain must recognise the Palestinian right to a state within the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, and must stop Israeli settlement building. However, all the sources said a Saudi-Israeli deal was unlikely to address those flashpoint issues.
Netanyahu has said Palestinians should not have a veto over any peacemaking deal.
Yet, even if the U.S, Israel and Saudi Arabia agree, winning support from lawmakers in the U.S. Congress remains a challenge. Republicans and those in Biden's Democratic Party have previously denounced Riyadh for its military intervention in Yemen, its moves to prop up oil prices and its role in the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who worked for the Washington Post. MbS denied ordering the killing.
"What's important for Saudi Arabia is for Biden to have the pact approved by Congress," the first regional source said, pointing to concessions Riyadh was making to secure a deal.
For Biden, a deal that builds a U.S.-Israeli-Saudi axis could put a brake on China's diplomatic inroads after Beijing brokered a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which Washington accuses of seeking nuclear arms. Tehran denies this.
"There was a sense that the U.S. has abandoned the region," said one diplomat. "By courting China, the Saudis wanted to create some anxiety that will make the U.S. re-engage. It has worked."
*(Reporting by Samia Nakhoul in Dubai, James Mackenzie, Dan Williams and Ali Sawafta in Jerusalmen, Aziz El Yaacouby in Riyadh, Steve Holland, Matt Spetalnick, Humeyra Pamuk and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Writing by Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Edmund Blair)

Syrian President Al-Assad says war in Syria is not over
LBCI/September 29, 2023
The Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad announced in an interview with Chinese television that the war in Syria has not yet ended and that the living conditions are worsening, considering external intervention as the hindrance to a solution. He also talked about the restoration of Saudi-Iranian relations under Chinese sponsorship, describing it as a very significant achievement.

Leaders of EU's Mediterranean nations huddle in Malta to discuss migration
Associated Press/September 29, 2023
The leaders of nine southern European Union countries met in Malta on Friday to discuss common challenges such as migration, the EU's management of which has vexed national governments in Europe for years.The nations represented at the one-day huddle included host Malta, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Slovenia and Croatia, with Adriatic Sea coasts, were added to the so-called "Med Group" in 2021. While Portugal has a long Atlantic Ocean border, the European Union considers it partially in the Mediterranean region. Two top EU officials — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel — were invited to the closed-door meeting. The leaders of the EU's 27 nations have an informal European Council meeting scheduled for next week in Spain. The huddle's main aim is to help develop consensus among the members on major issues concerning all EU countries. However, unity on migration has been elusive, as witnessed in Brussels during a Thursday meeting of interior ministers, who are tasked with enforcing individual nations' rules within the broader contours of EU regulations. Italy, for example, which now receives by far the largest number of migrants arriving via the Mediterranean Sea, has pushed in vain for fellow EU nations to show solidarity by accepting more of the tens of thousands of people who reach its shores. Many of the migrants are rescued by military boats, humanitarian vessels or merchant ships plying the waters crossed by migrant smugglers' unseaworthy boats launched from Tunisia, Libya, Turkey and elsewhere. Earlier this month, some 8,000 migrants stepped ashore on Lampedusa, a tiny Italian fishing island, in barely 48 hours, overwhelming the tourist destination. The relentless arrivals, which slow only when seas are rough, have put political pressure on one of the Malta summit's attendees — Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni. She came to power a year ago after campaigning on a pledge to stop illegal migration, including with a naval blockade, if necessary.
Under current EU rules, the nation where asylum-seekers arrive must shelter them while their applications are processed. In Italy's case, the majority of migrants arriving by sea from Africa and Asian countries are fleeing poverty, not war or persecution, and aren't eligible for asylum. But because Italy has so few repatriation agreements with home countries, it is stymied in sending unsuccessful applicants back. Many migrants slip out of Italy and into northern Europe, their ultimate destination, in hopes of finding family or work. Little progress has been made on a new EU pact as the member states bicker over which country should take charge of migrants when they arrive and whether other countries should be obligated to help. Three years after unveiling a plan for sweeping reform of the European Union's outdated asylum rules, such squabbling fuels doubt as to whether an overhaul will ever become reality. While heads of government or state represented most countries at Friday's summit, Spain sent its acting foreign minister because Acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was involved in discussions at home on forming a new government. While the talks in Malta were heavily concentrated on migration, other common challenges, including climate change, economic growth and continued EU support for Ukraine as it defends itself from Russia's February 2022 invasion were also on the agenda.

Iran protesters mark anniversary of bloody crackdown in southeast
DUBAI (Reuters)/September 29, 2023
Protesters faced off with security forces in Iran's restive southeast on Friday to mark the anniversary of a Sept. 30, 2022, crackdown by security forces known as "Bloody Friday", according to rights groups and social media videos. Videos posted on the X platform by the Iran Human Rights (IHR) group showed marchers confronting security forces in Zahedan, capital of the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, as apparent sounds of shooting are heard. IHR and the Baluch rights group Hal Vash said at least 23 people had been injured. Reuters could not verify the report or the authenticity of the videos. Protests continued into the night, with several videos posted online purporting to show protesters setting fire to tyres to block streets in Zahedan. Zahedan's prosecutor had earlier said the city was calm and videos showing the injured were old, the state news agency IRNA reported. The semi-official news agency Tasnim said police had used tear gas to disperse "a few people who had gathered and were throwing rocks at security forces". In the Sept. 30 crackdown, security forces killed at least 66 people, according to Amnesty International. Authorities accused protesters, angered by the alleged rape of a girl from the Baluch minority by a police commander, of provoking the clashes. Internet monitor Netblocks reported a "significant disruption" to the internet in Zahedan on Friday, saying authorities had "systematically shut down telecoms to suppress weekly anti-government protests."Molavi Abdolhamid, Iran's most prominent Sunni cleric and a long-time critic of Tehran's Shi'ite leaders, demanded justice for the victims of the Sept. 30 crackdown. "The people's demand in the past year has been that those who committed this crime be brought to Islamic justice ... but judges don't have independence in Iran," Abdolhamid said in a sermon posted online. Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, is one of Iran's poorest provinces and a major drug trafficking route. Human rights groups say the Baluch minority, estimated to number up to 2 million people, has faced discrimination and repression for decades. Iran says developing the region and resolving its problems is a "serious issue" for the government. Zahedan has also been the scene of weekly protests since a wave of nationwide unrest triggered last year by the death of a young Kurdish woman in the custody of morality police that shook the Islamic Republic.

Putin has been ignoring his generals and directing the war himself, analysts say — and has been surprisingly cautious
Sophia Ankel/Business Insider/Fri, September 29, 2023
Putin is largely ignoring the expertise of his military advisors, US analysts said in a report.
Instead, he is making most of the key decisions on his own, they said. The experts at the RAND Corporation said Putin has proved more cautious than many expected.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is making key decisions about the Ukraine war largely on his own, without input from his generals, analysts said in a report published last week.
But while doing so, Putin has proven to be more cautious than expected, said the report from the US-based RAND Corporation. "Putin [is] making key decisions largely on his own without substantial influence from the Russian General Staff," the analysts said in the report. RAND said that was simply because Putin does not trust those around him — and so makes "little use of economic or military expertise" at his disposal.
Western analysts have previously said that Russian military leaders, including Minister of Defence Sergei Shoigu, are likely concealing bad news about the war from Putin because they are increasingly concerned about the consequences for themselves.
Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation who focuses on Russia, wrote in a New York Times op-ed in July that there is an "atmosphere of suspicion and uncertainty" in the Kremlin. She wrote that Putin is "quick to blame traitors " and "self-censorship among top military leaders is likely to become more prevalent."The RAND report said that, even in his isolation, Putin has been less eager than it thought to confront NATO, even as it continues to support Ukraine.
But this does not mean that he will continue to do so in future, it cautioned."If Russian territorial, personnel, and materiel losses continue to mount without improvements on the battlefield, he will face a set of unpalatable choices, including negotiations from a position of weakness, more extensive and potentially destabilizing mobilizations, or more draconian attempts to ensure internal control," it said.Putin has made a series of threatening remarks before but has not acted on any of his more serious ones. When he first launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin said that if other countries attempted to intervene they would face "consequences they have never seen," per the Associated Press.Despite this, Western countries have provided billions of dollars of equipment to Ukraine, including steadily expanding its capabilities with aid including advanced Western tanks, artillery, and cruise missiles. During a speech in July, Putin said there was a "serious danger" of NATO being drawn further into the Ukraine war if members of the alliance kept supplying weapons — though as of September there had been no obvious new consequence for the West. Putin also mentioned Russia's large number of nuclear weapons, saying they would "guarantee" its security, CNN reported.While Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly gestured towards its nuclear arsenal, Western officials have reported no signs that Russia is making any serious preparation to use it.

