Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 19-20/2024
Gunshots Fired at Kataeb Headquarters in Saifi
Rahi: There is No Excuse for Not Electing a President
South Lebanon: Deadly Israeli Raid on Maroun al-Ras
Partial Elections at the Order of Physicians
The Quintet’s Quest for a Mechanism for Presidential Consultations
Food Scandal in the Beqaa Region
Raad says Hezbollah escalating to 'preserve deterrence equation'
Mass and funeral on the first anniversary of former Minister Sajaan Al-Qazzi
Sharafeddine: I demanded that the sea be opened for Syrian refugees to travel to Europe
Dekwaneh Vehicle Registration Center to Open on Sunday

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 19-20/2024
Factbox-What happens if an Iranian president dies in office?
Intense search for Iran’s President Raisi after helicopter ‘accident’
Is Iran’s Government Preparing for the Post-Raïssi Era?
Several Senior Iranian Officials Involved in Helicopter Crash
What happens if an Iranian president dies in office?
Who is Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi?
Saudi Arabia expresses concern over helicopter accident involving Iran’s Raisi
Iran Holds Indirect Talks With the US in Oman
Saudi crown prince meets White House national security adviser Sullivan
Death toll from Israeli strike on Nuseirat rises to 31: Gaza officials
Israel war cabinet minister says to quit unless Gaza plan approved
Islamic State claims attack in Afghanistan that killed three Spaniards
Israel pounds Gaza as top official gives Netanyahu ultimatum for postwar plan
Gallant and Halevy authorize a major expansion of the Israeli military operation in Rafah
UN Aid Chief Warns of Apocalyptic Outcome to Gaza Conflict
Women and children killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, officials say - as US envoy meets with Benjamin Netanyahu
The Israel-Hamas war is testing whether campuses are sacrosanct places for speech and protest
Ukraine said it destroyed a Russian minesweeper. 'Another bad day for the Black Sea fleet' — ministry.
Senior Syrian Officials to Go to Trial for Crimes Against Humanity

Titles For The Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on May 19-20/2024
Iran's New Proxy: American Universities/Robert Williams/Gatestone Institute/May 19, 2024
Who Has Priority in Lebanon... a President or a Republic?/Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 19/2024
Beware: The Final, Most Brutal War/Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 19/2024
Turkiye-Greek ties continue to warm as leaders meet again/Yasar Yakis/Arab News/May 19, 2024
Kuwait needs political stability to implement reforms/Dr. Bashayer Al-Majed/Arab News/May 19, 2024
How Trump vs. Biden debates might impact US election/Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/May 19, 2024

Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 19-20/2024
Gunshots Fired at Kataeb Headquarters in Saifi
This Is Beirut/May 19/2024
On Sunday afternoon, unidentified gunmen on board of a 4×4 opened fire at the central headquarters of the Kataeb party in Saifi, downtown Beirut. A party spokesman confirmed the shooting to This Is Beirut but declined to comment further. An investigation is underway.

Rahi: There is No Excuse for Not Electing a President
This Is Beirut/May 19/2024
Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai emphasized that there was no “justifiable reason not to elect a president of the Republic who will abide by the Constitution and reorganize constitutional institutions.”During his Sunday sermon, Rai underscored the necessity of “electing a president who can sit at the negotiating table” should an eventual peace agreement concerning the Gaza war be set forth. Patriarch Rai also criticized “those obstructing the electoral process by linking it to the Gaza war,” which many interpret as a clear reference to the Shiite tandem that wishes to tie the presidential election to the issues of Gaza and south Lebanon. The Pentecost mass, celebrated by the Maronite patriarch, was also an opportunity to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of broadcasting channel Noursat (Télé Lumière), as well as the 3rd anniversary of the death of Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir. After the mass, the patriarch met with the Acting Governor of the Central Bank (BDL), Wassim Mansouri.

