Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 16-17/2024
Pentagon: Miscalculation in Lebanon-Israel tensions could spark wider conflict
Israeli army attacks kill five Lebanese in 24 hours, including two women
Israeli drone strike along Lebanon-Syria border kills Syrian businessman close to the government
Southern Lebanon: Two Deaths in Drone Attack
Three Syrian Children Killed in Israeli Raid on Umm al-Tut
Israel strike on Bint Jbeil kills Hezbollah fighter and his sister
Hezbollah cancels Ashoura rallies in south due to border clashes
Israeli strike targets motorbike on Kfar Tebnit-Khardali road
Germany arrests Lebanese man accused of procuring drone components for Hezbollah
Sami Gemayel: We refuse that negotiations be limited to Hezbollah and Israel
Meeting in Bikfaya Between Cadic and Opposition MPs
Report: Parolin proposed list of 5 presidential candidates
Still at square one: Berri says there are no 'presidential initiatives'
Kouyoumjian Accuses Hezb of Creating Environment for Illegal Weapons
The Shiite Duo: No to a President Unless/Philippe Abi-Akl/This Is Beirut/July 16/2024
Lebanon's Telecommunications Ministry files complaint over Israeli GPS jamming
FPM's Gebran Bassil warns against impunity in corruption cases: 'We cannot remain silent'
French Senator Cadic returns to Lebanon, calls for de-escalation amid Hezbollah-Israel tensions
Beirut Holidays Festival: Reviving the Heartbeat of the Capital
AMCD Condemns Assassination Attempt on President Trump
UNIFIL: Mandate Renewal and Freedom of Movement South of the Litani/Bassam Abou Zeid//This Is Beirut/July 16/2024
Lebanon should not count on Netanyahu’s ‘good’ intentions/Ali Hamade/Arab News/July 16/2024

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 16-17/2024
US receives intel of Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, CNN reports
Trump cements grip on Republicans as ex-rivals fall in line
Iran threat prompted increased protection of Trump, Saturday attack appears unrelated, officials say
Security agencies identified Iranian plot to assassinate Trump separate from weekend attempt
Trump Jr. says he wants ‘veto power’ in staffing second Trump term
Donald Trump Jr says his father is a changed man after shooting, expects him to 'moderate'
Trump courts RFK Jr's support in leaked phone call
House Democrats want to stop early DNC effort to nominate Biden before party convention in August
Wife Of Man Killed At Trump Rally Has Not Heard From Former President
Goldberg: The Trump assassination attempt leaves Biden with just one viable political option
Biden admits Trump 'bullseye' comments a mistake
France's Macron discusses Israel/Hamas war with Egypt, Qatar and Bahrain
Israeli strikes in Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in ‘safe zone’
Gaza city says water treatment stops, 700,000 face health ‘crisis’
Amid new photos, families of Israel hostage soldiers plead for deal
Israeli army says has shortage of tanks
Blinken tells Israeli ministers to do more to cut 'unacceptably high' civilian deaths in Gaza
At least 72 people are killed in a militia attack near Congo's capital in a conflict over land
Pakistani troops kill 10 militants responsible for attack on military base that left 8 soldiers dead
Muslim charity calls court ruling on audit a green light for government overreach
Drones target Iraq's Ain al-Asad airbase, no casualties, say military sources
Islamic State claims responsibility for rare attack at Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Oman
Pakistanis and Indian among six killed in shooting near Oman mosque

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on July 16-17/2024
How Cairo Is Failing the Palestinians/The Algemeiner//David May and Haisam Hassanein/July 16, 2024
Prepare for a Nuclear Iran/Elie Diamond/National Review/July 16/2024
The case against Netanyahu speaking at the US Congress/Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/July 16/2024
What Modi-Putin summit means for China and US/Zaid M. Belbagi/Arab News/July 16/2024
Why Damascus has failed to prevent repeated Israeli strikes on Iranian targets on Syrian territory/ANAN TELLO/Arab News/July 16, 2024
A Season of Elections – But How Much Change?/David Hale/This Is Beirut/July 16/2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 16-17/2024
Pentagon: Miscalculation in Lebanon-Israel tensions could spark wider conflict
LBCI/July 16, 2024
On Tuesday, the Pentagon stated that their main concerns about the current tensions between Lebanon and Israel stem from the possibility of a miscalculation that could ignite a wider conflict that no one wants.

Israeli army attacks kill five Lebanese in 24 hours, including two women
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/July 16, 2024
BEIRUT: Israel continued to target Hezbollah members on Tuesday with attacks by combat drones, less than 24 hours after a member of the party and his two sisters were killed in an air assault on their home in the town of Bint Jbeil. On Tuesday afternoon, an Israeli drone launched a missile at a motorcycle on the Khardali road, a strategic route connecting the Nabatieh area to Marjayoun, killing two people. An eyewitness said: “The motorcycle was carrying two persons, and when several citizens tried to approach the targeted motorcycle, it was subjected to a second airstrike with a guided missile.”On Monday evening, Israeli warplanes had conducted intense raids on the towns of Bint Jbeil, Kfarkela, Mays Al-Jabal and Marwahin, destroying several homes and causing significant damage. One of the strikes hit the home of Amer Jamil Dagher and his sisters, Taghreed and Fawzia, in Bint Jbeil, destroying it and killing all three, who were said to be in their 40s and 50s. Hezbollah mourned their deaths and they were buried on Tuesday afternoon in their hometown, 18 people from which have been killed since fighting in southern Lebanon began on Oct. 8.
The Israeli army said it had “targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in several areas in southern Lebanon on Monday night to eliminate threats.”Hezbollah said it responded to the attacks by “shelling the Kiryat Shmona settlement with dozens of Falaq and Katyusha rockets.”Meanwhile, Israeli forces also shelled the outskirts of Deir Mimas and the town of Yohmor Al-Shaqif, along the Litani River. Lebanese Civil Defense teams and paramedics from Hezbollah and the Amal Movement reportedly worked through the night fighting fires in forests alongside the river caused by Israeli phosphorus shells. Hezbollah said it had targeted a “gathering of Israeli enemy soldiers around the Pranit barracks opposite the Lebanese border town of Rmeish,” “spy equipment at the Al-Raheb site” and “Al-Samaqa site in the occupied Kfarchouba hills.”MP Mohammed Raad, the head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, threatened Israel with “a severe response if the Israeli army launches a large-scale war in Lebanon.” He added: “The Israeli army knows this. We know the enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, and it knows we know its weaknesses.”Raad urged the “enemy to stop its evil against Lebanon and Gaza; we are ready to cease fire on the Lebanese front if the aggression on Gaza stops and the enemy will comply with this.”

Israeli drone strike along Lebanon-Syria border kills Syrian businessman close to the government
AP/July 16, 2024
BEIRUT: An Israeli drone strike on a car Monday near the Lebanon-Syria border killed a prominent Syrian businessman who was sanctioned by the United States and had close ties to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to pro-government media and an official from an Iran-backed group. Mohammed Baraa Katerji was killed when a drone strike hit his car near the area of Saboura, a few kilometers or miles inside Syria after apparently crossing from Lebanon. Israel’s air force has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in recent years, mainly targeting members of Iran-backed groups and Syria’s military. But it has been rare to hit personalities from within the government. The strike also came as Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group have been exchanging fire on an almost daily basis since early October, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war. An official from an Iran-backed group said that Katerji was killed instantly while in his SUV on the highway linking Lebanon with Syria. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media. The pro-government Al-Watan daily quoted unnamed “sources” as saying that Katerji, 48, was killed in a “Zionist drone strike on his car.” It gave no further details. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that Katerji was killed while in a car with Lebanese license plates, adding that he was apparently targeted because he used to fund the “Syrian resistance” against Israel in the Golan Heights, as well as his links to Iran-backed groups in Syria. Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment in its northern neighbor, has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges them.
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, sanctioned Katerji in 2018 as Assad’s middleman to trade oil with the Daesh group and for facilitating weapons shipments from Iraq to Syria.
The US Treasury declined Associated Press requests for comment. The sanctions imposed on Katerji were authorized under an Obama-era executive order issued in 2011 that prohibits certain transactions with Syria. A search of the OFAC database indicates that the sanctions were still in effect against Katerji and his firm at the time of his death. OFAC said in 2018 that Katerji was responsible for import and export activities in Syria and assisted with transporting weapons and ammunition under the pretext of importing and exporting food items. These shipments were overseen by the US­ designated Syrian General Intelligence Directorate, according to OFAC. It added that the Syria-based Katerji Company is a trucking company that has also shipped weapons from Iraq to Syria. Additionally, in a 2016 trade deal between the government of Syria and IS, the Katerji Company was identified as the exclusive agent for providing supplies to IS-controlled areas, including oil and other commodities. Katerji and his brother, Hussam — widely referred to in Syria as the “Katerji brothers” — got involved in oil business a few years after the country’s conflict began in March 2011. Hussam Katerji is a former member of Syria’s parliament.

Southern Lebanon: Two Deaths in Drone Attack
This Is Beirut/July 16/2024 
Two were killed in an Israeli drone attack, targeting a motorcycle on the Nabatieh-Khardali road on Tuesday. Eyewitnesses reported that two people were riding the motorcycle, and when a number of citizens tried to approach after the first hit, it was targeted again with a guided missile, which caused the death of the two drivers.Cross border clashes continued into the early hours of this morning, fires flared in the forests adjacent to the Litani River, near Marjayoun, resulting from intense Israeli phosphorous shelling. The Lebanese Civil Defense teams and “Al-Risalah” scouts worked on extinguishing the fires that raged throughout the night. Moreover, at dawn on Tuesday, the Israeli army opened heavy machine gunfire towards the forests adjacent to Ramya, Aita al-Shaab, Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab. The Israeli army also launched flares throughout the night over border villages adjacent to the Blue Line, in the western and central sectors. For its part, Hezbollah announced the shelling of “Kiryat Shmona with dozens of Falak and Katyusha rockets in response to the Israeli air raid on Bint Jbeil on Monday.”

Three Syrian Children Killed in Israeli Raid on Umm al-Tut
This Is Beirut/July 16/2024 
Three Syrian children were killed and others wounded on Tuesday evening, in an Israeli airstrike that targeted the house they lived in with their family near a school in the Umm al-Tut town, Tyre district. Mohammad Jarkas, Jan Jarkas and Khalil Khalil’s parents work in a watermelon field in Umm al-Tut. Rescue teams that arrived at the targeted location transported the three bodies to a hospital in the area, while other teams began clearing the rubble of the house. In the afternoon, two Young Syrians, Abdul Mutalib Abdul Fattah Nanis and Hamza Murhej Shaaban, were killed in an Israeli drone attack targeting a motorcycle on the Kfar Tibnit-Khardali road. In other field developments, Israeli artillery shelling targeted the outskirts of Deir Mimas and the eastern outskirts of the town of Yohmor al-Shaqif, connected to the Litani River. Moreover, the Israeli army targeted in the late afternoon the outskirts of al-Qouzah and the area between Aita al-Shaab and Ramya. Additionally, drones were recorded flying at medium altitude over the Tyre area, especially over the city, while a drone raided the outskirts between the towns of Dhayra and Yarine. For its part, Hezbollah claimed an attack on the Kiryat Shmona settlement (Khirbet Khalsa) “with dozens of Katyusha

Israel strike on Bint Jbeil kills Hezbollah fighter and his sister
Agence France Presse/July 16/2024
An Israeli air strike has killed a Hezbollah fighter and his sister in south Lebanon, the National News Agency (NNA) and the group said.Later, Hezbollah said it fired rockets at northern Israel in response. Israel's military said it had targeted on Monday an arms depot and a military installation belonging to the powerful Iran-backed group. "The Israeli enemy committed a massacre of civilians in the town of Bint Jbeil, with one brother and a sister in the Dagher family killed," the NNA reported. It said another sister was gravely wounded when Israeli aircraft hit the family's house twice, destroying it. Hezbollah in a statement later on Monday announced the death of one of its fighters from the Dagher family in Bint Jbeil, confirming the NNA's report. An Israeli military statement said that aircraft "struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Bint Jbeil and a Hezbollah military structure... in southern Lebanon" near the border village of Kfar Kila.The NNA also reported an Israeli strike hitting Kfar Kila. On Monday night, Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona "in response to the aggression of the Israeli enemy including the horrible massacre in Bint Jbeil". The Israeli military said it shot down about half of the roughly two dozen rockets fired, without mentioning any injuries. Hezbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip. The violence, largely restricted to the border area, has raised fears of all-out conflict between the foes, who last went to war in the summer of 2006. In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed 505 people, mostly fighters but also including 98 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.

Hezbollah cancels Ashoura rallies in south due to border clashes
Associated Press/July 16/2024
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has said that, because of the ongoing fighting with Israel, Hezbollah will not hold rallies in much of southern Lebanon this week commemorating the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein.
Ashoura is one of the most important dates on the Shiite calendar, but this year's solemn holy day comes as Hezbollah and Israeli troops have been exchanging fire on an almost daily basis since war broke out in Gaza. Nasrallah said in a televised speech Monday night that no rallies would be held in an area that includes the port city of Tyre, the market town of Nabatiyeh, as well as the towns of Khiam and Bint Jbeil near the border with Israel. His announcement came as Israel killed several civilians in an airstrike in Bint Jbeil on Monday night, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, which did not immediately provide further details. Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon have killed over 450 people, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also more than 80 civilians and non-combatants. On the Israeli side, 21 soldiers and 17 civilians have been killed since the war in Gaza began. Hezbollah annually holds rallies in different parts of Lebanon but the largest is in Beirut’s southern suburbs, which is usually attended by tens of thousands. Nasrallah gives a speech on the day that falls on the 10th day of the Muslim month of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, which this year coincides with Wednesday.
Millions of Shiite Muslims around the world commemorate Ashoura, marking the 7th-century martyrdom of Hussein that gave birth to their faith.

Israeli strike targets motorbike on Kfar Tebnit-Khardali road
Naharnet/July 16/2024 
An Israeli drone strike targeted a motorcycle on the Kfar Tebnit-Khardali road on Tuesday, reportedly killing two Hezbollah members. Heavy-caliber artillery shells meanwhile targeted the outskirts of the southern town of Deir Mimas. Israeli forces had at dawn fired heavy-caliber machineguns at the forests that are adjacent to the southern border towns of Ramia, Aita al-Shaab, Naqoura and Alma al-Shaab. Israeli artillery also targeted the stream of the Litani River, the Slouqi valley facing the town of Qabrikha, and the outskirts of the town of Bani Hayyan. On Monday night, Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at the Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmona in response to an Israeli strike that killed a Hezbollah member and his sister in Bint Jbeil. Hezbollah has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces in support of ally Hamas since the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.The violence, largely restricted to the border area, has raised fears of all-out conflict between the foes, who last went to war in the summer of 2006. In Lebanon, the cross-border violence since October has killed 505 people, mostly fighters but also including 98 civilians, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, at least 29 people have been killed, the majority of them soldiers, according to the authorities.