Russia is scaling back its use of the feared Ka-52 attack helicopter after Ukraine got good at taking them out: ISW
Tom Porter/Business Insider/ September 29, 2023
Ukraine is getting better at taking down Russia's Ka-52 helicopters, the ISW said.
The helicopters are among the most effective weapons Russia has in battling Ukraine's counteroffensive. But Russian commanders are now more reluctant to deploy them, the ISW said. Ukraine has gotten better at destroying the Russian Ka-52 attack helicopters that had plagued its counteroffensive, a US think tank said.The respected Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Russia had reduced its use of aviation when pushing back against Ukraine's grinding advances in the south and east of the country. The aircraft that played the most important role against Ukrainian attacks was the Ka-52 helicopter, nicknamed "Putin's Vultures" by Ukrainian media, and believed to be among the most effective attack helicopters in the world. The UK's military intelligence has said the helicopters are "one of the single most influential Russian weapon systems" on the front lines. "Ukrainian forces appear to have increased their ability to down Russian Ka-52 helicopters in mid-August 2023, and the Russian command may have decreased aviation use in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast out of fears of aviation and pilot losses," said the ISW. It said that Russia was instead conducting more airstrikes in other parts of the front line, including Kherson and Luhansk, in a possible bid to offset the "degraded" Russian forces in those areas. The Ka-52 is is highly maneuverable, fitted with thick armor, and with tank-busting rockets with a range of around 9 miles. Gian Gentile, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, told Insider that the helicopters enabled Russia to stop Ukrainian tanks while being so far away that Ukraine's air-defense systems could not shoot back. The ISW does not specify how Ukraine has been able to take down more of the helicopters, but Nico Lange, a Ukraine expert at the Munich Security Conference, told The Economist in August that Ukraine was picking them off "piece by piece," boosting its counteroffensive. He said that while Russia had around 100 of the helicopters at the start of the war, the number could have dwindled as low as 25. The Defense Express reported in August that Swedish shoulder-mounted missile launchers, had proven effective in attacking the helicopters. Ukraine is seeking to break through Russia's formidable defenses in the southern Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and then advance towards the strategically important city of Melitopol. Despite recent Ukrainian advances, so far Russia has prevented Ukraine from making a decisive breakthrough. The ISW said that Ukraine's improved ability against the Ka-52 had not seriously undermined Russian defenses. "Russian forces appear to have increased their use of strike drones against advancing Ukrainian forces, and Russian artillery units continue to play a significant role in repelling Ukrainian assaults," said the ISW.

Russia hosts the Taliban for talks on regional threats and says it will keep funding Afghanistan
ISLAMABAD (AP)/September 29, 2023
Moscow will keep helping Afghanistan on its own and through the U.N. food agency, Russian officials said Friday as they hosted Taliban representatives for talks on regional threats. The talks in the Russian city of Kazan came as Moscow is trying to maintain its influence in Central Asia even as it wages war on Ukraine. The discussions focused on regional threats and creating inclusive government, Russian state news agency Tass reported. President Vladimir Putin's special representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov attended the gathering and said Russia is inclined to keep helping Afghanistan independently and through the World Food Program.A letter from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was read at the talks, accusing Western countries of “complete failure” in Afghanistan, saying they should “bear the primary burden of rebuilding the country.”
The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in mid-August 2021 as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war. Following their takeover, the Taliban gradually imposed harsh edicts, as they did during their previous rule of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, based on their interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. They barred girls from school beyond the sixth grade and women from almost all jobs and public spaces. No country has formally recognized the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. The United Nations says that recognition is “nearly impossible” while the severe Taliban restrictions on women and girls are in place. Moscow has since 2017 hosted talks with the Taliban and other representatives from other Afghan factions, China, Pakistan, Iran, India and the former Soviet nations in Central Asia. Taliban representatives were not at the last meeting, in November. No other Afghan factions attended Friday's talks. Kabulov, the Kremlin envoy, has previously said that international recognition of the Taliban will hinge on the inclusiveness of their government and their human rights record.Russia had worked for years to establish contacts with the Taliban, even though it designated the group a terror organization in 2003 and never took it off the list. Any contact with such groups is punishable under Russian law, but the Foreign Ministry has responded to questions about the apparent contradiction by saying its exchanges with the Taliban are essential for helping stabilize Afghanistan. The Soviet Union fought a 10-year war in Afghanistan that ended with its troops withdrawing in 1989. Afghanistan's Taliban-appointed Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said Friday that other countries should stop telling them what to do. “Afghanistan doesn’t prescribe forms of governance to others, so we expect regional countries to engage with the Islamic Emirate rather than give prescriptions for the formation of a government in Afghanistan,” he said in Kazan. The Taliban call their administration the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.He invited people to come and see Afghanistan for themselves, and asserted that “tourists, diplomats, aid workers, journalists and researchers” travel to the country with confidence and roam freely.

Putin orders former Wagner commander to take charge of 'volunteer units' in Ukraine
Associated Press/September 29, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of "volunteer units" fighting in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin's effort to keep using the mercenaries after the death of their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin. In remarks released by the Kremlin on Friday, Putin told Andrei Troshev that his task is to "deal with forming volunteer units that could perform various combat tasks, primarily in the zone of the special military operation" — a term the Kremlin uses for its war in Ukraine. Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was also present at the meeting late Thursday, a sign that Wagner mercenaries will likely serve under the Defense Ministry's command. Speaking in a conference call with reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Troshev now works for the Defense Ministry and referred questions about Wagner's possible return to Ukraine to the military. Wagner fighters have had no significant role on the battlefield since they withdrew after capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the war's longest and bloodiest battle. The meeting appeared to reflect the Kremlin's plan to redeploy some Wagner mercenaries to the front line in Ukraine following their brief mutiny in June and Prigozhin's suspicious death in a plane crash Aug. 23. The private army that once counted tens of thousands of troops is a precious asset the Kremlin wants to exploit. The June 23-24 rebellion aimed to oust the Russian Defense Ministry's leadership that Prigozhin blamed for mishandling the war in Ukraine and trying to place Wagner under its control. His mercenaries took over Russia's southern military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and then rolled toward Moscow before abruptly halting the mutiny. Putin denounced them as "traitors," but the Kremlin quickly negotiated a deal ending the uprising in exchange for amnesty from prosecution. The mercenaries were offered a choice to retire from the service, move to Belarus or sign new contracts with the Defense Ministry. Putin said in July that five days after the mutiny he had a meeting with 35 Wagner commanders, including Prigozhin, and suggested they keep serving under Troshev, who goes by the call sign "Gray Hair," but Prigozhin refused the offer then. Troshev, is a retired military officer who has played a leading role in Wagner since its creation in 2014 and faced European Union sanctions over his role in Syria as the group's executive director. Wagner mercenaries have played a key role in Moscow's war in Ukraine, spearheading the capture of Bakhmut in May after months of fierce fighting. Kyiv's troops are now seeking to reclaim it as part of their summer counteroffensive that has slowly recaptured some of its lands but now faces the prospect of wet and cold weather that could further delay progress.