South Lebanon: Deadly Israeli Raid on Maroun al-Ras
This Is Beirut/May 19/2024
On Sunday, the Israeli army carried out a series of attacks on several regions of southern Lebanon, including a deadly one on Maroun al-Ras, where two Hezbollah members were killed. Israeli aircraft raided Maroun al-Ras, Alma al-Shaab, Bayt Lif and Naqoura. Two Hezbollah fighters, Hassan Yehia Nehmeh and Ali Hadi Salameh, were killed in Maroun al-Ras. A third person was wounded and had to be hospitalized. Artillery fire hit the outskirts of the towns of Aitaroun, Rashaya and Wadi Hamoul. A fire broke out in Wazzani and Ghajar following a sweep by the Israeli army. Bombing caused another fire in Hula. The Israeli army also fired phosphorus shells at Mays al-Jabal. Inhabitants urgently called in the civil defense to extinguish the fire, which was spreading and coming dangerously close to their homes. For its part, Hezbollah announced that it targeted the Israeli sites of Raheb, Jal al-Alam, Ramta and Zebdine with heavy artillery. It also claimed to have destroyed Israeli “spy equipment” at Ramya.

Partial Elections at the Order of Physicians
This Is Beirut/May 19/2024
The list made up of members of Hezbollah, the Amal Movement, the Free Patriotic Movement and independents won the partial election of the Lebanese Order of Physicians in Beirut. The elections took place on Sunday at the headquarters of the Order, under the supervision of its president, Dr. Youssef Bakhache, and the representative of the Ministry of Health, Joseph Helou. Four new members were elected to replace three Shiite doctors and one Christian, maintaining the traditional confessional balance. The newly elected members are doctors Jaafar Fadl Abbas, Ali Moussa Houmani, Raef Khalil Rida and William Nabih Moawad. Each member of the Council, as well as the President, is elected for a three-year term. Each year, a ballot is held to replace four outgoing members. During the elections on Sunday, the general meeting also approved the annual accounts. In the same context, the Future Movement announced the victory of the list it supported in the partial elections to the North Lebanon Order of Physicians. Dr. Mohammad Safi, President of the Order, announced the results: Yahya Saleh and Hala Abdallah (Future Movement), and Ibrahim Makdissi, supported by Sleiman Frangieh’s Marada. Salim Abi Saleh was automatically elected as the investment fund supervisor, with Faisal Trad and Rachad Alammeddine elected as assistant supervisors.

The Quintet’s Quest for a Mechanism for Presidential Consultations
Bassam Abou Zeid/This Is Beirut/May 19/2024
The quintet ambassadors—comprising the United States, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt—are exploring a consultation mechanism. They aim to ascertain if a consensus can be reached on a presidential candidate, or if a presidential election can be organized with a limited list of contenders. However, as of yet, these ambassadors have not reached a consensus on a consultation mechanism, possibly due to the complexity of the issue requiring further deliberation. Additionally, it’s conceivable that political parties are steadfast in their stances regarding dialogue and consultation.
During his visit to Meerab on Saturday, and his meeting with the leader of the Lebanese Forces, Samir Geagea, French Ambassador Hervé Magro took note of Geagea’s repeated refusal, as well as that of the opposition, to participate in a dialogue convened and chaired by the Speaker of the House, Nabih Berri. Geagea considers that there are other alternatives for this dialogue, such as bilateral and multilateral consultations between parliamentary blocs or even the adoption of the same mode of communication among the parliamentary blocs. This enabled reaching an agreement on the recommendation addressed to the government regarding the one billion euro subsidy from the European Union to address the repercussions of the Syrian migrant crisis in Lebanon. During his meeting with Magro, Geagea is said to have emphasized the importance of coupling any agreement on a consultation mechanism with a clear commitment that, in the event of a failure to reach a consensus on the presidential election, Nabih Berri would convene an electoral parliamentary session and maintain successive rounds until a president is elected. Berri would commit not to allow any party to prevent the quorum from being met.
However, Berri’s position appears unchanged. According to available information, he remains firmly committed to the idea of convening and chairing a dialogue himself. Furthermore, he has never engaged, on behalf of his party Amal, and his ally Hezbollah, to ensuring the quorum.
At this stage, maintaining these positions could be considered as a strategy for the tandem. Both do not wish to separate the presidential election from the two issues of Gaza and South Lebanon, once a ceasefire has been established. The presidency could thus be used in a bargain by Amal and Hezbollah. They are eager to take advantage of any opportunity that would enable them to claim what they call a victory, and thus invest in a political price that they believe the Lebanese are obliged to pay. Until now, the quintet ambassadors have been reluctant to declare their engagement in the consultation process. They opt to defer this matter to the Lebanese, who will bear the outcomes, whether positive or negative. It’s possible that these ambassadors might propose that the National Moderation Bloc resume its role as a mediator among political actors for consultation. While the National Moderation Bloc doesn’t seem fundamentally opposed, it fears it may fail again, which could undermine both its initiative and that of the quintet.