Germany arrests Lebanese man accused of procuring drone components for Hezbollah
Associated Press/July 16/2024
A Lebanese man accused of being a member of the Hezbollah militant group and procuring drone components that were to be exported for use in attacks against Israel has been arrested in Germany, prosecutors said Monday. The suspect, identified only as Fadel Z. in line with German privacy rules, was arrested in Salzgitter in northern Germany on Sunday, federal prosecutors said in a statement. He is suspected of membership in a foreign terrorist organization. He joined Hezbollah in Lebanon by the summer of 2016, prosecutors said. This year, he allegedly started procuring components in Germany for the assembly of military drones, particularly engines, on the group's orders. "They were supposed to be exported to Lebanon and used in terrorist attacks on Israel," prosecutors said. On Monday, Fadel Z. was brought before a judge, who ordered him kept in custody pending a possible indictment. The Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Israel have been trading near daily exchanges of fire since the Israel-Hamas war broke out nine months ago. Hezbollah says it is striking Israel in solidarity with Gaza. Hezbollah's leadership says it will stop its attacks once there is a cease-fire in Gaza and that, while it does not want war, it is ready for one.

Sami Gemayel: We refuse that negotiations be limited to Hezbollah and Israel
Naharnet/July 16/2024 
Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel has stressed that “the most important step today would be deactivating the southern front so that we take care of our country, economy, hospitals and education.” “Once the current war ends, regardless of its results, there should be a frankness session among the Lebanese to think of solutions for all problems, without eliminating anyone or drawing wars,” Gemayel told a Kataeb delegation from Zahle that visited him in Bikfaya. Addressing the international community, Gemayel said: “We reject that the negotiations be limited to Hezbollah and Israel and to see discussions that satisfy both parties amid the absence of the Lebanese people.” He added: “Resolution 1701 which prevents dragging Lebanon into war is not sufficient and Resolution 1559 must be simultaneously implemented in order to remove the weapons of militias.”

Meeting in Bikfaya Between Cadic and Opposition MPs
This Is Beirut/July 16/2024 
MP Samy Gemayel met with French Senator Olivier Cadic in Bikfaya, alongside MPs Michel Moawad, Neemat Frem, Nadim Gemayel, Elias Hankach, Salim el-Sayegh, Ghassan Hasbani and Bilal Al-Hashimi A comprehensive discussion took place about the developments in the region and the impact of the escalating southern front and the mutual threats between Hezbollah and Israel on Lebanon. The ongoing negotiations for de-escalation, in the absence of Lebanon, were also reviewed. “I returned after an 18-month absence to find that no progress had been made, no president had been elected, and no government had been formed,” Cadic said. He pointed out that “the security of the Lebanese is in danger due to Hezbollah’s unilateral decision to open a new confrontation with Israel, which threatens not only the security of the Lebanese but also many of our French citizens living in Lebanon. That’s why I decided to return and assess the extent of the danger facing Lebanon today.” He stated that his concern stems from the ongoing external influence on Lebanon, “which is no longer free or independent as it should be.” He expressed his worry about “the presence of 700 French soldiers in the international peacekeeping forces in the south, stationed at the border. I want to remind those fueling the conflict that the French soldiers came for peace, not to be part of a conflict not decided by the Lebanese.”

Report: Parolin proposed list of 5 presidential candidates
Naharnet/July 16/2024 
The Vatican’s Secretary of State Pietro Parolin proposed a list of five presidential candidates during his latest visit to Lebanon, a media report said. “The candidates can be considered consensual and they enjoy the acceptance of all parties,” Kuwait’s al-Anbaa newspaper has reported. Parolin discussed the list with “Christian leaders whom he met at the Papal Embassy in Harissa,” the daily added.The list contained the names of Lebanese Ambassador to the Vatican and ex-MP Farid Elias al-Khazen, former ambassador to the Vatican and former army intelligence chief Brig. Gen. George Khoury and former minister Jean-Louis Cardahi, the newspaper said.

Still at square one: Berri says there are no 'presidential initiatives'
Naharnet/July 16/2024
Almost two years after Michel Aoun's term ended in October 2022, Lebanese MPs still haven't managed to agree on a president or even on a dialogue to elect one. Opposition MPs have started a presidential initiative, calling for consultations or an open election session, as they refuse a dialogue chaired by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. Berri's camp believe that a dialogue in parliament must be chaired by its Speaker, Berri. As both parties - the so-called Axis of Defiance and its opponents - exchange accusations, Lebanon remains without a president, plunged into an economic crisis, with tensions on its southern border as Hezbollah fights Israel in support of Gaza. "We haven't made any progress, we are still at square one," Berri told al-Joumhouria newspaper, in remarks published Tuesday. There are no initiatives," he said, apparently dismissing the opposition's initiative that suggested unofficial consultations in parliament that would not be chaired by Berri. "The ball is in the court of those who are rejecting consensus, not in mine," Berri told the daily.

Kouyoumjian Accuses Hezb of Creating Environment for Illegal Weapons
This Is Beirut/July 16/2024
Richard Kouyoumjian, head of the foreign relations department of the Lebanese Forces, on Tuesday, accused the “Shiite Duo” of creating an adequate environment for the proliferation of illegal weapons. In an interview with an online media, he considered that “Hezbollah supporters, are thugs in the street.”This group wants to control an area in which it has no influence,” Kouyoumjian said, stressing that “this reality is created by Hezbollah”. Kouyoumjian’s comments come in the wake of an incident that took place on Saturday, in Burj Hammoud. Two people were wounded in a dispute that escalated into heavy gunfire. A young man later died in the hospital, after suffering a head shot.The clash comes a day after a sectarian dispute in which a group of youths chanted “Shiia Shiia” in front of a “Tashnag” party office. On Sunday, another dispute in the “Madi Neighborhood” in Beirut’s southern suburbs escalated into an exchange of gunfire, resulting in the injury of a Hezbollah liaison, Samir Kabbani. Kabbani, who was in the area to try to address the issue, suffered a head wound and died a few hours later. In a speech, on Monday, Hezbollah Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, commented on the Madi neighborhood incident. He stated that his group had an agreement with Amal to refer to the Lebanese judiciary on the matter. “The investigation is the responsibility of the Lebanese Army and the guilty party will be handed over to them.”

The Shiite Duo: No to a President Unless…
Philippe Abi-Akl/This Is Beirut/July 16/2024
Since the beginning of the presidential vacancy on October 31, 2022, the Shiite duo (Amal-Hezbollah) has not taken any significant steps to expedite the election of a new president. Their actions have varied from casting blank ballots to voting for Sleiman Frangieh for the first time during the 12th session on June 14, 2023, during which Frangieh secured 51 votes against the 59 votes received by former minister Jihad Azour, the candidate backed by the opposition coalition and the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM).
As previously mentioned, the Shiite duo doesn’t want to elect a president, which is why they support House Speaker, Nabih Berri’s initiative put forward on September 1, 2023: “A seven-day dialogue, followed by open sessions with consecutive rounds until a solution is found.” In this regard, Berri questioned the refusal of the Lebanese Forces (LF) and the Kataeb party to embrace any format for dialogue and consensus. While the Shiite duo is upholding its unwavering position, the opposition underwent a significant shift. Despite MP Michel Mouawad garnering substantial support, he was sidelined in favor of Jihad Azour during the 12th electoral session, due to the rejection by MPs aligned with the Moumanaa, also known as the “Resistance” axis. However, the Shiite duo’s position didn’t alter, failing to meet the opposition halfway. Amidst this inflexibility, in an attempt to navigate through the Moumanaa’s steadfast deadlock, and for the sake of emphasizing this camp’s responsibility for the deliberate obstructions, the opposition coalition called for consensus on a third candidate: an independent president able to implement reforms, one who is recognized both locally and regionally, and in line with the Paris Quintet specifications. However, the Shiite duo did not amend their position, adhering to dialogue as outlined by Nabih Berri, with Sleiman Frangieh confirmed as their final candidate.
Despite repeated efforts to elect a president, the Shiite duo squarely placed the blame for the election gridlock on the opposition camp. They also held the Christians accountable, as per the Constitution, the president is Christian. Furthermore, they accused them of stalling the election for personal, sectarian, or political reasons. The House Speaker conveyed this sentiment to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin. The latter’s response was: “Everyone is responsible, not only one group.” In this context, members of the opposition camp are pondering who bears the responsibility for the current presidential deadlock—themselves or the Moumanaa axis?
Returning to the core issue of the presidential dossier, sources within the opposition assert that “Hezbollah is committed to the following equation: no to a president who would betray the “Resistance”, who is deemed unreliable and cannot ease their concerns. This principle guides their support for candidate Sleiman Frangieh. According to these sources, the Shiite party firmly opposes “addressing the presidential issue until a ceasefire is secured in Gaza.” Hezbollah conveyed this position to Western security and political officials who recently visited the party’s central HQ in Haret Hreik. Opposition sources argue that the Moumanaa’s parties led by Iran, are focused on Gaza and not overly concerned about the presidential election.
Hezbollah’s assertion that there is no connection between Gaza, the southern front, and the presidential election is misleading. Their reluctance to engage in discussions on the presidential issue or take any proactive steps, despite their clear awareness of their substantial influence and responsibility in this matter is blatant. Consequently, the opposition questions why the Shiite duo chose to oppose their initiative instead of collaborating to facilitate the presidential election, despite claiming a separation between Gaza and the electoral process. Nabih Berri and the Shiite duo’s MPs promptly echoed this critical stance towards the opposition’s efforts.
Many questions can thus be raised. Why hasn’t the Shiite duo helped in merging initiatives to formulate a unified stance that facilitates calling for the election of a president? The opposition also wonders: Who is behind the current deadlock? Previously, who stalled initiatives such as the Paris Quintet, the Moderation bloc’s initiative, the FPM’s proposal, and the Progressive Socialist Party’s initiative. And currently, who is hindering the opposition camp’s initiative?
Political circles close to Hezbollah believe that the presidential election is a minor issue in light of the regional dynamics and the Gaza war. The confrontation with Israel is seen as pivotal and essential, requiring concerted efforts to thwart its expansionist ambitions and its plans that undermine the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the two-state solution. Currently, the Shiite party’s focus is mainly regional. Therefore, it has prioritized opening the only southern front to support Gaza and keep Israel engaged in the north, following the failure to unite regional fronts. Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah recently highlighted the existence of “military and political support fronts for Gaza, such as Syria, and Iran”.
Again, the opposition camp asks: Why weren’t Syria and Iran a support front? That could have prevented the loss of Lebanese lives and the destruction of Lebanon’s lands. Furthermore, why should Lebanon be the only country amongst 21 other Arab nations to support Gaza militarily? How about Syria, the vibrant fortress of Arabism, or Iraq, the land of resistance, or also Egypt, the heart of Arabism? And how about the Gulf states and the Maghreb countries?
It is quiet baffling that Lebanon, mired in financial and economic crises, with a disintegrating state and collapsing institutions, and with its military and security forces unable to meet the basic needs of their personnel, should be the only country supporting Gaza militarily. This decision has had catastrophic consequences for Lebanon. Sources within the LF wonder why Hezbollah is more focused on Gaza than on Lebanon and its people, who are bearing a heavy burden.
Since October 8, it has become clear that the “Resistance” in Lebanon is operating according to an Iranian agenda, effectively serving as a branch of Iran’s al-Quds Force. The Shiite duo is trying to use this alliance as leverage in the presidential election. In fact, Hezbollah is looking for a political deal, along with a cease-fire in Gaza, that would grant it political gains outside the National Accord (the Taif Agreement) signed by all political forces in Saudi Arabia in 1989. “This document is the only agreement signed by all MPs after the Lebanon war,” stated a former MP who attended the Saudi meetings. Therefore, Hezbollah seeks to obtain important positions within the Lebanese state that will ensure its continuity in line with the potential regional settlement in the event of border demarcations with Israel and between Syria and Israel. In this regard, the deal will allow the party to sustain its presence through the creation of “border guard brigades” as is the case in Iraq with the Popular Mobilization Forces. Hezbollah refuses to let go of its weapons, and end its “Resistance” role and presence which it uses as leverage to enforce pressure and authority whenever needed.
Will the opposition yield to the Shiite duo the way the March 14 camp did in 2016, when Hezbollah insisted on nominating General Michel Aoun under the equation “No president but Aoun,” eventually endorsing him? Or will they persist in their opposition, steadfast in their call for strict adherence to the Constitution, unwavering commitment to the Taif Agreement, and its complete implementation before any talks of potential amendments? An opposition MP asserts, “The 2016 scenario won’t be replicated, regardless of the sacrifices. There is a stark difference between pre-settlement and post-settlement Lebanon, and this agreement will dictate our future actions.”

Lebanon's Telecommunications Ministry files complaint over Israeli GPS jamming
LBCI/July 16/2024
The Ministry of Telecommunications announced that it has filed a complaint regarding Israeli jamming, which primarily affects the Global Positioning System (GPS), to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This complaint has been directed to the United Nations and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for consideration.

FPM's Gebran Bassil warns against impunity in corruption cases: 'We cannot remain silent'
LBCI/July 16/2024
President of the Free Patriotic Movement, Gebran Bassil, emphasized that "the presidential vacuum and the risks of war and displacement should not make us forget the financial collapse that accelerated after October 17."On Tuesday, he noted that "this is a just cause we will not forget, nor will we remain silent about, especially since former President Michel Aoun was behind the forensic audit and the preliminary report yielded alarming results."Bassil stressed in a press conference on the issue of corruption following the movement's regular meeting that "the recovery of depositors' funds is not mere rhetoric, but requires action through the recovery of funds transferred abroad selectively. We have proposed a law to recover these funds."He said: "To date, 'Alvarez & Marsal' has not been provided with the required figures, and we are following up on the Optimum file," noting that "corruption files that led to looting depositors' funds from banks cannot be ignored, and we cannot live in a country where corruption thrives. The principle of impunity cannot be tolerated."He added: "We will not remain silent, and during the bloc meeting, we signed a set of questions for the government in which we provided the necessary details and posed 10 questions revolving around preventing the judiciary from doing its job and the destinations to which the funds were transferred.""We will give a short period; if we do not get an answer, we will go to the judiciary. We have contacted international lawyers about the possibility of filing complaints and reports in European countries to pursue the case in European courts. We will stay on this; it is our cause, mission, and message, and we will follow it to the end," Bassil noted. He highlighted that "Judge Ghada Aoun was targeted to have the case removed from her, and while you may be able to take it from a Lebanese judge, you will not be able to take it from the Free Patriotic Movement."

French Senator Cadic returns to Lebanon, calls for de-escalation amid Hezbollah-Israel tensions
LBCI/July 16/2024
MP Samy Gemayel and several opposition MPs met with French Senator Olivier Cadic to discuss the developments in the region, the impact of escalating tensions on the southern front, and the mutual threats between Hezbollah and Israel on the situation in Lebanon, as well as the ongoing negotiations for de-escalation. During the meeting, Cadic said: "It was a valuable opportunity to exchange views with you and with several parliamentarians from different political blocs who explained their perspective on the situation in Lebanon."He affirmed: "I returned after an 18-month absence to find that no progress has been made, no president has been elected, and no government has been formed.""The security of the Lebanese people is in danger due to Hezbollah's unilateral decision to open a new confrontation with Israel, which threatens not only the security of the Lebanese but also many of our French citizens living in Lebanon. That's why I decided to return and assess the magnitude of the threat facing Lebanon today," the French Senator added. He continued: "My concern stems from the continued external influence on Lebanon, which is no longer free or independent as it should be. I am also worried about the presence of 700 French soldiers in the international peacekeeping forces in the south, stationed on the border.""I would like to remind those who are fueling the conflict that the French soldiers came for peace and not to be part of a conflict that the Lebanese did not decide," he concluded.