Ukrainian civilians are turning busted and salvaged vehicles into mobile rocket launchers with scavenged military hardware
Chris Panella/Business Insider/September 29, 2023
The volunteer civilians are using recovered military hardware to develop the systems.
Ukraine has long relied on its scrappiness, from capturing Russian weapons to turning cheap drones into deadly weapons. Ukraine's been fighting to keep control of its country for over a year and a half, its counteroffensive is showing limited but promising progress against Russian defenses in sectors of the front lines, and the Ukrainian people are continuing to show off their scrappy instincts and ingenuity with makeshift mobile rocket launchers made from wrecked vehicles and recovered hardware. New photos show volunteer civilians helping to develop multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) from recovered Russian and Ukrainian military hardware previously damaged in battle. The MLRS is being fitted onto salvaged vehicles, a marked improvement in which the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Despite its humble origin, the jury-rigged MLRS pictured here presumably functions in a manner similar to a system professionally built to military specifications. As mobile rocket artillery, it features a single platform supporting a collection of launch tubes able to fire multiple surface-to-surface rockets. When it prepares to launch, the tubes rise up and fire the rockets. They launch from the front, while the back of the tubes will release the exhaust. Ukraine asked the US for MLRS in May 2022, arguing the longer-range weapons would give troops the ability to strike Russian targets, such as command and control centers, troop concentrations, and ammunition depots, from further away. At the time, the Biden administration was hesitant to give Ukraine weapons that could be used to strike Russian territory, and there were real concerns about escalating tensions with Moscow. In June 2022, however, the US, UK, and Germany agreed to send M270 MLRS and the MARS II MLRS to Ukraine. The US also agreed to send High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS). The GMLRS rockets these systems fire boast a range of about 43 miles, farther than the systems Ukraine was using at the start of the war, like the Uragan and Grad systems. The makeshift MLRS pictured here adds additional firepower and is another example of Ukraine's clever efforts to bolster combat capability in a very tough situation however it can, from capturing Russian weapons and turning them against the enemy to innovating. Systems like the one pictured highlights the country's ability to adapt to its circumstances and the changing state of the war while reacting in real-time to what they need to be successful on the battlefield. Facing a tough adversary, Ukraine has found ways to inflict asymmetric losses on Moscow's forces with creativity. The country, for instance, doesn't really have a Navy, but it prioritized the development of Neptune anti-ship missiles and a drone boat force that has terrorized the Russian Black Sea Fleet, even destroying some vessels. Ukraine, often through civilian volunteer operations, has also prioritized the use of cheap airborne drones, using first-person view (FPV) drones to take out Russian tanks, expending drones that may only cost a few hundred dollars to take out tanks worth millions — another asymmetric win. And in another example of innovation, just this past month, Kyiv appeared to be hunting expensive and formidable S-400 air defense systems with modified anti-ship Neptune missiles, showing they had adapted the system to hit land targets..

Israeli troops kill Hamas man who army says attacked post in West Bank
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters)/September 29, 2023
Israeli soldiers on Friday killed a member of the Hamas Islamist group who the army said was among assailants who threw fire bombs at a military post in the occupied West Bank. The military said the attack on the post was near Psagot, an Israeli settlement. "Soldiers conducting routine activity at the scene identified the suspects and responded with live fire. Two assailants were neutralized and transferred to receive medical treatment," it said. The Palestinian Health Ministry said one of the men later died of his wounds. Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip but has strong support in the West Bank as well, claimed the man as a member. Violence in the West Bank has raged for more than a year, amid stepped-up Israeli military raids, increased settler assaults on Palestinian villages, and a spate of Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Germany, Israel sign agreement for Berlin to buy US-Israeli missile defense system
Associated Press/September 29, 2023
Germany and Israel have signed an agreement for Berlin to buy the sophisticated Arrow 3 missile defense system, designed to intercept long-range ballistic missiles. The development is the latest step in Berlin's bid to strengthen its air defenses following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Germany aims to integrate the system into wider NATO air defense efforts. Last year, Berlin launched the European Sky Shield Initiative, which now includes 19 countries. Israel secured U.S. approval in August for the $3.5 billion deal, which was needed because the system was jointly developed with the United States.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant signed a memorandum of understanding in Berlin on Thursday for the purchase of Arrow 3. "It is, without exaggerating, a historic day for both our countries," Pistorius told reporters, describing Arrow as "one of the best systems, if not the best.""We see from the daily Russian attacks on Ukraine how important air defense is in general," he added. "Air defense is essential, and particularly for us here in the center of Europe."Germany plans to start using Arrow in late 2025, with the system then being built up step by step. Gallant said that "with two simple signatures today, we made history" and that Israel is "committed to a timely and effective delivery." "This is a moving event for every Jew," he added, pointing to Israel's partnership with Germany decades after the Holocaust and to German contributions to Israel's security. "Only 80 years since the end of the second world war, yet Israel and Germany join hands today in building a safer future for both nations," Gallant said.

UAE, Egypt agree to currency swap deal as Cairo's economy struggles
Associated Press/September 29, 2023
The central banks of the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have agreed to a currency exchange deal, which could bolster the struggling Egyptian economy. A joint news release said the agreement would allow the two central banks to exchange up to 5 billion Emirati dirhams and 42 billion Egyptian pounds, or roughly the equivalent of $1.36 billion. The Egyptian pound lost more than 50% of its value against the dollar in the last 18 months, and the country is suffering from a shortage of foreign currency. Egypt, the Middle East's most populous country, is the world's largest importer of grain. Its supplies traditionally have come from eastern Europe, so it has been hit hard by the fallout of the Ukraine war. Last month Egypt's annual inflation rate stood at 39.7%, more than double compared to the same month last year, when it recorded 15.3%. Currency swap arrangements are usually deployed when nations are seeking to shore up central and domestic banks by providing them with extra liquidity in the form of a foreign currency. "It seems again that the UAE is providing Egypt with financial support," said James Swanston, an economist specializing in the Middle East and North Africa. "Egypt's central bank needs more ammunition to prop up its currency."The UAE and the other gulf states have been chief backers of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi's government since it came to power in 2013. Estimates suggest over $100 billion in Gulf money has gone to Cairo via Central Bank deposits, fuel aid and other support since then. The heads of the Emirati and Egyptian central banks both said Thursday's deal would enhance cooperation between the two allied countries, but gave few further details about the agreement.