Food Scandal in the Beqaa Region
This Is Beirut/May 19/2024
General Security (GS) recently shut down dozens of restaurants, factories and stores in the Beqaa region after uncovering an illegal network of Syrian nationals managing, producing and marketing counterfeit food products that fail to meet even the most basic food safety standards. GS agents discovered establishments run by Syrian investors operating illegally, as part of their ongoing campaign to combat offenses linked to the illegal Syrian presence in Lebanon. Flour mills, restaurants, stores selling dairy and cheese products, food packaging plants, and companies manufacturing household and cleaning products were sealed off. These establishments also specialized in counterfeit food brands, which were sold to restaurants, grocery stores and supermarkets, and consumed by both Lebanese and Syrians. Several tons of food products were seized and will be examined before being discarded. The campaign was established under the supervision of Beqaa Prosecutor General Mounif Barakat, in cooperation with the Ministries of Industry, Health and Economy, and under the directives of the head of General Security, Elias Baissari.

Raad says Hezbollah escalating to 'preserve deterrence equation'
NNA/May 19, 2024
The head of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammad Raad, said Sunday that his group is “reassured” over the course of its conflict with Israel. “The resistance is escalating its operations against the Israeli enemy to a certain level in order to preserve the deterrence equation,” Raad said. Hezbollah is doing this “so that the enemy does not fantasize that it has become capable and prepared to pounce on Lebanon and achieve its illusions in it,” the lawmaker added. “Accordingly, we will emerge victorious when we thwart the enemy’s goals,” Raad went on to say.
Since October 8, the cross-border fighting between Israel and Hezbollah has killed at least 419 people in Lebanon, mostly militants but also including 82 civilians.Israel says 14 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed on its side of the border. --- Naharnet

Mass and funeral on the first anniversary of former Minister Sajaan Al-Qazzi
NNA/May 19, 2024
The family of former minister Sajaan Al-Qazzi commemorated his first anniversary with a mass and funeral in his hometown at the Church of St. John the Baptist - Kfarshaham in Al-Aqiba. The mass was attended by President Amin Gemayel, Representative Salim Al-Sayegh, representing the head of the Lebanese Phalange Party, Sami Gemayel, and the party, MPs: Farid Haikal Al-Khazen, Shawqi Al-Dakkash, and Nadim Gemayel, former Minister Roger Depp, former MP Walid Khoury, Head of the Syndicate of Lebanese Press Editors, Joseph Al-Qasifi, President of the Maronite League, Khalil. Karam, the mayor of Al-Aqiba, Joseph Al-Dakkash, the former ambassador, Brigadier General George Khoury, the head of the Keserwan-Futuh Phalange region, Michel Al-Hakim, the media advisor to the head of the Free Patriotic Movement, Antoine Constantine, the lawyer, Joseph Abu Sharaf, the mayors of the town, a large crowd of party and social activists, and an audience of locals. The town and its surroundings. Monsignor George Al-Qazzi presided over the mass, assisted by the parish priest, Father Boutros Arab. Al-Qazzi delivered a sermon in which he enumerated the deceased’s merits “and the national milestones in which he emerged as a fighter for Lebanon, its independence and sovereignty, with his broad thought, steadfast stance, moral and literary courage, and his writings.” He pointed out that "his qualifications and talents prompted Patriarch Bechara Al-Rai to name him as his advisor." He noted his role in the government and the Ministry of Labor and his opening of an office in Jounieh that provides services to the areas of Keserwan - Al-Futuh, North Matn and Batroun. After the Mass and the prayer of laying incense, the family accepted condolences from the participants in the Mass.