Beirut Holidays Festival: Reviving the Heartbeat of the Capital
LBCI/July 16/2024
Many are eagerly awaiting the Beirut Holidays Festival, which is making a strong comeback after a five-year hiatus. Beirut also eagerly awaits such events as they provide much-needed economic support. The festival, held in the capital known for its great food and vibrant nightlife, will significantly boost activity in establishments ranging from the smallest snack bars to the largest nightclubs. Your evening will begin with delicious food at Beirut’s restaurants before the concert, and after the concert, the night will continue with the after party, eventually culminating in the best breakfast as the sun rises. With the influx of visitors, hotel occupancy rates are expected to exceed 70% during the festival period, according to industry insiders. This increase will include Lebanese visitors coming from distant areas, tourists, expatriates, and the artists and musicians' teams, leading to a bustling atmosphere. The return of festivals and tourist activity to the capital has also encouraged investments in retail shops. Beirut’s markets will see more than 100 shops opening from now until October, revitalizing the local economy and enhancing the shopping experience for visitors. To ensure the success of such a significant event, a dedicated team has been preparing and working for months, creating numerous direct job opportunities. This effort not only benefits the festival but also provides employment for many individuals, contributing to the local economy.  The success of Beirut and the efficiency of its people in organizing prestigious events over the years showcases Lebanon’s competitive advantage in entertainment, arts, and culture. Therefore, visitors to Beirut and its festivals will enjoy the beautiful atmosphere while simultaneously supporting the country's economy, creating a win-win situation for everyone involved.

AMCD Condemns Assassination Attempt on President Trump
July 15, 2024
The American Mideast Coalition for Democracy condemns the assassination attempt on President Trump and extends our most profound sympathy to the families of the victims. AMCD joins President Biden in calling for lowering the political temperature. “We have to come together as a country again,” said AMCD co-chair Tom Harb. “This assassination attempt is the direct result of the demonization of President Trump and his supporters.”“We’ve seen the political rhetoric against Republicans become more and more heated beginning with Nixon, growing under Reagan, escalating under George W. Bush and then hitting the stratosphere under Trump,” explained AMCD co-chair John Hajjar. “No one is surprised this happened. We’re incredibly thankful President Trump survived relatively unscathed, but at the same time, we mourn the loss of Corey Comperatore, who tragically lost his life while shielding his family, and we pray for the two others who remain hospitalized.” AMCD joins in the call for the return to civil discourse in America. We all love our country and though we may have different views on how best to move forward, we should be able to speak to each other respectfully and with compassion. We are all Americans and we must stand together against political violence in all its forms.

UNIFIL: Mandate Renewal and Freedom of Movement South of the Litani
Bassam Abou Zeid//This Is Beirut/July 16/2024
The mandate of the UN Peacekeeping Force in South Lebanon (UNIFIL) is to be renewed in August, on the basis that the multinational force has a crucial role in ensuring the implementation of Resolution 1701, once a long-term settlement is achieved on the border with Israel, diplomatic sources maintain.
Caretaker Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdallah Bou Habib reportedly received a verbal approval from the United States, France, Russia and China – all of which are permanent members of the UN Security Council and have veto power – that no amendments will be made to UNIFIL’s mandate as per the new renewal decision, and that the peacekeepers’ mission will remain the same, as stipulated in last year’s renewal. However, last year, China and Russia abstained from voting on the decision. According to the sources, the renewal will be not be an easy task, contrary to what the Lebanese side believes. In fact, it is only a matter of time before the Americans, the French and the British insist on the necessity of giving more leeway to UNIFIL south of the Litani river, and allowing the Lebanese army to protect the force by prohibiting any side from getting in the way of its patrols – coordinated or not. The aim is to avoid incidents similar to the killing of the Irish soldier in December 2022 – which the Lebanese authorities and judiciary dealt with neglectfully, eventually releasing the prime suspect who is said to be affiliated with Hezbollah. After all, the resolution in its current form allows UNIFIL freedom of movement anywhere. Still, according to the sources, amendments to UNIFIL’s mission may be brought up in the upcoming phase, that is, when a ceasefire is declared and a settlement is reached – if ever, in the South. That being said, such amendments cannot be included under the current circumstances, given that the war is still raging and that the Lebanese authorities, influenced by Hezbollah, still refuse to discuss the matter for the time being.
The diplomatic sources also highlighted the fact that neither the Americans nor the British or the French will accept that things go back to what they were before October 8 in South Lebanon. The three remain convinced that the Lebanese ought to be more serious about implementing resolution 1701, and the army should play a more active role in preserving a safe and weapon-free area south of the Litany River. In return, these countries would commit to working with Israel towards an understanding aimed at resolving the disputed spots along the border with Lebanon, with the exception of the Shebaa farms, and putting a permanent end to all Israeli violations – which can only be guaranteed through a proper implementation of resolution 1701 from the Lebanese side.Additional information shared by the diplomatic sources indicates that, this time, resolution 1701 will be fully implemented, even if this means that amendments have to be made to the UNIFIL’s mission. Finally, the sources added that the amendments in question would not be vetoed by Russia or China, because all sides want to keep UNIFIL south of the Litani, in order to preserve peace and security there.

Lebanon should not count on Netanyahu’s ‘good’ intentions
Ali Hamade/Arab News/July 16/2024
Despite the bloody episode of the latest Israeli strike in Gaza aimed at eliminating Mohammed Deif, who is No. 2 in the chain of command in Hamas, there is still hope of a temporary truce between the Israeli army and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. This could begin with agreement on a first phase of prisoner and hostage exchanges between the two sides. But on the front with Lebanon, the question arises: what about US-French efforts to put an end to the war of attrition that Hezbollah, the pro-Iranian militia, is waging against Israel from Lebanese territory? It is a question that remains unanswered, especially since the proposals that US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein has been carrying for some time and distributing between Paris, Tel Aviv and Beirut have hit a brick wall, as the pro-Iranian party absolutely refuses to consider any proposal before a definitive ceasefire in Gaza.
As a result, the hopes of putting an end to this mini-war initiated by Hezbollah are fading. This is because what is being proposed in Gaza is a truce with no further obligations for Israel and with the absence of a definitive ceasefire, followed by a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
This means that the US proposals, which were based on a series of earlier French and American proposals aimed at convincing Hezbollah to halt the military escalation in southern Lebanon, will remain mere words for the time being.
In practice, the proposals revolve around a return to what looks like compliance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701, modified in terms of the extent of the Hezbollah militants’ withdrawal and the evacuation of the area between the border with Israel and the Litani River. In exchange, Israel undertakes to respect the ceasefire and halt its violations of Lebanese airspace. Finally, the two parties will enter into negotiations aimed at settling all disputes between Lebanon and Israel relating to the demarcation of the temporary Blue Line that was established in 2000.
However, since the possibility of a truce in the Gaza Strip does not mean the end of the war, it does not meet Hezbollah’s conditions. Does this mean that Hezbollah will respond to the truce in Gaza with a truce in Lebanon? If not, how could the Israeli side manage a truce with Lebanon? Moreover, would it be realistic to attempt to build a long-term sense of stability on this basis? Some observers believe that Israel could play the diplomatic card and blame Hezbollah for a possible open war, accusing it of igniting the front. It is not certain that the mediators will succeed in imposing a truce in Gaza any time soon. Let us not forget that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s recent statements, in which he separates the situation in Gaza from that in southern Lebanon, reflect a clear commitment to continuing the war against Hezbollah until one of the two following scenarios happens: One, the reality in southern Lebanon changes and Hezbollah is forced to return to Resolution 1701, withdrawing from the border. Or, two, Israel accepts the new reality of Hezbollah taking over southern Lebanon and thus putting an end to the implementation of Resolution 1701 by being deployed at zero distance from northern Israel.
In another scenario, the fighting stops at the end of the war in Gaza. The pro-Iranian party succeeds in burying Resolution 1701 and negotiating a new demarcation of the Blue Line under the weight of its bombardments. Unfortunately, this would mean the end of Resolution 1701, that the French and US idea of amending it had fallen through and that Iran had openly become a neighbor of Israel. However, it is not certain that the mediators will succeed in imposing a truce in Gaza any time soon. It is very likely that, pending the US presidential election on Nov. 5 and following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu is maneuvering to gain time against a US administration at half-mast. Indeed, President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and the growing calls within the Democratic camp for his withdrawal from the presidential race play in the favor of the Israeli prime minister’s plan to continue the war against Hamas for as long as it takes for its total annihilation. July 24, the date of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, during which he will deliver a speech to the US Congress, should also be remembered, as the Israeli PM will have no hesitation in embarking on a visit to the federal capital while it is overwhelmed by a major crisis with Biden and the progressive wing within the Democratic Party. So, we do not think we can count on a truce in Gaza, still less on the intentions of Netanyahu and Gallant toward Hezbollah, which from the top of its tree stubbornly defies the principle of gravity.
• Ali Hamade is an editorial journalist at the Annahar newspaper in Lebanon.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 16-17/2024
US receives intel of Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, CNN reports
Reuters/July 17, 2024
The United States received intelligence from a human source in recent weeks about an Iranian plot to try to assassinate former President Donald Trump, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing people briefed on the matter. CNN reported that there was no indication that the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate Trump on Saturday was connected to the plot.

Trump cements grip on Republicans as ex-rivals fall in line
AFP/July 17, 2024
MILWAUKEE: Donald Trump’s failed primary challengers are to take the stage Tuesday at the Republican Party convention, in a display of fealty to its all-dominant champion and now official US presidential candidate.The unified front comes a day after the ex-president triggered high emotion when entering the convention hall in Milwaukee as he made his first public appearance since surviving a weekend assassination attempt. Three of Trump’s political rivals turned endorsers — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — are to address the convention’s 2,400 delegates Tuesday evening. Haley, who just four months ago said the United States can’t “go through four more years of chaos” under Trump, had not been expected to appear. But Saturday’s shooting at a Pennsylvania campaign rally reshuffled the deck, and Haley is now on Tuesday’s speaking schedule along with Ramaswamy and DeSantis, a convention source said. Seeking to reassure voters he remains robust despite the near-miss which injured his ear, Trump’s team announced he will address a campaign rally on Saturday afternoon — just one week on from the attack — with his new vice presidential pick J.D. Vance. Trump received a rapt ovation on Monday evening when he appeared with a bandage on his right ear, signaling how close he came to losing his life when a lone shooter on a roof fired at him. On the other side of the country, meanwhile, President Joe Biden on Tuesday called for a ban on the type of semi-automatic rifle that was used in the attempted assassination. “An AR-15 was used in the shooting of Donald Trump... It’s time to outlaw them,” the Democrat said during a campaign event in Las Vegas, adding: “Join me in getting these weapons of war off the streets of America.”Trump on Monday had solidified the Republican ticket on day one of the four-day convention, announcing Vance, a 39-year-old US senator from Ohio and a one-time harsh critic turned uncompromising supporter, as his running mate. Vance, who says his modest Rust Belt upbringing makes him a voice for working-class voters in left-behind America, is set to address the convention Wednesday evening, while Trump will formally accept the party’s nomination in a prime-time speech Thursday. The standard-bearer for a new kind of populism that has come to the fore under Trump, Vance is also one of the least experienced VP picks in modern history. But he embraces Trump’s isolationist, anti-immigration America First movement and is further to the right than his new boss on some issues — including abortion, where he embraces calls for federal legislation. On the convention floor, delegate and Trump supporter Austin Utley of Texas said he experienced “all kinds of crazy emotions” when his political hero made an appearance. “The fact that he’s here two days after he got shot just shows why we all support him and why everybody’s here, because he’s a fighter,” Utley told AFP. Trump has also been seeking to corral additional support for his buoyant campaign, calling Robert F Kennedy Junior to see if the independent candidate would drop out and endorse the Republican. On the call, leaked to social media Tuesday, Trump told Kennedy the graze on his ear from the shooting “felt like the world’s largest mosquito.”Less than four months before election day some 50,000 Republicans have descended on the convention in Wisconsin, the state where the Republican Party was born 170 years ago. While Trump, 78, is increasingly confident of a return to the White House — despite multiple legal problems and two impeachments clouding his first term — Biden is reeling from weak polls and Democratic concerns over his health.

Iran threat prompted increased protection of Trump, Saturday attack appears unrelated, officials say
Colleen Long And Aamer Madhani/WASHINGTON (AP)/July 16, 2024
A threat from Iran prompted the U.S. Secret Service to boost protection around Donald Trump before Saturday's attempted assassination of the former president, though it appears unrelated to the rally attack, according to two U.S. officials.
Upon learning of the threat, the Biden administration reached out to senior officials at the Secret Service to make them aware, the officials said, adding it was shared with the lead agent on Trump's protection detail and the Trump campaign. That prompted the agency to surge resources and assets. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. The additional resources did not prevent Saturday's attack at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania that left Trump injured to the ear, killed one rallygoer and severely injured two more when a 20-year-old with an AR-style rifle opened fire from a nearby rooftop. “As we have said many times, we have been tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years, dating back to the last administration," said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. “These threats arise from Iran’s desire to seek revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani. We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority.”Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani, who led the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps's Quds Force, in 2020. “At this time, law enforcement has reported that their investigation has not identified ties between the shooter and any accomplice or co-conspirator, foreign or domestic,” Watson added. Federal law enforcement officials were also warning of possible copycat attacks or election-related retaliation after the attempt on Trump’s life, as a visibly stronger security detail surrounded President Joe Biden, and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received Secret Service protection. Presidents — and presidential candidates — are always the subject of threats, but rhetoric online following the Saturday attack at a rally in Pennsylvania has been particularly concerning, “given that individuals in some online communities have threatened, encouraged, or referenced acts of violence in response to the attempted assassination,” according to a joint intelligence bulletin by Homeland Security and FBI and obtained by The Associated Press.