Dozens dead after blast in southwestern Pakistan at a rally celebrating birthday of Islam's prophet
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP)/September 29, 2023
A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up among a crowd of people celebrating the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, killing at least 52 people and wounding nearly 70 others, authorities said, in one of the country's deadliest attacks targeting civilians in months.
An open area near a mosque was left strewn with the shoes of the dead and wounded, TV footage and videos on social media showed. Bodies lay covered with bedsheets. Residents and rescuers were seen rushing the wounded to hospitals.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in Mastung, a district of Baluchistan province. But suspicion is likely to fall on the militant Islamic State group’s regional affiliate, which has claimed previous deadly bombings around Pakistan. IS carried out an attack days earlier in the same area after one of its commanders was killed there.On Friday, around 500 people had gathered for a procession from the mosque to celebrate the birth of the prophet, known as Mawlid an-Nabi. Similar events were held in communities across Pakistan, often including parades of children in traditional garb. The blast went off before the Mastung procession was to begin. Among the wounded seen at hospital were a number of young boys, bloodied and wrapped in bandages, though the full number of children among the casualties was not immediately known. Some of the wounded were in a critical condition, government administrator Atta Ullah said. Thirty bodies were taken to one hospital and 22 were counted at another, said Abdul Rasheed, the district health officer in Mastung. A senior police officer, Mohammad Nawaz, was among the dead, Ullah said. Officers said they suspect the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.
Friday’s bombing came days after authorities asked police to remain on maximum alert, saying militants could target rallies for Mawlid an-Nabi. Also Friday, a blast ripped through a mosque located on the premises of a police station in Hangu, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing at least five people and wounding seven, said Shah Raz Khan, a local police officer. Khan said two suicide bombers approached the mud-brick mosque and while guards shot and killed one, the other managed to reach the mosque and set off his explosives. The mosque collapsed with about 40 people inside worshipping, most of them police officers, officials said. Rescuers were pulling people from the rubble, Khan said. No one claimed responsibility for the attacks in Mastung and Hangu.
The Pakistani Taliban, the country’s main militant group, denied any role in either attack and denounced them. Known at Tehreek-e-Taliban, or TTP, the Pakistani Taliban has waged a campaign of violence that usually hits government or security targets, and it has repeatedly said it does not target places of worship or civilians. The TTP is separate from the Afghan Taliban but closely allied to them and has increased its attacks since the group seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in August 2021.
Suspicion is more likely to fall on the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, as the IS affiliate in Afghanistan and Pakistan is known. It has been more ruthless in attacking civilians and places of worship – often Shiite Muslim mosques but also Sunni ones like that in Mastung. On Sept. 14, IS set off a bomb targeting the convoy of a senior figure of a pro-Afghan Taliban political party as it passed through Mastung. The bomb wounded 11 people but the politician survived. The attack came days after police killed an IS commander in the town. The most recent major IS attack came in July, when a suicide bomber killed at least 54 people at an election rally by the same pro-Taliban party in northwest Pakistan. Pakistan’s President Arif Alvi condemned Friday’s attacks and asked authorities to provide all possible assistance to the wounded and the victims’ families.
In a statement, caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti called the Mastung bombing a “heinous act” to target people in the Mawlid an-Nabi procession. Also Friday, the military said two soldiers were killed in a shootout with Pakistani Taliban after insurgents tried to sneak into southwestern district of Zhob in Baluchistan province. Three militants were killed in the exchange, a military statement said. The gas-rich southwestern Baluchistan province at the border of Afghanistan and Iran has been the site of a low-level insurgency by Baluch nationalists for more than two decades. Baluch nationalists initially wanted a share of provincial resources, but they later launched an insurgency calling for independence. Pakistan has faced waves of militant violence over the years from multiple groups. In 2014, 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
In recent years, the Pakistani Taliban have emerged as the most powerful group. The group is suspected in this year’s deadliest bombing, in which more than 100 people were killed, in a Jan. 30 bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters.

US quietly acknowledges Iran satellite successfully reached orbit
Associated Press/September 29/2023
The United States has quietly acknowledged that Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard successfully put an imaging satellite into orbit this week in a launch that resembled others previously criticized by Washington as helping Tehran's ballistic missile program.
The U.S. military has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press since Iran announced the launch of the Noor-3 satellite on Wednesday, the latest successful launch by the Revolutionary Guard after Iran's civilian space program faced a series of failed launches in recent years.
Early Friday, however, data published by the website space-track.org listed a launch Wednesday by Iran that put the Noor-3 satellite into orbit. Information for the website is supplied by the 18th Space Defense Squadron of the U.S. Space Force, the newest arm of the American military. It put the satellite at over 450 kilometers (280 miles) above the Earth's surface, which corresponds to Iranian state media reports regarding the launch. It also identified the rocket carrying the satellite as a Qased, a three-stage rocket fueled by both liquid and solid fuels first launched by the Guard in 2020 when it unveiled its up-to-then-secret space program.
"Noor" means "light" in Farsi, while "Qased" means "messenger."Authorities released a video of a rocket taking off from a mobile launcher without saying where it occurred. Details in the video earlier analyzed by the AP corresponded with a Guard base near Shahroud, about 330 kilometers (205 miles) northeast of the capital, Tehran. The base is in Semnan province, which hosts the Imam Khomeini Spaceport from which Iran's civilian space program operates. The website space-track.org also listed the missile as having been launched from the Guard base at Shahroud. Speaking Thursday night to Iranian state television, Guard space commander Gen. Ali Jafarabadi described the Noor-3 satellite as having "image accuracy that is two and a half times that of the Noor-2 satellite." Noor-2, launched in March 2022, remains in orbit. Noor-1, launched in 2020, fell back to Earth last year. Jafarabadi said Noor-3 has thrusters for the first time that allow it to maneuver in orbit. He also offered a wider description of Iran's hopes for its satellite program, including potentially controlling drones. That could raise further concerns for the West and Ukraine, which Russia has bombarded with Iranian-made bomb-carrying drones for over a year. "If you look at the recent wars in the world, you will see that success on the battlefield is very dependent on the use of satellite technologies," Jafarabadi said. "Now the armed forces in all the progressive countries are trying to make all their equipment remote control, it means that to make it steerable, when a vessel or any other equipment takes a long distance from us, it is no longer possible to see and guide it, except through satellite."The image-taking capabilities of the Noor-3 remain unclear. International sanctions on Iran have locked it out of accessing commercially available imagery, forcing it to develop its own homegrown satellites. The head of the U.S. Space Command dismissed the Noor-1 as a "tumbling webcam in space" that would not provide vital intelligence. The United States says Iran's satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. U.N. sanctions related to Iran's ballistic missile program are due to expire Oct. 18. The U.S. intelligence community's 2023 worldwide threat assessment says the development of satellite launch vehicles "shortens the timeline" for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.
"Iran's continued advancement of its ballistic missile capabilities poses a serious threat to regional and international security and remains a significant nonproliferation concern," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Thursday. "We continue to use a variety of nonproliferation tools, including sanctions, to counter the further advancement of Iran's ballistic missile program and its ability to proliferate missiles and related technology to others." Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its space program, like its nuclear activities, is for purely civilian purposes. However, U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran abandoned an organized military nuclear program in 2003. The involvement of the Guard in the launches, as well as it being able to launch the rocket from a mobile launcher, also raise concerns for the West.
Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space. The program has seen recent troubles, however. There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh program, another satellite-carrying rocket. A fire at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in February 2019 killed three researchers, authorities said at the time. A launchpad rocket explosion later that year drew the attention of then-President Donald Trump, who taunted Iran with a tweet showing what appeared to be a U.S. surveillance photo of the site.
Tensions are already high with Western nations over Iran's nuclear program, which has steadily advanced since Trump five years ago withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and restored crippling sanctions on Iran.
Efforts to revive the agreement reached an impasse more than a year ago. Since then, the IAEA has said Iran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels to build "several" nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so. Iran is also building a new underground nuclear facility that would likely be impervious to U.S. or Israeli airstrikes. Both countries have said they would take military action if necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Iran and the U.S. just conducted a prisoner swap in which South Korea released just under $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets. However, both countries have signaled publicly that they are no closer to any wider diplomatic deals.