Sharafeddine: I demanded that the sea be opened for Syrian refugees to travel to Europe
NNA/May 19, 2024
Caretaker Displaced Minister, Issam Sharafeddine, considered that “the file of displaced Syrians will be discussed seriously this time after the parliamentary recommendation to the government.”The Minister said in an interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper: “This time, due to popular and parliamentary pressure, from religious authorities, from the majority of ministers and all the Lebanese, and as a result of the new security situation and repeated crimes by outlaws, especially from displaced Syrians, the government was forced to make a political decision regarding the displaced.”He stressed that "the importance of the decision this time lies in the fact that the recommendations came from the Council of Ministers and the Parliament together, And that there is a ministerial committee that prepares periodic reports, pointing out that this committee has existed for two years under the name “Committee for the Return of the Displaced,” but there was no political decision to implement the ministry’s plan, which stipulates the voluntary return of 15,000 Syrians per month, with the possibility that the number of the first group will be 180,000.”
He continued: "The plan was approved by the Syrian side and we prepared a paper of understanding, but we were hesitant and there was no political decision to implement it."
Sharafeddine disclosed that there will be a visit to Syria, during which he will meet all the ministers concerned with military service, the unregistered individuals, the issue of prisoners, and the issue of border control.
Asked about the one billion euro gift, he said: “If the gift of one billion euros is conditional on keeping the displaced in Lebanon, then it is rejected, and if it is conditional on making us border guards in the seaports as well, then it is rejected. We have 3 demands: The first is in Brussels to form a tripartite committee between Lebanon, Syria, and the UNHCR. The second is to give all incentives and benefits to the displaced Syrian upon their return to Syria, including in-kind, material, hospital, social, and educational benefits.The third demand is to ask the Prime Minister to raise the issue of lifting the siege on Syria because it constitutes the main obstacle to the return of displaced Syrians, because this siege and the Americans have placed their hands on the oil sources in northern Syria and the plains that produce grains and which do not help the return of the displaced.”
Regarding the debate between opening the sea or land to displaced Syrians, the minister said: “Yes, I demanded that the sea be opened to legitimate convoys based on international decrees and customs in 1951 and the 1967 Protocol. All countries affiliated with the Human Rights Organization are called upon to receive any displaced person from any country in which a civil war took place or economically besieged, and therefore we can start with Canada, North and South America, Australia, and all the countries of the world, and they are obligated to receive them, and we are not their border guards."Regarding Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s fear of sanctions, as conveyed by a number of MPs in the parliamentary session, he indicated that “the pressures are real and we know that there are sanctions imposed on Lebanese officials. We are a weak third world country, and there is American arrogance and the unjust Caesar Act.”

Dekwaneh Vehicle Registration Center to Open on Sunday
This Is Beirut/May 19/2024
The Vehicle Registration Center announced that its Dekwaneh center will be open on Sunday, May 19, and throughout the following week to process applications for the release of all types of vehicles and motorcycles from seizure.

Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 19-20/2024
Factbox-What happens if an Iranian president dies in office?
Reuters/May 19, 2024
(Reuters) - Rescuers in Iran were racing on Sunday to find the crash site of a helicopter that was carrying President Ebrahim Raisi to find out the fate of all those on board. Below is brief outline of what Iran's constitution says happens if a president is incapacitated or dies in office:
* According to article 131 of the Islamic Republic's constitution, if a president dies in office the first vice president takes over, with the confirmation of the supreme leader, who has the final say in all matters of state.
* A council consisting of the first vice president, the speaker of parliament and the head of the judiciary must arrange a election for a new president within a maximum period of 50 days.
Raisi was elected president in 2021 and, under the current timetable, presidential elections are due to take place in 2025.