Security agencies identified Iranian plot to assassinate Trump separate from weekend attempt
Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY/July 16, 2024 .
WASHINGTON ― The White House continues to track threats by Iran against former Trump administration officials, but law enforcement officials have not identified ties between Saturday’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump and any foreign officials, according to a statement Tuesday from the National Security Council. CNN reported that the Secret Service had beefed up security for Trump in recent weeks after intelligence showed Iran had been plotting to kill Trump. “As we have said many times, we have been tracking Iranian threats against former Trump administration officials for years, dating back to the last administration,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement. “These threats arise from Iran’s desire to seek revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani. We consider this a national and homeland security matter of the highest priority.”
Trump ordered the killing of Soleimani, who led Iran’s elite Qud’s Force, part of the country’s hard-line paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps. The attack that killed Soleimani led to a missile attack on U.S. troops at a base in Iraq that wounded more than 100. Watson referred questions about increased security for Trump in recent weeks to the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Iranian plot to kill Trump detected; separate from rally attempt

Trump Jr. says he wants ‘veto power’ in staffing second Trump term
Sarah Fortinsky/The Hill/July 16, 2024
Former President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said Tuesday he would like “veto power” over staffing decisions in a hypothetical second Trump administration. “I don’t want to pick a single person for a position of power. All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster,” Trump Jr. said in an interview with Axios’s Mike Allen, on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Allen asked the former president’s son what role he expects to play in a hypothetical transition between Election Day and Inauguration Day, when, Allen said, “the staff and appointees and nominees are picked.” Trump Jr. continued: “I want to block the liars. I want to block the guys that are, you know, pretending they’re with you. I just want to block the bad actors. I just want to be a block. That’s it.”“You guys pick the guy, that’s right. I want a veto power to cut out each and every one of those people,” he added. Trump Jr. has raised money and rallied for his father during this campaign cycle, and reports indicate he personally vouched for Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to be chosen as Trump’s running mate. Trump was officially nominated to lead the GOP presidential ticket on Monday, after announcing Vance as his choice for vice president. The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for a response. Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Donald Trump Jr says his father is a changed man after shooting, expects him to 'moderate'
Zac Anderson, USA TODAY/July 16, 2024
MILWAUKEE - Former President Donald Trump is a changed man after a would-be assassin tried to kill him and the new tone of unity he is projecting won't fade away, his eldest son said Tuesday on the second day of the Republican National Convention.
Speaking at an Axios event, Donald Trump Jr. said the attempt on his father's life during a rally Saturday in Pennsylvania is the type of event that permanently changes someone. "You know, I think it lasts," Donald Trump Jr. said in response to a question of how long the "new Trump" would continue. "There are events that change you for a couple minutes and there’s events that change you permanently. Now again it’s Trump so you’re still going to be reactionary."The former president and current GOP presidential nominee will always punch back against critics, his son said, adding that he will "always be a fighter, that's never gonna change, but he's gonna do, I think, his best to moderate that where it needs to be.""He's going to be tough when he has to be. We’ve seen that, he’s never gonna change. But I think there will be something. I think these are momentous occasions that change people permanently," Trump Jr. said.
Trump has talked about rewriting his convention speech to strike a new tone of unity after the shooting. Trump Jr. worked with his father on the original speech, going over it with him for hours on Friday. "It was, it was hot," Trump Jr. said of the original speech. "And by the way, I think it probably should have been at that time. But again, a lot changes once you’ve got shot in the face.” Yet even as he talked about striking a new tone, Trump Jr. took repeated jabs at President Joe Biden throughout the event Tuesday, including bragging that his father draws more people to his rallies.
“Obviously, he’s a guy that attracts a lot of people," Trump Jr. said in discussing his father's security needs. "There are big crowds. It’s a little different than a Biden rally.”
The audience laughed. “I mean, fact check – true," Trump Jr. responded. A relentless campaigner and someone who has strong political opinions, there has been speculation about how much power Trump Jr. would exercise in a second Trump administration if his father wins. He said he was heavily involved in the selection of Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance as his father's running mate, advocating against some of the other candidates. Trump Jr. said he doesn't expect to pick members of a potential second Trump administration, but he will act as a gatekeeper to keep people he doesn't like from getting White House jobs, saying "I just want to be the veto." “I don’t want to pick a single person for a position of power," he said. "All I want to do is block the guys that would be a disaster. I want to block the liars, I want to block the guys that are, you know, pretending they’re with you." "I just want to block the bad actors. I just want to be a blocker," he added. "That’s it... I want a veto power to cut out each and every one of those people." Robert F. Kennedy Jr. isn't among those Trump Jr. would exercise veto power over. The independent presidential candidate met with Trump after the assassination attempt. Asked whether his father might get Kennedy's endorsement, Trump Jr. said “we’ll have to see… I’d love to see that." "The history of his family, obviously, as it relates to assassinations I think... maybe that’s one of those moments that brings people together," Trump Jr. said of the candidate, whose is the nephew of assassinated President John F. Kennedy. "Maybe there’s a great place for him somewhere in an administration… he comes from obviously a very left background and that’s fine, that doesn’t mean there’s not an incredible role that I think he could execute or prosecute quite well in Washington D.C.," Trump Jr. added.This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump's eldest son says father's unity message will last

Trump courts RFK Jr's support in leaked phone call
Stephanie Kelly/NEW YORK (Reuters)/July 16, 2024
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump suggested to Robert F. Kennedy Jr that the independent presidential candidate could do something to support the Trump campaign, according to a video of a phone call on Sunday posted on social media and confirmed by Kennedy. "I would love you to do something – and I think it would be so good for you and so big for you," Trump can be heard saying via speaker phone in the video, apparently referring to the 2024 election race. "We're gonna win," Trump said, after which Kennedy said, "Yeah." "We're way ahead of the guy," Trump added, referring to Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden. Kennedy supporters range across the political spectrum, from liberal to conservative to independent, and some polls show he would draw voters from Trump and Biden both. Trump also spoke to Kennedy about Saturday's assassination attempt, saying that the bullet that hit his ear "felt like a giant - like the world's largest mosquito."Of Biden's phone call with Trump after the assassination attempt, Trump said, "It was very nice actually."Trump's phone call with Kennedy also included a conversation about vaccines, which echoed some of Kennedy's earlier views. The environmental lawyer has spread misinformation on vaccines for years. "When you feed a baby, Bobby," Trump said, "a vaccination that is like 38 different vaccines, and it looks like it's meant for a horse, not a, you know, 10-pound or 20-pound baby... and then you see the baby all of a sudden starting to change radically. "And then you hear that it doesn't have an impact, right? But you and I talked about that a long time ago."After the call spread on social media, Kennedy on Tuesday apologized to Trump on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. "When President Trump called me I was taping with an in-house videographer," he wrote. "I should have ordered the videographer to stop recording immediately. I am mortified that this was posted."A day earlier, Kennedy posted on X about meeting with Trump, writing, "Our main topic was national unity, and I hope to meet with Democratic leaders about that as well. No, I am not dropping out of the race." The Democratic Party views Kennedy, who began the race as a Democratic candidate before declaring himself independent, as an election "spoiler" who would take votes away from Biden and in effect help Trump win the White House. Democratic National Committee spokesperson Matt Corridoni said on X that Kennedy also had dinner with conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson at the Republican National Convention, taking place in Milwaukee this week.
"He (Kennedy) has no path to victory in this race and is nothing more than a spoiler for Trump," said DNC Communications Adviser Lis Smith.
The Kennedy campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

House Democrats want to stop early DNC effort to nominate Biden before party convention in August
Lisa Mascaro And Will Weissert/WASHINGTON (AP)/July 16, 2024
A contingent of House Democrats is wary of swiftly nominating President Joe Biden as the party's pick for reelection, circulating a letter Tuesday raising “serious concerns” about plans for a virtual roll call as soon as July 21, ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August. The letter to the Democratic National Committee, which has not yet been sent, says it would be a “terrible idea” to stifle debate about the party’s nominee with the early roll call vote. "It could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats," said the letter obtained by The Associated Press. As Biden pushes ahead with a robust campaign schedule in battleground Nevada, determined to “finish this job” and win a second term at the White House, the uneasiness over his candidacy lingers after his halting debate performance against Republican Donald Trump. Nearly 20 congressional Democrats have called for Biden to leave the race, though public calls for him to step aside have stopped since the assassination attempt against Donald Trump over the weekend. Privately, the internal party debate about Biden's future is far from over.
Democrats are deeply splintered on Capitol Hill over the president's ability to carry on his campaign and win reelection, and a constituency that should provide a groundswell of support for the sitting president instead is worried they could lose not only the White House to Trump, but control of Congress to Republicans. The party announced in May that it would hold an early roll call to ensure Biden would qualify for the ballot in Ohio, which originally had an Aug. 7 deadline, but the state has since changed its rules, making the issue no longer relevant, the letter says.
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., who asked pointed questions of Biden on a call with progressive lawmakers over the weekend and is the head of the Democrats' task force opposing the conservative Project 2025 agenda, is among those raising concerns.
Huffman had asked the president during Saturday's private discussion if he would consider meeting with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and congressional leaders Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries to talk about the viability of the campaign. Biden “disagreed" that they were on a losing trajectory, Huffman said in a social media post afterward. And while Biden expressed a “willingness to listen” to other voices, Huffman said he doubted any would be persuasive. “I continue to believe a major course correction is needed, and that the President and his team have yet to fully acknowledge the problem, much less correct it,” he said. The call was tense, according to person familiar with it and granted anonymity to discuss the situation. Huffman is not taking the lead in circulating the letter, and it says the lawmakers signing on — who are not named — represent “the spectrum of views” on the situation. "Some of us have called on President Biden to step aside, others have urged him to stay in the race, and still others have deep concerns about the status of the President’s campaign but have yet to take a position on what should happen," it said. The DNC says no formal date has been set for the virtual roll call, but its rulemaking committee is set to meet on Friday and could set a date or simply vote to formally allow virtual activities. No virtual activity can begin at least until after Sunday, when the DNC's convention committee is scheduled to meet. One person familiar with the planning said they were told that virtual actions would last multiple days, getting underway the week of July 22, and possibly culminate on July 29. The person was granted anonymity to discuss the private planning. Others, however, have suggested that virtual proceedings might not begin until the following week. Biden’s reelection campaign has said only that the roll call needs to be completed by Aug. 6, to meet the original Ohio ballot deadline.
In a statement on Tuesday, DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said “the suggestion that the timeline for the virtual roll call has been accelerated is false.”“The timeline for the virtual roll call process remains on schedule and unchanged from when the DNC made that decision in May,” Harrison said. Biden's deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said at a Tuesday news conference in Milwaukee, where the Republican National Convention is being held, that the virtual roll call was still necessary, despite Ohio modifying the deadline, because lawmakers in the state’s GOP-controlled legislature could still choose to go back and change the date again — thus denying Biden ballot access. “It is our obligation as a campaign to make sure that President Biden is on the ballot,” Fulks said. In response, the Ohio secretary of state’s office said “the issue is resolved.”“Democrat proxies know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio for their own party’s disfunction,” the office said in a statement.

Wife Of Man Killed At Trump Rally Has Not Heard From Former President
Nick Visser/HuffPost/July 16, 2024
Trump Survives Assassination AttemptScroll back up to restore default view.
Helen Comperatore, the wife of the man killed at Donald Trump’s rally last weekend, said Monday in an interview with the New York Post that she has not yet heard from the former president and had declined to speak to President Joe Biden when he reached out. Comperatore was with her husband, Corey, and their daughter in the rally audience in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when a gunman opened fire and attempted to assassinate Trump. Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief, used his body to shield his family and was struck in the head by gunfire. The 50-year-old died on the scene. Helen Comperatore described her husband as a hero to the Post, saying his last words to his family were “get down!” She also told the outlet that Trump had not reached out to her family and that Biden attempted to call her, but she didn’t speak with him. “I didn’t talk to Biden. I didn’t want to talk to him,” Helen Comperatore said. “My husband was a devout Republican and he would not have wanted me to talk to him.” Flowers and a tribute to fallen firefighter Corey Comperatore are pictured at the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company in Buffalo Township, Pennsylvania, on July 15. Comperatore was shot and killed at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Flowers and a tribute to fallen firefighter Corey Comperatore are pictured at the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company in Buffalo Township, Pennsylvania, on July 15. Comperatore was shot and killed at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. via Associated Press “I don’t have any ill-will towards Joe Biden,” she added. “I’m not one of those people that gets involved in politics. I support Trump, that’s who I’m voting for but I don’t have ill-will towards Biden. He didn’t do anything to my husband. A 20-year-old despicable kid did.” Corey Comperatore was referenced multiple times during the first night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, with many of the speakers hailing him as a hero. A GoFundMe set up to aid the Comperatore family has raised over $1.1 million, while another made for the family and other victims of the rally shooting has raised close to $5 million. The second GoFundMe is organized by Trump’s top finance person, Meredith O’Rourke, and says it is “President Trump authorized.”

Goldberg: The Trump assassination attempt leaves Biden with just one viable political option
Jonah Goldberg/ Los Angeles Times./July 16, 2024
While his debate performance was exceptional only if graded on a curve, his opponent’s was a debacle by any objective standard. Then the Supreme Court handed down an exceedingly fortuitous ruling on presidential immunity, which at a minimum delayed the federal cases against him until after the election. And a lone concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas in that decision apparently inspired Aileen Cannon, a federal judge in Florida, to throw out the classified documents case against him. Oh, and an assassin shot at him and missed. More accurately: almost missed. A bullet sliced through the top of Trump’s right ear; if he had turned his head a millimeter or two in the wrong direction, he would have been dead, and the graphic footage of his murder would now be serving as the backdrop of a dark new chapter of American life. All of this happened on the eve of the Republican National Convention, buoying the party and consolidating support for Trump’s candidacy. That’s certainly understandable, albeit irrational in a very human way. There’s nothing logical about the idea that being shot by a disturbed young man — and registered Republican — makes Trump more qualified to be president. But it makes emotional sense. It also deprives President Biden of the central rationale for his reelection, at least for the foreseeable future. Other than abortion rights, “protecting democracy” was going to be the issue Biden rode to reelection. In the current climate, however, attacking Trump as a threat to democracy sounds like extreme rhetoric — as it has been at times. But if Biden can no longer prosecute that case against Trump — after spending tens of millions of dollars on ads laying it out — what case does he have?
I reject that idea that criticizing Trump for his attempt to steal the last election or for his own extreme rhetoric is suddenly illegitimate. But political reality is what it is. What is even more profoundly fortunate for Trump is that the assassination attempt also buoyed Biden’s candidacy, though in a very different way. The Democratic Party is not enthusiastic about Biden. In an NBC News poll conducted shortly before the shooting, only 33% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they were pleased with their party’s nominee, compared with 71% on the Republican side. There’s no reason to think the assassination attempt will cause rank-and-file Democrats to rally around Biden. But what it has done is cause senior Democrats who were determined to push Biden off the ticket to abandon hope and reconcile themselves to losing. “The presidential contest ended last night,” an unidentified "veteran Democratic consultant" told NBC News after the assassination attempt. “[Trump] was already on track to win,” a Democratic Senate aide told Semafor, “and the fact that he is now a victim of political violence rather than the perpetrator undermines Biden’s core appeal.”
I think that’s right, and all of the reporting suggests Democrats have lost the will to do anything about it. Biden’s Oval Office address Sunday was not terrible. It struck a welcome, conciliatory tone, and its shades of unnecessary partisanship were restrained partly because they had to be. Biden is an avatar of the cultural status quo: He ran to restore normalcy and “unify” the country. Whether it’s fair or not to judge him on that score, he failed. And that’s why the address was a missed opportunity. Biden could have announced that he was standing down as his party’s nominee and in the process tried to pull Trump with him. He could have — and should have — said this country is better than a race most Americans do not want between two grumpy old men who have come to represent two warring tribes. He should have called for turning the page and giving the country a fresh start.
Biden is an unpopular incumbent who is not going to get more vigorous or cognitively acute. And he’s certainly not going to have a moment like Trump had Saturday night.
Simply put, Biden’s luck has run out. But he could still put an end to his opponent’s improbable run of luck.