Cardin eyes changes on Egypt, Turkey as he takes powerful Senate foreign post
Associated Press/September 29/2023
The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has pointed to possible policy shifts affecting Egypt, Turkey, the war in Ukraine and other issues around the globe as he took over the powerful leadership of the panel, replacing indicted Sen. Bob Menendez. Sen. Ben Cardin, a veteran Maryland Democrat, will have an abbreviated term leading the committee because his term expires in January 2025 and he is not seeking reelection. He described him unexpectedly inheriting the chairmanship, with its power to help shape how the United States approaches the rest of the world, as a "pinch yourself" moment. Cardin spoke to reporters under the chandelier and vaulted ceiling of the historic 19th-century committee room on his first full day on the job. Menendez was indicted on Sept. 22 on charges he and his wife, Nadine, accepted bribes including cash and gold bars in transactions that included using his position as committee chairman to influence some U.S. policy decisions in favor of Egypt's autocratic government. The indictment alleges that included helping Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi's government overcome human-rights restrictions limiting a small portion of what is more than $1 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Egypt. Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty. Cardin, before becoming chairman, had condemned the Biden administration's decision this year to override a human-rights prohibition on $235 million of this year's military aid to Egypt. The administration cited national security interests for waiving the human rights restrictions, even though the State Department acknowledged Egypt had made no progress on detaining journalists, writers and rights advocates, as well as other human rights abuses. Asked Thursday if he intended to stop the distribution of that money if it could still be stopped, Cardin said he was "looking at his options." He said he wanted to give the administration and some lawmakers a hearing on the issue before reaching a final decision. As chairman, Cardin can place holds on some funding and sales.
Cardin signaled another break, regarding Turkey, a NATO partner that for years has sought to buy advanced warplanes from the U.S. but has been repeatedly blocked, including by Menendez. Menendez had placed a hold barring the sale of F-16s to Turkey, arguing — in part — that he was concerned about Turkey having more air power than Greece, its neighbor and rival. Cardin made clear he was open to considering moving forward on the sales, if he is satisfied with points, including any additional threat to Greece and on Turkey's human rights. Turkey has used the veto power held by each NATO member to block Sweden's entry into the Western military alliance, even though the U.S. and European allies want Sweden in the bloc to strengthen NATO's northern flank against Russia.
Turkey has linked its getting the F-16s to its decision on Sweden joining NATO. Cardin, who attended a gathering of NATO ambassadors this week, said Turkey has indicated it would clear the way for Sweden's membership in the first part of October.
The power of Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairs to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on some key U.S. decisions makes the committee's chairs at least as well-known in some foreign countries as they are in the United States.
In Turkey, some news media are celebrating Menendez's legal difficulties. A CNN Turk political panel gleefully showed the indicted senator as a sobbing SpongeBob SquarePants.Ahmet Hakan, a journalist with close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's administration, used his column in Sunday's Hurriyet newspaper to comment on the case against Menendez, who he said opposed Turkey "to the death."
"Together we can celebrate it with...laughter: Hahaha!" he wrote.
In Latin America, Menendez, whose parents immigrated from Cuba, was widely seen as using his influence to block any further thaw in U.S. relations with Cuba, even as he helped some Latino causes and politicians in the U.S. Former Cuban diplomat Carlos Alzugaray told the AP the fall of Menendez would be significant for his island. "In any case, the pressure goes down," Alzugaray said. Tellingly, Cuba did not even come up as Cardin ran down a list of his foreign policy priorities with reporters Thursday. Cardin described working to maintain the U.S. flow of money and arms to Ukraine against invading Russian forces as "by far the highest priority" for him. It's one he sees as crucial to the United States' own security and its ability to influence global affairs, he made clear. Ukraine's supporters in Congress should do a better job of making that case to Americans, he said. "China's watching" whether Americans stand by Ukraine's defense, to guide China's decision on how far it pushes to assert its claim to Taiwan, Cardin said. "North Korea's watching. Iran's watching," he said. Cardin also addressed the Biden administration's push to broker an agreement for the first broad diplomatic relations between U.S. ally Israel and Gulf heavyweight Saudi Arabia as a "game-changer in the region," and one he was excited about. Biden officials and other supporters say the deal would help stabilize the Middle East and boost the economies of the Middle East. "There's recognition that this is going to happen. There's going to meaningful changes," Cardin said, saying that he was seeing conversations involving Israel and the Palestinians "that I didn't think we could have" as part of those broader negotiations. He gave no details. Saudi Arabia, as a condition for agreeing to the deal, is asking the U.S. for security commitments and for assistance in developing its civilian nuclear program. Cardin said he would be active in setting the terms for any such U.S.-Saudi agreement. "It must meet the highest standards, and there's got to be guardrails." And as far as "any security agreement that the United States commits to help defend another country to make sure it's always in our national security interest to get engaged," he said. Issues on Saudi Arabia's poor human rights record would need to be addressed, he said, and handed reporters a printout on a Saudi man rights groups say has been tortured and imprisoned over tweets critical of the Saudi government.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 29-30/2023
US and Europe put the screws to Iran’s drone program - analysis
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/September 29/2023
A report said that European countries might ban sales to countries that appear to be aiding the program.
Iran’s drone program is facing unprecedented challenges, as both the US and Europe increasingly focus on the supply lines that fuel the Iranian drone war machine with components from China or via Turkey.A new report at The Guardian published this week sheds light on how more than 50 components of the drones were actually manufactured in Western countries. These troubling details have been, to some degree, known for years, because Iranian drones have been shot down in the past, and their parts have been traced back to the Western suppliers. What the report sheds light on is how now there is a focus on cutting off the supplies. Iran uses dual-use items to equip its drones, which can include the most minor electrical components or more complex items, such as engines and gyroscopes.
Tehran sends the drones to Russia these days. This is an important market for Iran. Iran wants Russia to acquire its drones so it can produce them on a larger scale and can see how they work in a conventional war. Iran then wants to receive other items in return, such as warplanes from Russia.
The report further notes that, “in a 47-page document submitted by Ukraine’s government to the G7 governments in August, it is claimed there were more than 600 raids on cities using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) containing Western technology in the previous three months.”The components are used in the Shahed 131 drone and in the Shahed 136. Iran exploits various suppliers, including a Polish subsidiary of a British company, according to the report.
“Among the manufacturers are companies headquartered in the countries of the sanctions coalition: the United States, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Poland.” A follow-up report says European countries might ban sales to countries that appear to be aiding the program. The US State Department said on Wednesday that “today, the United States is designating a network linked to the US-designated Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This network – comprised of five entities and two individuals based in Iran, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates – has been procuring sensitive parts for Iran’s attack-drone program.”
The department further noted that “Iran is supplying Russia with arms, including Shahed-136 UAVs, to support Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine. One of the servomotors procured by the network designated today was recovered in the remnants of a Russia-operated Shahed-136 that was recently shot down in Ukraine.The United States is determined to take action against those supporting Russia’s war machine, particularly the provision of weapons that target Ukraine’s people and civil infrastructure.”
China and Iran's drones
China has slammed the new focus on its role in the Iranian drone program. “China notes that the United States has included some Chinese enterprises and individuals in the ‘Specially Designated Nationals List’ on the grounds of the so-called development of drones and military aircraft involving Iran, which China firmly opposes,” a China commerce ministry spokesman told state broadcaster CCTV.
Taken together, it is clear that Iran’s drone program is now getting more time in the spotlight from the US and Europe. The problem the West faces in going after the drone program is that Iran is an expert at setting up shell companies and exploiting loopholes to avoid sanctions; it has done this for decades. The components in the drones are also not that hard to find, so Iran can easily create a new company or a new source for them. The fact that there have been numerous rounds of sanctions on the drone program already illustrates that it may not be effective yet. Iran has also rolled out claims of a new type of kamikaze drone that it claims has a rocket engine. Overall, this shows that Iran is not slowing down, but ramping up the drone threat. This threat targets the Middle East and Ukraine these days, but may go further afield. Iran, for instance, sent drone models to a defense expo in Serbia, according to recent reports, and it appears to be trying to sell the drones not only in Europe, but also in Asia, Africa and South America.

US quietly acknowledges Iran satellite successfully reached orbit as tensions remain high
Jon Gambrell/AP/September 29, 2023
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States has quietly acknowledged that Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard successfully put an imaging satellite into orbit this week in a launch that resembled others previously criticized by Washington as helping Tehran’s ballistic missile program.
The U.S. military has not responded to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press since Iran announced the launch of the Noor-3 satellite on Wednesday, the latest successful launch by the Revolutionary Guard after Iran’s civilian space program faced a series of failed launches in recent years.
Early Friday, however, data published by the website space-track.org listed a launch Wednesday by Iran that put the Noor-3 satellite into orbit. Information for the website is supplied by the 18th Space Defense Squadron of the U.S. Space Force, the newest arm of the American military.
It put the satellite at over 450 kilometers (280 miles) above the Earth’s surface, which corresponds to Iranian state media reports regarding the launch. It also identified the rocket carrying the satellite as a Qased, a three-stage rocket fueled by both liquid and solid fuels first launched by the Guard in 2020 when it unveiled its up-to-then-secret space program.
Authorities released a video of a rocket taking off from a mobile launcher without saying where it occurred. Details in the video earlier analyzed by the AP corresponded with a Guard base near Shahroud, about 330 kilometers (205 miles) northeast of the capital, Tehran. The base is in Semnan province, which hosts the Imam Khomeini Spaceport from which Iran’s civilian space program operates.
The website space-track.org also listed the missile as having been launched from the Guard base at Shahroud.
Speaking Thursday night to Iranian state television, Guard space commander Gen. Ali Jafarabadi described the Noor-3 satellite as having “image accuracy that is two and a half times that of the Noor-2 satellite.” Noor-2, launched in March 2022, remains in orbit. Noor-1, launched in 2020, fell back to Earth last year. Jafarabadi said Noor-3 has thrusters for the first time that allow it to maneuver in orbit. He also offered a wider description of Iran’s hopes for its satellite program, including potentially controlling drones. That could raise further concerns for the West and Ukraine, which Russia has bombarded with Iranian-made bomb-carrying drones for over a year.
“If you look at the recent wars in the world, you will see that success on the battlefield is very dependent on the use of satellite technologies,” Jafarabadi said. “Now the armed forces in all the progressive countries are trying to make all their equipment remote control, it means that to make it steerable, when a vessel or any other equipment takes a long distance from us, it is no longer possible to see and guide it, except through satellite.”
The image-taking capabilities of the Noor-3 remain unclear. International sanctions on Iran have locked it out of accessing commercially available imagery, forcing it to develop its own homegrown satellites. The head of the U.S. Space Command dismissed the Noor-1 as a “tumbling webcam in space” that would not provide vital intelligence.
Other video released by Iranian state TV showed the Guard using a Dutch-Italian IVECO truck to pull the mobile launcher used in the launch. The truck manufacturer did not respond to a request for comment.
The United States says Iran’s satellite launches defy a U.N. Security Council resolution and has called on Tehran to undertake no activity involving ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. U.N. sanctions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program are due to expire Oct. 18.
The U.S. intelligence community’s 2023 worldwide threat assessment says the development of satellite launch vehicles “shortens the timeline” for Iran to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile because it uses similar technology.
“Iran’s continued advancement of its ballistic missile capabilities poses a serious threat to regional and international security and remains a significant nonproliferation concern,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Thursday. “We continue to use a variety of nonproliferation tools, including sanctions, to counter the further advancement of Iran’s ballistic missile program and its ability to proliferate missiles and related technology to others.”
Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its space program, like its nuclear activities, is for purely civilian purposes. However, U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency say Iran abandoned an organized military nuclear program in 2003. The involvement of the Guard in the launches, as well as it being able to launch the rocket from a mobile launcher, also raise concerns for the West.
Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space. The program has seen recent troubles, however. There have been five failed launches in a row for the Simorgh program, another satellite-carrying rocket.
A fire at the Imam Khomeini Spaceport in February 2019 killed three researchers, authorities said at the time. A launchpad rocket explosion later that year drew the attention of then-President Donald Trump, who taunted Iran with a tweet showing what appeared to be a U.S. surveillance photo of the site.
Tensions are already high with Western nations over Iran’s nuclear program, which has steadily advanced since Trump five years ago withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers and restored crippling sanctions on Iran.
Efforts to revive the agreement reached an impasse more than a year ago. Since then, the IAEA has said Iran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons grade levels to build “several” nuclear weapons if it chooses to do so. Iran is also building a new underground nuclear facility that would likely be impervious to U.S. or Israeli airstrikes. Both countries have said they would take military action if necessary to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran and the U.S. just conducted a prisoner swap in which South Korea released just under $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets. However, both countries have signaled publicly that they are no closer to any wider diplomatic deals.
*Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

The Monetary Value of Relaxed Oil Sanctions Enforcement by the Biden Administration
Saeed Ghasseminejad/FDD-Insight/September 29, 2023
“U.S. officials privately acknowledge they’ve gradually relaxed some enforcement of sanctions on Iranian oil sales,” Bloomberg News revealed last month. The dollar value of this sanctions relief can be calculated by estimating how much Iranian exports increased due to lighter enforcement, then projecting how much these additional sales have been worth. In August, Iran reported exports of 1.7 million barrels of crude oil per day (mbpd), a level not seen since March 2019. Others put the figure even higher, at 2.2 mbpd, although this memo will use the UANI Tanker Tracker database, which uses publicly available data going back to April 2018. By contrast, Tehran exported an average of 0.775 mbpd while facing the “maximum pressure” campaign waged by the Trump administration. Depending on the discount Iran offered to incentivize purchases from a sanctioned government, the estimated value of Tehran’s additional oil sales — the difference between its realized revenue and what it would have earned had its exports remained at the maximum pressure period’s average level — was $26.3 to $29.5 billion dollars, a number that will continue growing while enforcement remains lax.
Iran’s Oil Exports
In May 2018, the Trump administration declared its exit from the 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), paving the way for the revival of American oil sanctions on Iran in November of that year. To ease the consequent shock to global oil markets, the administration issued a six-month waiver that permitted select countries to import up to a million barrels of Iranian oil daily. This waiver expired in May 2019 without an extension.
Data from the UANI Tanker Trackers, which monitors global oil shipments, reveal that Iran’s exports stood at 2.9 mbpd in April 2018, just before Washington’s JCPOA withdrawal. By October 2018, this figure dwindled to 1.8 mbpd as buyers sought to minimize their dependency on Iranian oil. During the six months in which the waiver was in effect, exports averaged 1.39 mbpd. After the waiver’s expiration, Iranian exports averaged 0.775 mbpd for the remainder of Trump’s tenure although there were significant fluctuations month-to-month, as seen in Table 1.
Table 1 – Source: UANI Tanker Tracker Database
Tehran’s exports began growing as soon as Biden took office. They reached 1.14 mbpd in 2021, a 32 percent increase from the year prior. This level of sales persisted in 2022 before another significant leap this year. The average export rate from January to August 2023 has been 1.38 mbpd, a 21 percent increase from the year prior and 59 percent greater than the last year of Trump’s tenure. This steady ascent hints at a sustainable upward trajectory in Tehran’s exports.
To estimate how much Iranian exports increased each month because of lax sanctions enforcement, this analysis subtracts the average daily export in the “maximum pressure” era (0.775 mbpd) from Iran’s export level in each month of Biden’s tenure, as shown in Table 1. In effect, the analysis posits that Biden could have held Iranian exports constant had he chosen to enforce sanctions vigorously.
Assessing the Worth of Iran’s Oil Exports
Tehran’s efforts to obscure its export activities and sidestep sanctions make it harder to determine both the quantity of exports and their likely price. This analysis assumes that Iran offers its buyers a discount for purchasing oil from a sanctioned entity. Since Tehran’s discount offerings likely fluctuate based on time and clientele, this analysis posits three scenarios in which Iran’s oil is priced at 5, 10, and 15 percent below the Brent rate, respectively. For each month of Biden’s tenure (February 2021-August 2023), this analysis takes the estimated increase in Iranian exports as calculated in the previous section and multiplies it by the average monthly Brent price, less the discount for that scenario.
Depending on the scenario, Iran’s total revenue during Biden’s tenure ranges from $81 billion to $90.7 billion. Had Iranian exports remained at the baseline “maximum pressure” level of 0.775 mbpd, revenues would only have been $54.7 billion to $61 billion. The differences between these two sets of figures indicates an Iranian gain of $26.3 billion to $29.5 billion, depending on the discount.
To simplify the calculations, the analysis assumes that a dip in Tehran’s export volume would leave global oil prices unaffected, a plausible premise given the historically minimal price impact of sanctions against Tehran. In other words, had the Biden administration kept Iranian exports to the “maximum pressure” level of 0.775 mbpd, the reduction in global supply would not have pushed prices upwards, partially compensating Tehran for the lower volume of sales.
The spike in Iranian export levels last month may turn out to be transitory, yet the upward trend in 2023 has proven to be resilient. Tehran’s exports will likely remain above the 2021 and 2022 levels and continue to grow as the sanctions wall crumbles. This trend further erodes U.S. financial leverage over Tehran, leaving Washington with fewer means to pressure Iran to restrain the rapid advance of its nuclear program.
*Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior advisor on Iran and financial economics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). Follow Saeed on X @SGhasseminejad. For more analysis from Saeed and FDD, please subscribe HERE. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