Biden admits Trump 'bullseye' comments a mistake
Christal Hayes - BBC News/July 16, 2024
US President Joe Biden has said it was a mistake for him to say "time to put Trump in a bullseye", days before Saturday's assassination attempt on his election rival. Mr Biden's remarks came in his first interview since the incident, in which he defended his rhetoric against Donald Trump and cited why it was important. The president told NBC's Lester Holt his campaign had a duty to clearly communicate the threat of a second Trump term, adding that his words were not the ones that needed to be tempered. After a brief pause following Saturday’s attack, presidential campaign events now appear to be back under way. Mr Biden is set to speak at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Trump made his first appearance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Monday, to a rapturous welcome. Trump to speak Thursday - what to expect at Republican convention
A shocking act that will reshape the presidential race
During his NBC interview, Mr Biden described a phone call with Trump following the attempted assassination as “very cordial”. "I told him he was literally in the prayers of Jill and me, and his whole family was weathering this," he said. When pressed on his "bullseye" comments, Mr Biden said: "It was a mistake to use the word. I didn't say crosshairs. I meant bullseye, I meant focus on him. Focus on what he's doing." He said he meant Democrats needed to look at Trump, his policies and the false statements he made during the presidential debate late last month. According to Politico, Mr Biden had said on a private donor call: "I have one job, and that's to beat Donald Trump. I'm absolutely certain I'm the best person to be able to do that. So, we're done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye."Throughout the interview, Mr Biden made it clear he would not be stepping aside in the presidential race - despite calls from members of his own party after his poor debate performance. "I'm old," he lamented, while also noting he's only three years older than Trump. He said his mental acuity was fine and listed his accomplishments as president - but acknowledged he was working to reaffirm to Americans that he was up to the job. "I understand why people say, 'God, he’s 81 years old. Whoa. What's he going to be when he’s 83 years old, 84 years?' It’s a legitimate question to ask," he said. He said he put his faith in the voters who overwhelmingly backed him in the Democratic primary. "I listen to them."The president has repeatedly called for Americans to "lower the temperature" since the shooting on Saturday, where Trump's ear was grazed by a bullet. One crowd member was killed and two others were critically injured in the attack. About a dozen Republicans have blamed Mr Biden and other Democrats for inciting the attempt on Trump's life. Many have specifically cited the "bullseye" comment. JD Vance, who was announced as Trump's presidential running mate on Monday, said in the wake of the shooting that Democratic rhetoric about the Republican candidate "led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination".
President Biden, in an Oval Office address on Sunday, denounced the attack and called for Americans to "take a step back", warning that "political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated". When asked in the NBC interview if he had also taken a step back to examine his past remarks for anything "that could incite people who are not balanced", Mr Biden said the inflammatory rhetoric had not come from him. "I've not engaged in that rhetoric," Mr Biden said. "Now, my opponent is engaged in that rhetoric. "How do you talk about the threat to democracy, which is real, when a president says things like he says? Do you just not say anything, because it may incite somebody? "I am not the guy that said I want to be a dictator on day one, I am not the guy that refused to accept the outcome of the election." The FBI has identified the gunman who targeted Trump as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, a kitchen worker from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who is a registered Republican. A Secret Service sniper shot Crooks dead after he fired at the former president. Correction: An early headline on this story stated that Mr Biden said he regretted calling Donald Trump a threat to democracy. This was incorrect and the headline was updated.

France's Macron discusses Israel/Hamas war with Egypt, Qatar and Bahrain
PARIS (Reuters)/July 16, 2024
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on Tuesday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Qatar's Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa to discuss the conflict between Israel and Hamas, said Macron's office.
WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
France is a United Nations Security Council permanent member and the country has both large Jewish and Muslim populations. Also, hostages holding French citizenship were killed in the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 last year.
Qatar has also played an increasingly important role as a mediator - in January, Qatar and France brokered a deal with Israel and Hamas to deliver urgent medication to Israeli hostages.
KEY QUOTES
"The President condemned recent Israeli air strikes that have targeted UN schools as well as displaced citizens in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp which have left a large number of civilian victims," Macron's office said in a statement.
"He also reaffirmed France's insistence that Hamas immediately release the hostages," it added.
CONTEXT
The conflict risks escalating and worsening on the border with Lebanon, where France wields some influence as Lebanon's former colonial power. Israel has carried out near-daily air strikes in Syria and Lebanon since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on southern Israeli border communities and its ensuing military offensive in Gaza.

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill more than 60 Palestinians, including in ‘safe zone’
AP/July 16, 2024
GAZA: Israeli airstrikes killed more than 60 Palestinians in southern and central Gaza overnight and into Tuesday, including one that struck an Israeli-declared “safe zone” crowded with thousands of displaced people. Airstrikes in recent days have brought a constant drumbeat of deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, even as Israel has pulled back or scaled down major ground offensives in the north and south. Almost daily strikes have hit the “safe zone” covering some 60 square kilometers (23 square miles) along the Mediterranean coast, where Israel told fleeing Palestinians to take refuge to escape ground assaults. Israel has said it is pursuing Hamas militants who are hiding among civilians after offensives uprooted underground tunnel networks. Tuesday’s deadliest strike hit a main street lined with market stalls outside the southern city of Khan Younis in Muwasi, at the heart of the zone that is packed with tent camps. Officials at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital said 17 people were killed. Apparently referring to the strike, the Israeli military said in a statement that it targeted a commander in Islamic Jihad’s naval unit west of Khan Younis. It said it was looking into reports that civilians were killed.
The attack hit about a kilometer (0.6 miles) from a compound that Israel struck on Saturday, saying it was targeting Hamas’ top military commander, Mohammed Deif. That blast, in an area also surrounded by tents, killed more than 90 Palestinians, including children, according to Gaza health officials. It is still not known if Deif was killed in the strike. The new airstrikes came as Israel and Hamas continued to weigh the latest ceasefire proposal. Hamas has said talks meant to wind down the nine-month-long war would continue, even after Israel targeted Deif. International mediators are working to push Israel and Hamas toward a deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza. Israeli forces have repeatedly had to launch new offensives to combat Hamas fighters they say have been regrouping in parts of Gaza that the military has previously invaded. Still, the military has sounded increasingly confident that it has severely damaged the militants’ organization and infrastructure in its 9-month-old campaign. The military said Tuesday that it has eliminated half of the leadership of Hamas’ military wing and that some 14,000 militants have been killed or detained. It said it killed six brigade commanders, over 20 battalion commanders, and approximately 150 company commanders from Hamas’ ranks, and that over the course of the war, it has hit 37,000 targets from the air within the Gaza Strip, including more than 25,000 terrorist infrastructure and launch sites.
The figures could not be independently confirmed. Israel’s ground campaigns have focused on northern Gaza and the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, where it says it has destroyed extensive Hamas tunnel networks. The offensives have left entire neighborhoods flattened. While ground operations continue in Rafah, airstrikes now appear to be hitting heavily in the areas untouched by previous offensives in the center and the coastal “safe zone.”Strikes late Monday and on Tuesday hit the Nuseirat and Zawaida refugee camps in central Gaza. Strikes on four houses killed at least 24 people, including 10 women and four children, according to officials at Al Aqsa hospital in the nearby town of Deir Al-Balah. Another hit a UN school in Nuseirat where families were sheltering, killing at least nine people. AP footage showed the school’s yard covered in rubble and twisted metal from a structure that was hit. Workers carried bodies wrapped in blankets, as women and children watched from the classrooms where they have been living.
Israel’s military said Hamas militants were operating from the school to plan attacks. Its claim could not be independently confirmed. Other strikes in Khan Younis and Rafah killed 12 people, according to medical officials and AP journalists. An AP journalist counted the bodies at the hospital before a funeral was held at its gates. The military said air force planes struck some 40 targets in Gaza over the past day, among them observation posts, Hamas military structures and explosives-rigged buildings. Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants operate in densely populated areas.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that it would begin sending draft notices to Jewish ultra-Orthodox men next week — a step that could destabilize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and trigger more large protests in the community. Under long-standing political arrangements, ultra-Orthodox men had been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men — an exemption that created resentment among the general public in Israel. The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,600 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger. Hamas’ October attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities. Violence has also surged in the West Bank. On Tuesday a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli policeman, wounding him lightly, before another officer opened fire, killing the assailant who was identified as a 19-year-old from Gaza.

Gaza city says water treatment stops, 700,000 face health ‘crisis’
AFP/July 16, 2024
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Wastewater pumping stations in one of Gaza’s main cities stopped working on Tuesday because fuel had run out, the local authority said, expressing fears that disease could rapidly spread. Tens of thousands of people displaced by the Israel-Hamas war have sought shelter in Deir Al-Balah, and city authorities said more than 700,000 people could be at risk from a “health and environmental crisis.” “Deir Al-Balah municipality announces the halt of water waste pumping stations because stocks of fuel necessary for their functioning are exhausted,” said a city statement. It predicted that “roads will be flooded by waste water” and “diseases will spread.”Gaza has had no electricity supplies since the war was unleashed by the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The fuel-powered waste plants treat water that is then put into the Mediterranean. “Nineteen pits and two large reservoirs are unusable in Deir Al-Balah,” Ismail Sarsour, an official with the city’s emergency committee, said ahead of the release of the statement. He said the stations handle wastewater for more than 140 points of shelter where tens of thousands of people have taken refuge. The Palestinian Authority’s water department, the PWA, which is based in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said recently it had arranged for tens of thousands of liters of fuel to enter Gaza. But Palestinian experts said the water crisis is so deep that the fuel alone would not help. Sarsour and the experts said there was also a critical shortage of spare parts to repair damaged infrastructure. Israel said this month that, with help from the UN children’s agency UNICEF, it has connected one desalination plant in southern Gaza to its electricity network. It is unclear if the plant has started working. The Palestinian Authority also said Tuesday that it expected electricity supplies to start again in central Gaza in “coming days” to power public infrastructure. Israeli authorities have not confirmed the move. Israel’s military offensive since October 7 has killed at least 38,713 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry. The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

Amid new photos, families of Israel hostage soldiers plead for deal
AFP/July 17, 2024
TEL AVIV: The families of five Israeli women soldiers held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Tuesday pleaded with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make an accord for their release before he goes to Washington next week. Facing mounting international and domestic criticism, Netanyahu is set to speak to a joint meeting of the US Congress on July 24 and to meet President Joe Biden. The families released new pictures of the detainees to increase pressure on Netanyahu. “Prime Minister, we are begging, we are asking you, please make the deal happen. It can be before the Congress, it can be during the Congress while you’re giving your speech, but the deal must happen now,” said Sasha Ariev, the 24-year-old sister of 19-year-old hostage Karina Ariev. “First a deal, and only then you can fly. Every day is critical for our daughters and all the hostages. We need you here,” added Shira Elbag, the mother of Liri Elbag. The families spoke at one of an increasing number of events they organize to keep the hostages in the Israeli public spotlight. Of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas, 116 of whom are still in Gaza including 42 the Israeli military says are dead. Many are soldiers taken by the militants when they crossed into southern Israel. Qatar and Egypt have been leading US-backed mediation efforts for several months in a bid to secure a ceasefire and a release of some hostages in return for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. But Hamas has accused Netanyahu of seeking to torpedo a ceasefire deal with his vows to destroy Hamas amid Israel’s fierce military onslaught in Gaza. On Sunday, a day after a massive Israeli strike aiming to kill Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, a senior Hamas leader told AFP that the group was withdrawing from the ceasefire talks but could return if Israel’s attitude changed.
Netanyahu said on Tuesday, however, that he wanted to “increase pressure” on Hamas. The families of the five hostages, part of the Hostages Families Forum, authorized the release of two undated photos of the five women in detention. The images appear to be of the soldiers in the first days of their detention. Some have bruises and cuts. “Nine months have passed since my Daniela and the other girls have been held in these conditions, the conditions that can be seen in the photos we published,” said Orly Gilboa, the mother of Daniela Gilboa. “This is my daughter. Look into her eyes, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister. Meet with us immediately so we can make her voice heard,” said Ayelet Levy, mother of Naama Levy, who appeared to be held separately from the other four. The picture of Levy showed her with one eye closed up and bruised. “We are waiting for a face-to-face meeting with you to ensure that the negotiations are moving toward a signed deal that will bring Naama and all the hostages back,” said the senior Levy.

Israeli army says has shortage of tanks
Naharnet/July 16, 2024
The Israeli army has said that it has a shortage of tanks after many were damaged in the ongoing war on the southern and northern fronts. Ammunition is also in short supply, the military said. This is the first time that the Israeli army has openly admitted to a shortage of equipment and munitions as well as officers and enlisted men after many were killed or injured since the war broke out in October. "The number of operational tanks in the corps is insufficient for the needs of the war," the Israeli army said.

Blinken tells Israeli ministers to do more to cut 'unacceptably high' civilian deaths in Gaza
Paul Godfrey/United Press International/July 16, 2024
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated warnings that the civilian death toll in Gaza remained "unacceptably high" in a meeting with senior Israeli government officials following Israeli Defense Forces airstrikes over the weekend.
Blinken made the comments Monday in a meeting with Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer in Washington at which he told the officials Israel must do more to reduce the numbers of civilians being killed and injured, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told a press briefing on Monday. The United States' top diplomat told Hanegbi and Dermer of the administration's "serious concern" about recent civilian casualties, including at a United Nations-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in Saturday's airstrike which Israel said targeted senior Hamas commander Mohammed Deif. "As I've noted before, we have seen civilian casualties come down from the high points of the conflict and even from where they were say six weeks, two months ago; but they still remain unacceptably high," Miller said. The comments came after an IDF airstrike in al-Mawasi on Saturday that killed 71 people and injured 300. "We continue to see far too many civilians killed in this conflict. We want to see civilian casualties completely ended," said Miller who stressed that even in advance of the hoped-for cease-fire the administration was pushing so hard for "we want to see Israel do more to reduce civilian casualties."However, Miller qualified his criticism by pointing out that Israel had said it was targeting militants holed up within the site stuck Saturday and that it had "the right to target militants," but stressed "there is nothing that justifies attacks on civilians."The Saturday attack was targeting Mohammad Deif, the leader of the Hamas military's Qassam Brigades who is accused of planning the Oct. 7 attcks on Israel. "We don't want to see any civilian deaths," he said. "So as always, this is the difficult thing in this conflict, when you see militants who continue to hide in schools, in mosques, in hospitals, in other facilities. It makes the challenge that Israel faces incredibly difficult." Miller said Hanegbi and Dermer had not provided any update on whether the airstrike succeeded in killing Deif. Blinken reassured the pair the United States' commitment to Israel's security remained "ironclad" but that it must take "further steps to reduce civilian casualties" and do more to resolve "logistical issues that are preventing humanitarian assistance from being fully delivered across the Gaza Strip."They also discussed planning, including how to establish governance and security in Gaza post-conflict, and practical solutions to outstanding issues in ongoing cease-fire negotiations in which Blinken stressed the importance of reaching an agreement that secures both the release of hostages and alleviates the suffering of Palestinians.