How US taxpayer dollars line the pockets of Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad
David Adesnik/ New York Post/September 29, 2023
Presidents and prime ministers descended on Manhattan the past two weeks to take part in the 78th annual session of the UN General Assembly. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took the stage at Turtle Bay to call out the dangers the world faces, from war and nuclear weapons to inequality and climate change. Yet while asking world leaders to give more money to the United Nations, he remained silent about the waste, fraud and abuse that plague so many of the organization’s endeavors. There is no better case in point than the constant flow of UN dollars to Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Each July, the UN quietly releases new data on its spending habits. What you’ll find are receipts showing UN agencies have spent $95.5 million over the past eight years to house their staff at the Four Seasons Damascus, including $14.2 million last year. New Yorkers know good hotel rooms don’t come cheap, but the real problem in Damascus is the Four Seasons’ owners are the Assad regime itself and one of the war profiteers who manages the regime’s finances.
The hotel would likely go under if not for UN business; Damascus is not a tourist destination these days. Spending millions at the hotel is a gift to Assad.
The UN claims keeping its staff at the Four Seasons is about keeping them safe.
Yet there has been little fighting in Damascus since 2017.
A former UN diplomat with experience in the Syrian capital told me the regime tells UN agencies it can only guarantee the safety of their staff if they stay at the Four Seasons.
And so they do.
Incidentally, the hotel is not actually entitled to call itself the Four Seasons.
The Toronto-based company that manages the global chain cut all ties to its Damascus affiliate after the Trump administration slapped sanctions on the place in 2019, citing its connections to Assad.
What makes the Four Seasons debacle especially galling is it’s been public knowledge for seven years, and the UN has done nothing about it — or the many other ways the regime siphons off aid for its own benefit.
One of the most lucrative is manipulating exchange rates.
To run massive aid programs in Syria, the UN needs to convert dollars or euros into local currency. Since the regime has a vise grip on the money-changing business, it determines how many Syrian lira the UN gets for each dollar or euro.
The result: The UN gets a much worse rate than other customers.
One of Washington’s top experts on humanitarian aid crunched the numbers and concluded the UN lost $100 million over 18 months to this kind of rate-fixing.
A pair of British reporters first exposed the UN’s seven-figure spending at the Four Seasons and a raft of similar embarrassments, such as directing $8.5 million to so-called charities run by Assad’s wife, Asma.
There was much hand-wringing at UN headquarters, followed by lengthy deliberations that generated a new set of principles for ensuring the independence and impartiality of UN operations in Syria.
Yet as the newest spending data shows, nothing has changed.
The fiascos keep piling up.
The World Health Organization, the UN body with a habit of parroting Beijing’s talking points on COVID, had to suspend its top executive in Damascus last year amid accusations of corruption and abusing her staff.
The Associated Press reported that she plied Syrian officials with cars and gold coins and met surreptitiously with Russian military officers.
Naturally, she lived at the Four Seasons “in a spacious, multi-room suite with two washrooms and a panoramic view of the city.”
Speaking from the podium at Turtle Bay, the secretary-general declared that “the global humanitarian system is on the verge of collapse,” so member states need to step up and donate more to his organization — an apt reminder the UN isn’t wasting its own money at the Four Seasons Damascus.
It’s wasting American taxpayer dollars, British taxpayer pounds, Japanese taxpayer yen and so on. What the United States and its allies should do is make clear to the UN they will turn off the spigot if the body doesn’t get its act together.
But the UN remains a sacred cow, so the Biden administration and other Western governments are loath to speak openly about its habitual submission to Assad’s manipulation. After all, laying out the full truth would come uncomfortably close to an admission that Washington keeps sending billions without pausing to ask whether taxpayer dollars are lining Assad’s pockets.
**David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is working on a co-authored book about the conflict between Israel and Iran. Follow him on X @adesnik. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

The two sides of Iran’s diplomacy
Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/September 29, 2023
There was a global sigh of relief when Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed in Beijing on March 10 to restore diplomatic ties after seven years of rupture. They also signaled a desire for dialogue and reconciliation.
However, while Saudi Arabia has been genuinely trying to translate the Beijing understandings into a real movement toward peace and reconciliation, the signals from Tehran and especially its allies in the region have been mixed, if not confusing.
Since the March meeting, Saudi and Iranian foreign ministers met in April in Beijing. The Saudi foreign minister visited Tehran in June, and in August Iran’s foreign minister visited Saudi Arabia and met the crown prince. The Saudi ambassador’s arrival in Tehran on Sept. 5 was a concrete sign of the new arrangement, especially as he effused about a new dawn in the relationship between the two countries. On Sept. 19 it was revealed that Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi had sent two letters to King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in another sign of improved relations.
The official statements issued by both sides following these events have accentuated the positive and indicated that things were moving in the right direction. However, in terms of actions taken by the two sides, they appear to diverge.
In Yemen, Saudi Arabia sent its ambassador to Sanaa in April to mediate between the Iran-affiliated Houthis and the internationally recognized government. While there was no public breakthrough after several days of intensive discussions, the talks were described as positive. Between Sept. 14 and 18, Riyadh hosted a Houthi delegation led by top negotiator Mohammed Abdulsalam, to resume discussions aimed at reaching a “roadmap” to support the path to peace in Yemen. While this round was also inconclusive, participants were upbeat, describing it as positive.
In May, Saudi Arabia hosted the Arab League summit that restored Syria’s standing in the organization and co-led efforts to address the Syrian crisis, cooperatively with the Syrian government, a close ally of Iran.
Saudi Arabia continued its efforts to support Iraq’s reintegration with the GCC and the rest of the Arab World. In June, the GCC-Iraq electric grid connection was launched from Dammam in a festive occasion to celebrate closer ties between Iraq and GCC member states, led by Saudi Arabia. The two sides had already agreed on an ambitious integration program that includes political and security dialogue, trade and investment cooperation, and people-to-people re-engagement.
In addition to diplomatic overtures and confidence building measures with Iran and its regional allies, Saudi Arabia has embarked on an ambitious diplomatic campaign on several other fronts to deal with pressing issues. Saudi officials have been trying to mediate between Russia and Ukraine to reach a ceasefire, embark on a political solution to the conflict, and exchange prisoners and detainees. They have also put their weight behind efforts to resume grain exports from Ukraine and Russia.
It is likely that there are in Iran and in the movements it supports throughout the region unruly elements who are not buying into the new reconciliation and seek to undermine it.
In Sudan, Saudi Arabia, joined by the US, is mediating between the warring parties. The Jeddah Process is to date the most promising platform to end the Sudan violence or at least de-escalate and establish humanitarian corridors while negotiations on a political solution are taking place. Last week in New York, Saudi Arabia organized an event to energize a humanitarian response plan for Sudan.
Even more ambitious, Saudi Arabia is leading a sustained effort to reinvigorate the Middle East peace process. Joined by the Arab League and the EU, the Kingdom is seeking, in cooperation with Egypt and Jordan too, to breathe life into that seemingly impossible task. On Sept. 18, Saudi Arabia convened Peace Day, an event in New York at the UN General Assembly. About 50 foreign ministers from around the world took part. The aim was to produce a “Peace Supporting Package” that will maximize peace dividends for the Palestinians and Israelis if they reach a peace agreement.
However, Iran does not seem to be quite so fully behind the new policy. Some observers thought it was disconcerting that Iran’s national security adviser Ali Shamkhani was dismissed in May, just two months after he signed the deal with his Saudi counterpart to restore diplomatic ties. More seriously, there was no perceptible effort by Iran to defuse regional crises in which Tehran had considerable influence. In some cases there has been backsliding.
In Yemen, despite the positive atmosphere of recent talks, rhetoric from key Houthi leaders has remained unchanged. While the truce is generally holding, ceasefire violations have increased. On Sept. 25, a Houthi drone attack on the Saudi border with Yemen killed three servicemen from Bahrain. A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition said there had been other recent attacks in the border area, including an attack on a power station and another on a police station.
In Iraq, some politicians, believed to be allied with Iran, have started stirring conflict by repeating old false claims about Kuwait and calling for ending a 2012 maritime boundary treaty, despite the fact that it wasratified by both countries in 2013 and deposited with the UN since 2015, and is recognized by the international community. Some Iranians have even made claims on the Saudi-Kuwait-owned Durra gas field.
These steps, taken since the historic agreement in March to restore diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, do not contribute to confidence building but serve to sow doubt and suspicion.
The two sides of the coin can be seen in Raisi’s speech at the UN on Sept. 19. He praised the diplomatic efforts in the region and gave a nod to peace and dialogue with neighbors, but his passionate eulogy of the deceased Revolutionary Guard warlord Qassem Suleimani was shocking. More troubling was his claim that the “resistance” of the people of Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and Syria had “borne fruit.” These countries have in fact fared badly as a result of Iran’s meddling, politically, socially, economically and in security: the only win here was Tehran’s success in turning them into instruments for destabilization.
Some have accused Tehran of Janus-like duplicity. It is more likely, however, that there are in Iran and in the movements it supports throughout the region unruly elements who are not buying into the new reconciliation and seek to undermine it. Iranian leaders need to speak out and call out those provocateurs who are trying to derail Saudi-Iran diplomatic efforts.
• Dr. Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is the Gulf Cooperation Council assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily represent the GCC. X: @abuhamad1

Due diligence is a must as global conflict threatens our region
Khalaf Ahmad Al-Habtoor/Arab News/September 29, 2023
If you follow the news these days, you might feel like you are watching a fictional action movie because of all the recurrent disasters and calamities. Recently, several countries have got engulfed in chaos, wars and internal and external conflicts. This is not pure coincidence, as the situation is getting worse with no restrictions whatsoever.
Conflicts and tensions are the new norm worldwide; no continent is spared. They are raging in the heart of Europe, notably through the Russian-Ukrainian war and the protests in French streets. In Asia, several countries, such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Israel, are witnessing internal conflicts and instability, while other countries, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, North Korea, South Korea, China and Taiwan, are on the brink of war. Not to mention the civil wars in Sudan and other African countries; even the US, the most powerful country in the world, is threatened by insecurity.
These countries represent the peak of the global conflict that risks spreading to other countries and regions as part of the struggle for control and international influence. The war between Russia and Ukraine is almost a global war by proxy between two camps. All kinds of weapons have been used so far, except for biological and nuclear weapons.
In the two world wars, conflicts between different camps led to the emergence of influential powers that created a new reality based on suppressing others and controlling weak countries at all levels. We are now witnessing a new era of international conflict, almost similar to the conditions that led to the world wars and with comparable goals, even though the means differ.
Ongoing conflicts use innovative methods that conceal their true intentions through deception. The weapons used are not only military, but they also include instigating conflicts and hotspots of ethnic, sectarian, tribal, ideological and civil tensions. Economic weapons lead to the impoverishment and starvation of populations, driving them to emigrate, which can pave the way to the implementation of dubious schemes that are made possible through the chaos of creative immigration.
These wars have dire consequences all over the world, especially in the European countries whose logistic, military and economic resources are being depleted, which leads to their weakening and highly endangers their existence and the lives of their citizens. Wars also take a heavy toll on the global economy and can create food crises that affect everyone on the planet.
In light of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the confrontation in Africa, it can be easily concluded that there is a connection between the wars led by major powers. Conflicts are spreading throughout the continents and states are competing for control. Roles change as new powers emerge while others are eclipsed. Meanwhile, the populations of those African countries are intentionally driven toward Europe in a massive wave of legal and illegal immigration. In my opinion, the flow of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from wars is an imminent threat. For example, systemized immigration from unstable countries to Europe made the Old Continent reel under the burden of refugees, whose presence there wreaked havoc. Individual states are unable to expel them out of fear of the reaction of human rights organizations and other international bodies.
Chaos is being nurtured to achieve mischievous aims. This is the case in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Israel and Iran, where instability reigns. As for Lebanon, which suffers from insecurity and economic instability, the Syrian refugee flow has gotten out of control, posing an unprecedented existential threat to the country. Major powers also have their share of chaos and instability; the protests in France can attest to that.
In the face of such chaos worldwide and old and new conflicts, I, as a Gulf Cooperation Council citizen, cannot but sound the alarm to warn of chaos and conflicts spreading to our countries. What are we planning to do? Will we sit idly by without taking any preventive or defensive measures?
Complacency is not an option. We should be careful and on alert to protect our land and existence. At some point, wars risk spilling over due to conflict between states vying for global power. This would lead to a new world war.
Amid all these conflicts, the GCC countries might face security, military, humanitarian and even economic challenges. Are we ready to deal with these risks if they occur, God forbid?
Prevention is the best treatment. I do not want to spread fear; I just urge you to take the necessary steps to limit the damage and consequences of any disaster that might take place in the world. We should rely on ourselves to face all challenges without waiting for help, either from the East or the West. God helps those who help themselves. In addition, these countries are vulnerable and they will only care about saving themselves.
We are now witnessing a new era of international conflict, almost similar to the conditions that led to the world wars.
In this article, I wanted to shed light on the worrying developments looming over our region that could sweep us away in a vicious circle of conflicts and confrontations, engulfing countries and continents and paving the way for a new era of conflicts and power-sharing.
Therefore, I call upon the GCC countries to establish a consolidated crisis unit to closely monitor the developments and put plans in place to defend our existence, security and stability. I fear conflict and chaos will reach the Arab Gulf, which would face the greatest risk of random and illegal immigration.
Over the years, I warned in my articles — which were later published in my book “Is Anybody Listening?” — of things that actually went on to happen. Today, I am trying to anticipate the events in all transparency and realism. Let us work to protect ourselves and our societies by providing them with all means of defense and prevention, so that they can be ready for any emergency and to undercut all parties trying to implement agendas that are harmful to our Arab region. We will not tolerate any infringement on our lands.
**Khalaf Ahmad Al-Habtoor is a prominent UAE businessman and public figure. He is renowned for his views on international political affairs, his philanthropic activity, and his efforts to promote peace. He has long acted as an unofficial ambassador for his country abroad.