At least 72 people are killed in a militia attack near Congo's capital in a conflict over land
KINSHASA, Congo (AP)/July 16, 2024
At least 72 people, including nine soldiers and a soldier's wife, were killed when armed men attacked a village in western Congo, local authorities said, as violence intensifies between rival communities. Saturday's attack took place in the village of Kinsele, around 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Kinshasa, the capital. Because of insecurity and poor infrastructure in the region, attacks can take days to be reported. Kinsele is in the Kwamouth territory, where conflict has raged for two years between the Teke and Yaka communities, leading to hundreds of civilian deaths.
The attackers were with the Mobondo militia, a group presenting itself as defenders of the Yaka people. “The search continues to find other bodies in the bush,” David Bisaka, the provincial deputy for the Kwamouth territory, told The Associated Press in a phone interview. He added that the army had "succeeded in routing this militia” for the second time in a week. The Mobondo militia first tried to attack the village on Friday. Following Saturday’s attack, the dead included nine soldiers and the wife of a soldier, the head of a nearby village, Stanys Liby, told U.N.-funded Radio Okapi.
The conflict over land and customary claims in the Kwamouth territory erupted in June 2022 between so-called “native” and “non-native” communities, according to the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. Tensions flared between the Teke, historical inhabitants of the region, and farmers from various other ethnic groups including the Yaka, who settled near the Congo River more recently. Despite a cease-fire in April 2024 in the presence of Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi, clashes between the communities have continued and even intensified in recent weeks.
Congo's defense minister, Guy Kabombo Muadiamvita, on Monday visited Kwango province, where the attacked village is located, to “feel the reality on the ground,” the ministry said on social media platform X. “The province of Kwango is the last security barrier to access the city province of Kinshasa,” the ministry said, adding that the minister “promised to spare no effort” against the militia. Congo's army also struggles to contain more widespread violence in the vast country's east, which has seen decades of fighting between government forces and more than 120 armed groups. Many seek a share of the region’s gold and other resources. Violence in the east has worsened in recent months. Earlier this month, a militia attack on a gold mine in northeastern Congo killed six Chinese miners and two Congolese soldiers.

Pakistani troops kill 10 militants responsible for attack on military base that left 8 soldiers dead
Ishtiaq Mahsud/DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan (AP)/Tue, July 16, 2024
All 10 militants who rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a Pakistani military facility were killed in an 18-hour operation, officials said Tuesday, adding that militants in a separate attack on a health facility killed five civilians. In its statement, the Pakistani military said eight soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber early Monday rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the outer wall of an army housing complex in Bannu, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. A splinter group of Pakistani Taliban, led by a militant commander Gul Bahadur, claimed the attack, which has been denounced by the country's Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi and other officials. The military said the suicide attack collapsed a portion of the wall and damaged nearby infrastructure, resulting in the killing of the eight soldiers. Responding to the attack, security forces killed all ten attackers, it said. The military said a “timely and effective response by the security forces prevented major catastrophe.”Pakistan has consistently raised its concerns with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the military adds, “asking them to deny persistent use of Afghan soil by the terrorists and to take effective action against such elements.”The military said Pakistan's armed forces “will keep defending the motherland and its people against this menace of terrorism and will take all necessary measures as deemed appropriate against these threats emanating from Afghanistan."There was no immediate comment from Kabul. Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks, mostly in the northwest which borders Afghanistan, in recent years. In a separate incident, five civilians, including two women health workers and two children, were killed Tuesday when militants opened fire at a health facility in the northwestern district of Dera Ismail Khan, the military said in a statement. In a statement, troops stationed nearby responded to the attack, killing three of the attackers. However, two soldiers were also “martyred” in the ensuing shootout, it said. The military said that those behind the killings of innocent people "will be brought to justice.”No one claimed responsibility for the attack on the health facility. However, most such previous attacks on civilians and security forces have been blamed on the Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP. They are a separate group but also an ally of the Afghan Taliban. TTP has stepped up its attacks on security forces across the country since the Afghan Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

Muslim charity calls court ruling on audit a green light for government overreach
The Canadian Press/July 16, 2024
OTTAWA — A major Muslim charity is disappointed about losing another court battle in an ongoing bid to halt a Canada Revenue Agency audit. The Muslim Association of Canada says a new Ontario Court of Appeal ruling is a green light for government overreach, and will allow the federal government to infringe the Charter rights of Canadians with impunity. The association contends that a long-running revenue agency audit of its activities is fundamentally tainted by systemic bias and Islamophobia. Last year an Ontario Superior Court judge dismissed the charity's bid to stop the audit, saying it was too early to intervene in the federal examination. Justice Markus Koehnen said while he was sympathetic to many of the association's arguments, a court should not involve itself in a government body's process while it is still playing out. In the latest ruling, a panel of Appeal Court judges found no error in Koehnen's decision to dismiss the challenge as premature.

Drones target Iraq's Ain al-Asad airbase, no casualties, say military sources
BAGHDAD (Reuters)/July 16, 2024
Two armed drones on Tuesday targeted Iraq's Ain al-Asad airbase, which hosts U.S forces and other international forces in western Iraq, two Iraqi military sources told Reuters. It was the first attack against U.S. forces in Iraq since early February when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq stopped their attacks against U.S. troops. No casualties have been reported, said the sources. An Iraqi military official said defence systems downed one drone near the base perimeter. The attack came less than a week before an expected visit by a high level Iraqi military delegation to Washington to continue talks on ending the U.S.-led military coalition in the country. Washington and Baghdad in January initiated talks to reassess the draw-down of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, formed in 2014 to help fight Islamic State after the extremist Sunni Muslim militant group overran large parts of the country. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a projectile appears to have targeted the base, but without causing casualties.

Islamic State claims responsibility for rare attack at Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Oman
CAIRO (Reuters)/July 16, 2024
Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack at a Shi'ite Muslim mosque in Oman, the group said on Tuesday, which left at least nine people dead, including three attackers, a rare security breach in the oil-producing Gulf state. The attack on Monday, which is unusual in the wealthy, Sunni Muslim-dominated Gulf states, raises fears that the Islamic State group may be trying to gain a foothold in new territory. "Three suicide attackers from the Islamic State attacked last night a gathering of Shi'ite (Muslims) while they were practicing their annual rituals at a temple in the Wadi al-Kabir district in the (Omani) capital," according to group's statement, which cited three security sources.The Islamic State fighters fired on Shi'ite worshippers and exchanged gunfire with Omani security forces until morning, the statement added. Islamic State late on Tuesday published what it said was a video of the attack on its Telegram site. The group also said that the attack left more than 30 Shi'ite Muslims and five Omani forces, including a police officer, killed or wounded.

Pakistanis and Indian among six killed in shooting near Oman mosque
David Gritten & Jaroslav Lukiv - BBC News/July 16, 2024
Six people, including a policeman, have been killed and 28 others injured in a rare shooting attack near a Shia Muslim mosque in Oman's capital, Muscat, police say. The three attackers were also killed by security forces during the incident in the al-Wadi al-Kabir area on Monday night, according to a statement.
Police gave no details about the identities of the victims and gunmen, or the motive. But Pakistan said four Pakistanis were among those killed in a "terrorist attack" on the Imam Ali Mosque. India also said one of its citizens was killed. The Sunni Muslim jihadist group Islamic State (IS) says three of its members were involved in the attack. Supporters of the group celebrated the shooting on social media networks. IS has repeatedly targeted Shia ceremonies, processions and worshippers in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it has never before claimed an attack in Oman, where the Shia are a minority. Video showed a crowd running for cover inside the mosque's courtyard as gunshots were heard. Worshippers had gathered there on the eve of the Shia holy day of Ashura. The police statement expressed condolences to the victims' families and said an investigation into the circumstances of the incident was under way. It also emphasised "the necessity of obtaining information from official sources and disregarding unreliable information". Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was "deeply saddened" by the attack and that his heart went "out to the families of the victims"."I have instructed the Pakistan embassy in Muscat to extend all possible assistance to the injured and visit the hospitals personally," he wrote on X. "Pakistan stands in solidarity with the Sultanate of Oman and offers full assistance in the investigation." Pakistan's embassy in Muscat named the four Pakistanis who were killed as Ghulam Abbas, Hasan Abbas, Sayyed Qaisar Abbas and Sulaiman Nawaz. It also said 30 Pakistanis were receiving hospital treatment.
On Tuesday morning, Pakistani ambassador Imran Ali said in a video that he had visited some of those injured at three local hospitals and described their conditions as "relatively safe". He also advised Pakistani residents of Oman to avoid al-Wadi al-Kabir and to co-operate with local authorities.
Mr Ali later told AFP news agency that the attackers had initially opened fire from a building next to the mosque, where hundreds of people had gathered for a prayer service. The worshippers were held "hostage" by militants before "they were later freed by Omani forces", he said. India's embassy said it had been informed by the Omani foreign ministry that one Indian national had been killed and another injured, without identifying them. The shooting happened on the night of the ninth day of the Islamic month of Muharram, when Shia Muslims attend rituals on the eve of Ashura. Ashura is a major commemoration of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in a battle in the seventh century. Some of the worshippers in the courtyard can be heard shouting “O God”, “O Hussein” and “I am here, O Hussein” in the video filmed inside the Imam Ali Mosque as the attack unfolded. Oman that has long been seen as one of the most stable and secure countries in the Middle East. This has allowed it to play a leading role in mediation efforts to try to resolve conflicts and disputes in the region. The Gulf sultanate has a population of about 4.6 million, of which more than 40% are foreign workers. The government does not publish statistics about religious affiliation. However, the US state department estimates that 95% of the population is Muslim, with 45% Sunni, 45% Ibadi and 5% Shia. Hindus, Buddhists and Christians make up the remaining 5%.

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on July 16-17/2024
How Cairo Is Failing the Palestinians
The Algemeiner//David May and Haisam Hassanein/July 16, 2024
Egypt recently hosted top US and Israeli officials for Israel-Hamas ceasefire discussions. But nine months into a war that Hamas launched, Egypt has often exacerbated the conflict and largely evaded criticism for intensifying Palestinian suffering.
CIA director Bill Burns, top Biden Middle East advisor Brett McGurk, and senior Israel officials arrived in Cairo earlier this month to discuss a ceasefire deal, the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and mechanisms for securing the Egypt-Gaza border.
The last element is pivotal for weakening Hamas. The terrorist group has imported much of its weaponry via tunnels underneath the Gaza-Egypt border. Shutting off that valve is central to Israel’s war plans. In May, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it discovered around 20 tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor, the strip of land that runs along the Egypt-Gaza border, most of which crossed into Egypt.
In 2013 and 2014, at the beginning of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s rule, Egypt reportedly destroyed more than 1,600 tunnels crisscrossing the Egypt-Gaza border. And in 2015, Egypt demolished thousands of homes on the Egyptian side of Rafah, along the border with Gaza, to prevent smuggling. However, in the years since, Egypt has become much laxer in anti-smuggling efforts, allowing Hamas to stockpile weapons. There are several possible explanations for this reversal, including that it allowed Sisi to use the situation in Gaza as a tool for regional influence, keeping Egypt relevant in the Israeli-Palestinian arena as it competes with Qatar, Turkey, and Iran. Embarrassment regarding his insufficient anti-smuggling efforts might explain why Sisi was so concerned about Israeli operations along the Egypt-Gaza border. For months, Rafah remained Hamas’ last bastion in Gaza. In May, Egypt warned of “dire consequences,” including downgraded bilateral relations, as Israel inched towards launching its Rafah offensive.
Egypt’s approach to Palestinian aid has also been worrisome. On October 12, just days after Hamas carried out its killing spree in southern Israel, Sisi stressed the importance of Palestinians remaining “steadfast and present on their lands.” In other words, Gazans were not welcome in Egypt. As over a million Palestinians gathered in Rafah in February, Egypt refused to allow them across the border into the Sinai. Even wounded and sick Palestinians have largely not escaped this ban. In late June, Cairo allowed only a trickle of 19 Palestinians to enter Egypt for treatment. This was the first time in nearly two months that Egypt allowed wounded or sick Palestinians into the country. Recently, Egypt has reportedly refused to allow larger numbers of medical evacuations unless the Palestinians control the Gaza side of the border.
Egypt has justified its policies by claiming to fear that Israel would not allow Gazans to return after the fighting ended, pointing to the Palestinian experience in 1948. Egypt also argued that Hamas operatives would sneak into Sinai among refugees by posing as civilians and attacking Israel from Egyptian soil. Such developments would increase Israeli-Egyptian tensions.
When Cairo has let in Palestinians, it has reportedly exploited their suffering by charging exorbitant sums for entry permits. According to a New York Times report, an Egyptian tourism company with close ties to Egypt’s security establishment has been charging Gazans between $2,500 and $5,000 to exit the territory. According to NPR, on March 1 alone, 400 Palestinians paid around $1.3 million to exit through Egypt. In recent months, Egypt has refused to coordinate with Israel on the entry of aid via the Rafah crossing, possibly to pressure Israel into making concessions to the Palestinians. Egypt wisely understands that international public opinion will castigate Israel for Palestinian suffering but ignore Egypt for adding to it. To be sure, Israel has played down Egypt’s role as a spoiler, presumably to avoid embarrassing Egypt and thereby jeopardizing Israeli-Egyptian ties. Similarly, since 2007, Egypt and Israel coordinated on a blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, but only Israel received widespread criticism for it.The lack of interest in Palestinian suffering not attributable to Israel was also apparent when around 3,000 or 4,000 Palestinians were killed in Syria’s civil war from 2011 to 2020, including approximately 500 or 600 Palestinians who died from torture. And in the Ein el-Hilweh camp in Lebanon, clashes between rival factions left 13 Palestinians dead in July 2023 and resumed in September.
You could be forgiven if you missed the street protests, university encampments, divestment calls, city council resolutions, or social media campaigns decrying these injustices; there weren’t any.
Egypt has frequently worsened Palestinian suffering, including by reportedly sabotaging Israel-Hamas ceasefire negotiations in May. As Egypt returns to the spotlight for the latest round of ceasefire negotiations, it is worth highlighting Egypt’s largely unhelpful role, even if Cairo receives a free pass in the court of public opinion.
**David May (@DavidSamuelMay) is a research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
*Haisam Hassanein (@HaisamHassanei1) is an adjunct fellow. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Prepare for a Nuclear Iran
Elie Diamond/National Review/July 16/2024
With the necessary political will, however, Iran’s path to the bomb can still be stopped.
Iran is closer to developing nuclear weapons than many realize. Few are planning for what happens when it does.
In May, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran has enriched enough weapons-grade uranium to produce multiple nuclear bombs in a matter of days. Recent reports also suggest that Iran may have already begun advanced work on “weaponization,” which involves computer modeling and the acquisition of key parts to build deployable warheads.
Of course, Iran may be even further ahead than Western intelligence indicates — North Korea shocked the world in October 2006 when it completed an underground nuclear test. Iran already has a robust arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles on which to deploy a warhead, a capability North Korea achieved only in 2017, eleven years after nuclearization.
Despite these worrying developments, an unnamed Biden official recently swore that “Iran will never get a nuclear weapon.” Given Biden’s record in the Middle East since taking office — especially since October 7 — consider the jury unconvinced.
Iran has far more to gain from quickly developing a weapon than it does by waiting. Especially if Donald Trump returns to office in January 2025.
One view is that if Iran goes nuclear, the Saudis will quickly pursue their own capability through a U.S. commitment or directly via Pakistan, thus negating Iran’s advantage. But if you’re Iran, you’ve proven that you can directly strike a nuclear-armed adversary (Israel) without serious threat of reprisal. The Saudis are far less capable than the Israelis, and if they’re reliant on support from the U.S., like Israel is, they will fail to establish a credible deterrent. No matter what, the Biden administration will always push its allies to de-escalate.
Hezbollah, Iran’s most formidable proxy, has been willing to ratchet up attacks against Israel without the cover of an Iranian nuclear umbrella. Should a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah break out, Iran could threaten nuclear retaliation against Israel before it could put Hezbollah out of the fight. Right now, the Israelis would bear significant but liveable costs from striking deep into Lebanon to neutralize Hezbollah. That changes if Iran can threaten nuclear retaliation to keep its proxy from losing.
States like Iraq and Qatar, which currently balance between the U.S. and Iran, would be forced to bandwagon in Iran’s direction under threat of nuclear blackmail. Tehran and its proxies would increase pressure on both countries to push U.S. forces out of their territory, with the aim of moving the U.S. entirely “offshore.”
Critically, Iran’s growing entwinement with China and Russia will make it less vulnerable over time to Western sanctions as a tool of punishment. According to data from United Against Nuclear Iran, as of May, Iran now ships nearly 90 percent of its oil to China, compared with roughly 50 percent in May 2020. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Tehran has provided Moscow with ballistic missiles and sophisticated missile-defense platforms — high-end systems it withheld in the past due to fear of Western pushback. No longer.
The basic picture is that the Middle East would become inhospitable to the U.S. and its allies when Iran goes nuclear. Israel would find itself isolated, with fewer options for deterring Iran or confronting its proxies. The Saudis and Emiratis would be forced into uncomfortable compromises.
Without a change in direction, the U.S. would be forced offshore sooner than we think. While some believe the U.S. can or should live with that, Houthi piracy on the high seas should dispel that notion. Houthi attacks have made the region’s waterways hostile to Western shipping while Western adversaries, namely China, transit unmolested. Roughly 30 percent of global trade now runs through the Malacca Straits, but at least 10 percent still runs through Suez.
Most worrying of all, interior lines connecting the economies and militaries of Eurasia’s three authoritarian powers — the nightmare scenario of U.S. military analysts going back decades, not even a reality during the Second World War — would be protected by a nuclear triangle. Axis blackmail and mutual support would make this emerging reality harder to dislodge in the event of a global conflict involving the U.S. and its allies.
So long as Biden is president, there is little that can be done to avoid this outcome. His policies all but assure it.
But if Trump makes it back into the White House before Iran gets the bomb, there might still be time to reverse course.
Any couse reversal has to start by recognizing that the United States has entered the early stages of a global conflict in which the Middle East is set to be a main attraction, not a sideshow.
Directly or not, the U.S. is engaged in this conflict and has a significant stake in its outcome. In Europe, American and Western arms are the only things standing between Ukraine and its defeat at the hands of Russia. In the Middle East, American arms remain indispensable to Israel’s survival as it wages a defensive, multifront war against Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. In the Indo-Pacific, China has embarked on the greatest military buildup since World War II, its eyes set on Taiwan but ultimately U.S. primacy.
While Iran is the smallest of these three powers, China and Russia rely on it greatly for oil and weapons, respectively. Both rely on it as a tool to degrade America’s position in the region. Constraining Iran and preventing its nuclear breakout would keep waterways open for Western shipping and undermine a key node in the supply chain for China and Russia.
At a regional level, President Trump had the right idea with a doctrine of “maximum pressure” against Iran and a corollary of “maximum support” for U.S. allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
Should he take office again in 2025 before Iran achieves nuclear breakout, Trump should bring this doctrine back, with a few twists adjusted to new realities. The objective should be to restore a credible military deterrent while forcing Iran into material trade-offs between its nuclear program and support for its allies and proxies.
First, Trump should publicly blame Iran for October 7. By design, the Biden administration has avoided laying the blame for the October 7 attacks at the feet of Iran. Doing so would invite escalation with Tehran and repudiate the administration’s policy of rapprochement with the regime through sanctions waivers and lax enforcement. Iran has, therefore, faced few consequences for the actions of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or various proxy militias in Iraq and Syria, which have fired at and killed U.S. troops. That needs to change from Day One. Iran should become the watchword whenever President Trump talks about the Middle East. When civilians die in Gaza or Western ships get sunk in the Red Sea — blame Iran. Trump should also call out Tehran for keeping China afloat with cheap oil and undercutting prices for U.S. oil and gas exports.
Second, toughen sanctions on the regime. Trump should immediately reimpose the toughest sanctions actionable under U.S. law and on the widest range of sectors, including energy, banking, armaments, shipping, and more. He should also stiffen enforcement of sanctions on China and other countries that purchase Iranian oil. From a staffing perspective, Trump should quickly move to fill key sanctions roles at Treasury, State, and Commerce to signal that comprehensive enforcement is back. Altogether, this approach would begin to starve Tehran and its proxies of much-needed cash and make China think twice about how much energy it imports from Iran. It would also force Tehran into trade-offs between providing material support to its proxies and investing in its nuclear program.
Third, impose direct military consequences on Iran for the actions of its proxies. As noted, the Biden administration has avoided blaming Iran for the actions of its proxies throughout the region. This asymmetry can be fixed. For example, Trump could publicly threaten to sink an Iranian naval vessel for every Western vessel sunk by the Houthis in a one-to-one ratio. Similarly, he could announce that any drone or missile used in an attack on U.S. troops would put the IRGC facility that produced it under threat of a U.S. strike. So long as it were willing to follow through, America would maintain escalation dominance over the regime.
Fourth, harden U.S. military bases in the region — and announce it. Since the onset of war between Hamas and Israel, U.S. bases in the region have become targets for Iran’s proxy militias. This has led to rumors that the Biden administration is considering shifting U.S. bases out of Iraq, where roughly 2,500 servicemen are deployed. Instead of ceding these important outposts, Trump should commit to hardening them against future drone and missile attacks, and say so loudly. He doesn’t need to increase the number of U.S. troops, but he can better protect those currently deployed. This would signal resolve to the Iranians that the U.S. isn’t going anywhere and that future attacks would be weathered, and answered for.
Finally, upgrade the Abraham Accords to an “Abraham Alliance.” The Abraham Accords, a signature achievement of Trump’s first term, focused mainly on improving economic and diplomatic ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors, not military ties. With the Middle East now at war, the Accords should get leveled up to a full-on security partnership.
The limiting factor for Israeli–Arab military coordination has been the Biden administration: Rather than putting its weight behind Israel and its Gulf allies simultaneously, Biden has tried to play them off each other — for example, dangling the prospect of Israeli–Saudi normalization in exchange for a cease-fire in Gaza and Israel’s recognition of a Palestinian state, both of which are nonstarters in Jerusalem.
To deter Iran, Trump should work to expand the Accords into an alliance along the lines of AUKUS, a security partnership between the U.S., U.K., and Australia designed to counter China in the Indo-Pacific. Militarily, the promise of such a partnership was on display when Iran conducted direct strikes against Israel in April: The Saudis helped shoot down Iranian projectiles while Jordan allowed Israel to take defensive measures over its airspace. Like the Accords, the ingredients for a security partnership already exist; they just need to be encouraged and formalized. Similar to AUKUS, the Abraham Alliance could facilitate the exchange of key technology and weapons systems between the U.S., Israel, and Gulf allies. It could also serve as an informal mechanism for defensive and offensive planning against Iran.
In a global context, the Abraham Alliance would round out the historic Atlantic Alliance in Europe and AUKUS in the Indo-Pacific, solidifying U.S. footholds in the three core theaters of great-power competition, or a future war.
With the necessary political will, Iran’s path to the bomb can still be stopped. But should it acquire the ultimate weapon, the U.S. and its allies must be ready for what comes next.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/07/prepare-for-a-nuclear-iran/

The case against Netanyahu speaking at the US Congress
Yossi Mekelberg/Arab News/July 16/2024
Already, a week before taking off for a visit to Washington to address US lawmakers on July 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wings have been somewhat clipped. Nearly a decade ago, in his boundless vanity and envy of state leaders who are flown by an aircraft specially designated for them, he ordered an aging Boeing 767 to be converted to the highest pampering demands of himself and his wife. Eight years on, and at an estimated cost of 1 billion shekels ($277 million), the “Wing of Zion” will leave the ground for one of the most controversial visits of an Israeli prime minister to the US. Nevertheless, it was revealed that this expensive toy was unable to make a direct transatlantic flight while carrying the full load of the prime minister’s entourage and hence an interim stopover in the Czech Republic and Hungary was considered. Alas, according to Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster, this plan was decided against, amid fears that the International Criminal Court was readying an arrest warrant against the Israeli PM as a result of the way he has conducted the war in Gaza.
What looks like a mere technical issue encapsulates Netanyahu’s reign of sheer hedonism and wastefulness when it comes to public money and the transformation of the Israeli prime minister into a pariah with an international arrest warrant hanging over his head after embroiling his country in its longest war since independence.
Those are all convincing reasons for the US Congress to have never thrown him the lifeline of inviting him to deliver a speech on one of the world’s more prestigious stages. To be sure, this invitation was more about domestic US politics, particularly during an election year, than a demonstration of friendship with Israel. But it will harm both US and Israeli interests, harm the prospects of an end to the war in Gaza and the return of the hostages any time soon, further endanger the cause of peace based on a two-state solution and only perpetuate the destructive role of Netanyahu in Israeli politics.
An invitation to a foreign leader to address a joint meeting of Congress is a rare occasion and is usually a recognition of the close relations between the US and this country. It appears to honor the personal contribution of the invitee to these relations or even for his or her exceptional contribution to world affairs.
But Netanyahu represents none of the above. As a matter of fact, he represents the exact opposite, especially at this delicate time, when he represents a major hurdle to reaching a ceasefire in Gaza and, with it, the release of hostages and a scaling down of the immense suffering of the Palestinians there. Allowing Netanyahu to play the statesman, which he is not, is an act of betrayal of all those who have been killed, maimed and/or lost everything they had since Oct. 7, as well as of those many hundreds of thousands of Israelis who took to the streets even before this wretched war to defend Israeli democracy against an unprecedented and utterly self-serving attack on it, led by the PM himself.
And what is the main aim of extending this prestigious invitation? It is a cheap and obvious attempt by the Republicans in Congress, in an election year, to gain some support among friends of Israel and to push the Democrats into a corner, trapped between their support for Israel and their opposition to Netanyahu as someone who is bringing calamity to his own country and endangering its relations with the US as its closest and most consequential ally.
Allowing Netanyahu to play the statesman, which he is not, is an act of betrayal of all those who have been killed.
For the Republicans, the invitation was immediately successful when Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed to it, despite his recent comments about Netanyahu’s unsuitability for the job of prime minister. He had stated bluntly: “I believe that holding a new election once the war starts to wind down would give Israelis an opportunity to express their vision for the postwar future.” It was as good as a call to replace Netanyahu, as he and everyone else was aware of Israeli opinion polls that had for months been showing Netanyahu’s Likud party trailing way behind its rivals. Along with Schumer’s volte-face, President Joe Biden is now slated to host a meeting with Netanyahu in the White House, a treat the American president has intentionally denied the publicity-craving prime minister since the latter formed his far-right government last year.
Giving Netanyahu a stage that is an international as well as an American one, while he has not made a single concession on any of the issues the US holds as important to ending the war in Gaza, bringing the hostages back and embarking on the enormous path of rebuilding the Gaza Strip, is providing a failed and discredited prime minister and his coalition of extremists with an undeserved tailwind for their efforts to cling to power.
Sadly, one is accustomed to some level of cynicism in politics, but this invitation is a total eclipse of judgment at the expense of the good of the people. In 2015, Netanyahu used a similar occasion in Congress to lobby against the Iran nuclear deal, which was a centerpiece diplomatic initiative by the Obama administration, and to unashamedly intervene in US domestic affairs in an attempt to derail it.
When Netanyahu eventually, through direct and indirect pressure on the Trump administration, persuaded the US to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it merely demonstrated his lack of strategic thinking, as it only brought Iran closer than ever to nuclear military capability. Why should he be listened to now? Moreover, joining his delegation will be a number of the hostages’ families, in another act of cynicism by Netanyahu, who will exploit their desperation to parade them in Washington, while behind the scenes he remains one of the chief reasons why their loved ones are still going through hell in captivity.
In 2015, 58 American lawmakers showed their integrity and good political judgment in skipping Netanyahu’s speech. This time, the number is expected to be higher and it will be a true test for those who are genuine friends of Israel, who care about human rights and who support peace, let alone doing what is best for US interests. They should vote with their feet by leaving the benches of Congress empty during that speech.
• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at international affairs think tank Chatham House.
X: @YMekelberg

What Modi-Putin summit means for China and US
Zaid M. Belbagi/Arab News/July 16/2024
July is proving to be an eventful month globally, with concerns over American President Joe Biden’s candidacy, an assassination attempt on Republican candidate Donald Trump and last week’s much-talked-about visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for the 22nd India-Russia annual summit.
This was Modi’s first visit to Russia since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The visit led to a renewed commitment to political, military, economic, cultural and energy cooperation. The countries set a target of $100 billion in trade by 2030 and Modi received the Order of St. Andrew — Russia’s highest civilian honor. These developments are notable but not unexpected.
India and Russia have shared strong relations since the former’s independence in 1947. As India’s independence coincided with the start of the Cold War between the US and the Russian Federation’s predecessor, the USSR, the South Asian giant led the move to be nonaligned in this great power competition. Its nonalignment, however, always had a slight tilt toward the USSR and India actively sought American support only briefly during its 1962 war with China.
India’s close ties with the USSR, and eventually Russia, revolved primarily around strong ties in the defense sector. Close to 70 percent of India’s military hardware comes from Russia, much of which is the latter’s arsenal from the bygone Soviet era. The two countries also cooperate on matters of energy, counterterrorism and, increasingly, outer space exploration.
The convivial exchange between the two leaders was equally the result of India’s historical warmth toward Russia and Modi’s style of personalized diplomacy. In Putin, Modi has found a friend who shares the skill of being a muscular leader with a penchant for maintaining strong visibility in the public eye. This has provided a fillip to bilateral relations since Modi’s ascent to power in 2014.
India’s neutral position under Modi’s leadership on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the ongoing war has also helped. India has called for an end to hostilities and resumption of diplomatic dialogue without actively joining the West in criticizing Russia. It has also abstained from UN resolutions on the war in Ukraine. Moreover, India has made use of the significant drop in price of Russian oil to today become its largest purchaser. Despite this closeness, India has never abandoned diplomatic relations with the West. Building on the nonalignment inherent in its foreign policy, New Delhi has built strong economic and political cooperation with the US and its Western allies, striving to foster any partnership that is in the best interests of India. India-US trade relations stand at nearly $200 billion, with American imports worth almost double its exports to India. US imports include pharmaceuticals, textiles, precious stones and agricultural products. With about 2 percent of the American population being of Indian origin, the two countries are also bound together by the diaspora. India’s increased proximity to Russia is, therefore, increasingly of concern to the US and its Western allies. India will not take any diplomatic decision that may jeopardize its relations with the US in any significant manner.
Modi’s recent visit to Russia was undoubtedly part of an Indian effort to preserve ties with an old ally, but the relationship is increasingly changing. India is wary of Russia’s growing closeness with China under President Xi Jinping’s leadership. Moscow is certainly dependent on India for trade and, since 2022, for international legitimacy amid Western sanctions and hostility. However, its dependence on China is greater.
China and Russia have shared strong commercial, diplomatic and military relations in recent years and Moscow is today China’s largest oil supplier. Their cooperation has also been strengthened under the multilateral framework of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This is a matter of concern for India, whose own relations with Beijing have historically been tense and have deteriorated in recent years due to several border disputes.
In this light, Modi’s visit to Moscow aimed to be a reminder to Putin that India continues to be a time-tested ally of Russia. This is key to India’s efforts to reduce Russian dependence on China and secure Russian support during any hostilities between India and China.
The fact that the US keenly watched and expressed its concerns over the clear camaraderie between Modi and Putin illustrates India’s growing strategic significance for the West, with the latter believing that India’s diplomatic relations directly impact Western interests. Further, India’s location as a neighbor of China is strategically important for the US amid the atmosphere of a “great game” between Washington and Beijing. This location is integral to Western plans to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the strongest example of which is the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, which was announced last year at the G20 Summit in New Delhi, in addition to the White House’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment.
Given the role played by India in the West’s global ambitions, it is clear why the White House raised concerns over the recent India-Russia summit, while urging the former to use its relations with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
In reality, India will not take any diplomatic decision that may jeopardize its relations with the US in any significant manner. However, Modi’s continued strategic ambivalence toward Russia is an important reminder to the US that India, and the broader Global South, has come into its own in foreign policymaking. As analyst Chietigj Bajpaee highlights, India is drawing up a foreign policy that is “non-Western, but not explicitly anti-Western.”
Despite India’s commitment to maintaining relations with the US, it is nonetheless going to secure its partnership with Russia, as this is key to security in India’s immediate neighborhood.
• Zaid M. Belbagi is a political commentator and an adviser to private clients between London and the Gulf Cooperation Council region.
X: @Moulay_Zaid

Why Damascus has failed to prevent repeated Israeli strikes on Iranian targets on Syrian territory
ANAN TELLO/Arab News/July 16, 2024
LONDON: Since the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, Israel has repeatedly struck military targets on the nation’s territory. These attacks have sharply increased in frequency since the Gaza conflict erupted last October, with Israel seemingly free to act with impunity. Following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack that triggered the war in Gaza, Israel has mounted strikes against suspected Iran-backed targets on Syrian soil, leaving Syrians fearful that their country could be dragged into a wider regional conflagration between Israel and Iran.
A similar scene has been unfolding in neighboring Lebanon, where Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia have been exchanging cross-border fire since Oct. 8 last year, resulting in hundreds of fatalities and the mass displacement of civilians.
On Monday, a suspected Israeli drone strike on a car near the Lebanon-Syria border killed Mohammed Baraa Katerji, 48, a prominent Syrian businessman who had close ties to the government of President Bashar Assad, according to an Associated Press report quoting pro-government media and an official from an Iran-backed group.
The pro-government Al-Watan daily quoted unnamed “sources” as saying that Katerji was killed in a “Zionist drone strike on his car.” Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Katerji was apparently targeted because he used to fund the “Syrian resistance” against Israel in the Golan Heights, as well as his links to Iran-backed groups in Syria.
Israel rarely claims responsibility for such strikes on Syrian territory but has repeatedly given warning that it will not tolerate Iran gaining a military foothold there or using the country to transport advanced weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Although Syrian air defenses and the Assad regime’s Russian allies have occasionally intercepted Israeli missiles over Syrian territory, they have failed to deter Israeli attacks on military installations and commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Indeed, at least 19 senior officials of the IRGC’s extraterritorial Quds Force have been killed in suspected Israeli strikes since Oct. 7, including top-ranking officer Mohammad Reza Zahedi. Rescue workers search in the rubble of a building annexed to the Iranian embassy a day after an air strike in Damascus on April 2, 2024. (AFP)
Israel’s ability to track high-profile targets and strike deep inside Syrian territory owes largely to its technological and military superiority and the comparative weakness of Syria’s defenses.
Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, believes Israel has been attacking Syria for almost a decade simply because “Israel can.”“Syria has no effective way to deter Israel from attacking it at will,” he told Arab News. “Israel has every incentive to destroy weapons sent to Syria from Iran or elsewhere, especially those that might end up strengthening Hezbollah.”
In late June, Israel reportedly struck multiple targets in southern Syria, including a pro-Iran service center and an IRGC stronghold in the Sayyida Zainab area south of Damascus, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
SOHR said the suspected Israeli strike killed three people, including an elderly woman, and injured 11 others. State media cited a military source saying two people were killed and one soldier was injured. Syrian air defenses were activated but failed to repel the attack. “Iran and Hezbollah have no answer to Israel’s technological superiority,” said Landis. “Syria’s air force is in shambles, its anti-aircraft missiles are inadequate, and Russia does not want to alienate Israel, which could easily seek revenge against Russia by helping Ukraine.”
The Israel Defense Forces saw its arms expenditure increase by more than 200 percent — from $1.8 billion in September to $4.7 billion in December 2023 — according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
People gather outside a buildling reportedly targeted by Israeli air strikes in the Kafr Sousa district of the Syrian capital Damascus on February 21, 2024. (AFP)
Moreover, the US provides Israel with $3.8 billion in annual military aid, making it the IDF’s biggest arms supplier. Second to the US is Germany, which sold Israel $326.5 million worth of arms last year alone.
Calls by several UN rights experts and pro-Palestine activists for an arms embargo on Israel have fallen on deaf ears. Even a case brought by Nicaragua to the International Court of Justice to halt Germany’s arms sales to Israel was rejected in April.
Mohammed Al-Basha, a senior Middle East analyst at the research network Navanti Group, agrees with Landis that “Syrian government and Hezbollah aircraft defense and anti-aircraft capabilities are limited.”
He told Arab News: “These capabilities are generally quite restricted and likely concentrated around key targets, such as Damascus.”He added that the Syrian government and Hezbollah “primarily receive their air defense systems from countries like Russia, Iran, and possibly China. “While Syria may have had some capacity to counter missile attacks five years ago, as evidenced by their response to a strike by US President Donald Trump’s administration … it is now likely that Russia is prioritizing these resources for its own conflicts in Ukraine, South Ossetia, and potentially Transnistria.”
On April 14, 2018, the US, UK, and France fired more than 100 missiles at three government sites in Syria, claiming these were chemical weapons facilities. Russia said Syrian air defenses downed at least 71 incoming cruise missiles.
Whatever the condition of Syria’s air defenses today, Al-Basha stressed that “Israel’s air capabilities are almost certainly more advanced than those of the Syrian government and Hezbollah.”While Syria may lack the means to meaningfully retaliate against Israel, the same cannot be said for Iran and its regional proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Al-Hashd Al-Sha’abi in Iraq — groups that collectively make up the “Axis of Resistance.”
On July 9, Hezbollah retaliated for the killing of a bodyguard of its leader Hassan Nasrallah by firing dozens of rockets into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, killing two people, according to Israeli police.
Earlier that day, the bodyguard’s vehicle had been hit with an Israeli shell in Syrian territory on the Damascus-Beirut highway, Reuters reported.
The killing of senior Hezbollah commander Mohammed Nasser in southern Lebanon on July 3 also did not go unpunished. The following day, the militia said it launched more than 200 rockets and a swarm of drones at 10 Israeli military sites.
War-shattered Syria, by contrast, appears to Israel as a soft target.
Syrian-Canadian analyst Camille Alexandre Otrakji told Arab News that by targeting Syria, Israel “strategically targets both the broader resistance camp and Syria specifically.“Israel is attempting to weaken the overall capabilities of the resistance camp, with Syria being a relatively safe target compared to other regional resistance actors,” he said. “If Israel targets non-state actors in Lebanon, Yemen, or Iraq, it would likely face retaliatory attacks. Unlike Syria, these actors are not constrained by international agreements, complicating their decision to retaliate against Israel.”
The Baathist regime itself, however, has also long been considered a sworn enemy by Israel. Pointing out that Syria’s army “has been significantly weakened” by 13 years of civil war, Otrakji said Damascus “faces a more challenging situation,” and “its close allies are not all supportive of a decision to escalate toward military confrontation with Israel.” He added: “Syrians legitimately claim that Damascus is the world’s oldest continuously inhabited capital. With comparable validity, they also assert that Syria holds the oldest continuously inhabited position within the resistance axis.
“Since 1947, Syria has frequently opposed Israeli and American initiatives in the Middle East with varying degrees of intensity.
“In a CIA analysis document titled ‘Israel: Perceptions of Syria,’ declassified in 2011 and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, CIA analysts noted that ‘Israelis, both in and out of government, view Syria as Israel’s most determined enemy.’
“The document further states, ‘Most Israelis foresee an extended period of internal unrest in Syria after Assad leaves the scene … the Israelis believe it would weaken Syria’s position in the region and force the successor regime to turn inward.’”
Otrakji argues that “although Israel cannot deploy its full military might to achieve its long-term goal of creating a power vacuum in Syria, it can pursue this objective gradually.” He explained that “this slow-paced approach appears to be welcomed by the international community, serving as an additional means to pressure Syria’s leadership into making further compromises.”While Israel is expected to continue mounting attacks on Syrian territory, Landis of the University of Oklahoma does not foresee Syria becoming the primary battlefield in Israel’s shadow war with Iran.
“Syria will not be the main battlefield, but Israel will strike any arms depots or manufacturing sites in Syria that may resupply Hezbollah,” he said.
“If Iran tries to reinforce Hezbollah through Syria, Israel will be sure to attack Syria in an effort to stop arms from reaching Lebanon.”

A Season of Elections – But How Much Change?
David Hale/This Is Beirut/July 16/2024
The Lebanese people are no strangers to political violence and assassinations, sadly. Nor are the American people, even if our experience is less frequent or systematic. One advantage we have is that we remain a nation of institutions, capable of doing what is essential at moments like this — credible, impartial, and transparent investigations to find out what exactly happened. There will always be conspiracy theorists from our society’s right and left margins. But speculation masquerading as evidence or analysis can only be refuted by the facts.
Since pundits must earn their living, there is already — hours after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania — no shortage of assessments of its impact on the election. At this still-early stage, it seems obvious the task for the Democrats has been made even harder. First, there is the issue of image. On the one hand, the June 27 presidential debate in Atlanta gave our nation a hard-to-erase image of an incumbent president struggling to communicate coherent thoughts and appearing even older than his 81 years. On the other hand, there are iconic images of his opponent on July 13 showing a commanding bearing, defiance, and presence of mind under dire circumstances. Those are exactly the qualities many Americans seek and admire in a leader. Second, there is the issue of campaign strategy. The Democrats, who have already suspended campaign ads attacking Trump, will find it hard to target and demonize Trump and “MAGA Republicans” as they have been doing and apparently had planned to amplify. They’ll need a strategy re-boot. President Biden began with his address to the nation on July 14. He called for cooling down political rhetoric and for discourse based on good faith, reason, and decency. We’ll see. Our election is four months away and we have already endured some astonishing developments. Maybe the candidates will focus on actual, concrete policy issues, a change that some might find most astonishing of all. Above all, for Trump it will be key to stick to the high road and theme of unity he has so far adopted; for Biden, if he will no longer cast Trump as evil incarnate, he will rely on highlighting competing visions for our future.
When it comes to foreign policy and national defense strategy after the election, there may be more consensus — regardless of who wins in November — than either side is prepared to admit. On trade restrictions, there are few differences between the two candidates, although Trump has promised to increase them even more. On immigration, Biden’s election-eve conversion to a tougher line may soften in a second term, but Republicans and Democrats showed earlier this year that compromise and consensus are possible in the effort to control our borders. There is a broad, bipartisan consensus on our approach to China. As for the Middle East, no matter who gets elected a course correction on Iran policy will be imperative, since the Biden team’s support for a restored JCPOA nuclear deal is obsolete. Trump would redouble his maximum pressure strategy toward Iran; it is less obvious what the Democrats would do, but their current policy of not having a policy is unsustainable. A Trump administration would be less ardently hopeful about a two-state outcome for Israelis and Palestinians. But in any case, it is hard to see how even introducing creative, informed, and effective American diplomacy could overcome the current reality that neither Israelis nor Palestinians seem interested in the compromises and tradeoffs that such a two-state outcome requires — and by “current reality” I mean for the past two decades. On NATO, Trump’s unconventional rhetoric made clear that allies could not expect a free ride — and whatever Trump’s foes may state, that tough line did compel increased defense spending by many NATO members and lay the groundwork for Biden’s choreography of NATO’s contributions to Ukraine’s self-defense. One policy departure: a Trump administration is likely to seek increased U.S. defense spending to outpace inflation, unlike our current budget. Such a position would help enhance America’s deterrence posture against actors such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The national security tone and style of the two possible presidencies would markedly differ, but less so the policy goals each seeks. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on which style is more likely to get attention and results.
There is less change than meets the eye in recent elections in the UK, France, and Iran. Even though the shift in voters toward Labor was tiny, the loss of Tory support to smaller parties has given Labor an outsized parliamentary majority. Labor can do most anything it wants for now, but its leaders would be wise to remember they have little more public support today than they did in 2019. Staying in tune with public opinion may preclude radical change. In France, the two-stage election system did its job by keeping the National Front at bay for now, but at the price of what may be a paralyzing cohabitation of natural opponents. Stymied on the domestic front, President Macron may channel his abundant energies into foreign policy, where the president has his own authority. However, France can accomplish little on its own without partners in NATO or the EU, so there are inherent boundaries there as well. Finally, the election of a regime-tolerated moderate as Iran’s president does show a public yearning for change at least on gender and human rights, and perhaps the economy, but power does not rest with the presidency, especially on external policies. Expect no change in Iran’s strategy of menacing its neighbors through proxies and the pursuit of its nuclear ambitions.So, despite all the tumult, for better or worse the prospect for radical policy change in 2025 may not be so great after all. However, the one major exception may be all that matters: who is more likely to enhance America’s deterrent posture, the incumbent we saw in Atlanta on June 27, or the challenger we saw in Butler on July 13? That’s for voters to decide.