Intense search for Iran’s President Raisi after helicopter ‘accident’
AFP/May 19, 2024
TEHRAN: Iran launched a large-scale search and rescue effort to scour a fog-shrouded mountain area after President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter went missing Sunday in what state media described as an “accident.”Fears grew for the 63-year-old ultraconservative after contact was lost with the helicopter carrying him as well as Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and others in East Azerbaijan province, reports said. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Iranians to “not worry” about the leadership of the Islamic republic, saying “there will be no disruption in the country’s work.”“We hope that Almighty God will bring our dear president and his companions back in full health into the arms of the nation,” he said in on state TV. Expressions of concern and offers to help came from abroad, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar and Turkiye, as well as from the European Union which said it activated its rapid response mapping service to aid in the search effort. State television reported that “an accident happened to the helicopter carrying the president” in the Jolfa region of the western province, while some officials described it as a “hard landing.” “The harsh weather conditions and heavy fog have made it difficult for the rescue teams to reach the accident site,” said one broadcaster. More than 40 rescue teams using search dogs and drones were sent to the site, reported the IRNA news agency as TV stations showed pictures of rows of waiting emergency response vehicles. Raisi was visiting the province where he inaugurated a dam project together with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, on the border between the two countries. Raisi’s convoy included three helicopters, and the other two had “reached their destination safely,” according to Tasnim news agency. Foreign countries were closely following the search effort at a time of high regional tensions over the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas since October 7 that has drawn in other armed groups in the Middle East. A US State Department spokesman said: “We are closely following reports of a possible hard landing of a helicopter in Iran carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister.
“We have no further comment at this time.”
An Iranian Red Crescent team was seen walking up a slope in thick fog and drizzling rain, while other live footage showed worshippers reciting prayers in the holy city of Mashhad, Raisi’s hometown. In neighboring Iraq, Prime Minister Mohamed Shia Al-Sudani “instructed the interior ministry and the Iraqi Red Crescent and other relevant authorities to offer available resources... to aid in the search.”Azeri President Aliyev said in a post on X that “we were profoundly troubled by the news of a helicopter carrying the top delegation crash-landing in Iran.”“Our prayers to Allah Almighty are with President Ebrahim Raisi and the accompanying delegation,” he said, noting that his country “stands ready to offer any assistance needed.”The accident happened in the mountainous protected forest area of Dizmar near the town of Varzaghan, said the official IRNA news agency. Military personnel along with the Revolutionary Guards and police had also deployed teams to the area, said army chief-of-staff Mohammad Bagheri. Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said one of the helicopters “made a hard landing due to bad weather conditions” and that it was “difficult to establish communication” with the aircraft. Raisi has been president since 2021 when he succeeded the moderate Hassan Rouhani, for a term during which Iran has faced crisis and conflict. He took the reins of a country in the grip of a deep social crisis and an economy strained by US sanctions against Tehran over its contested nuclear program. Iran saw a wave of mass protests triggered by the death in custody of Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September 2022 after her arrest for allegedly flouting dress rules for women.

Is Iran’s Government Preparing for the Post-Raïssi Era?
Iranian Presidency/AFP/This Is Beirut/May 19, 2024
Is Tehran preparing for the possibility of the deaths of its President and Foreign Minister, following a helicopter crash on Sunday? Rescue operations continue in search of the site where Iranian President Ebrahim Raissi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s helicopter “crashed” on Sunday. However, Tehran already seems to be preparing for the possibility of their deaths. Iranian Vice-President Mohsen Mansouri was on his way to the northwestern city of Tabriz, the nearest city to the crash site, on Sunday, accompanied by several members of the Iranian government. At the same time, the Iranian government announced that it was holding an emergency meeting of the National Security Council, headed up by Khamenei. The Iranian administration’s spokesman, Ali Bahadori Jahromi, said the aim was to monitor the progress of rescue operations, but an Iranian security official, quoted by the media, did not rule out the possibility of an “assassination attempt”. Rescue operations were continuing in the late afternoon in search of the crash site, Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi announced in the early evening. According to Tasnim, the “particularly difficult” weather conditions, with visibility “not exceeding ten meters”, are greatly complicating the progress of the twenty or so rescue teams involved. The official told Reuters that the lives of Raisi and Amir-Abdollahian were “at risk following the helicopter crash”. “We are still hopeful but information coming from the crash site is very concerning,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. For this reason, these teams are preferring to use the land route rather than the air route. Some twenty ambulances are currently mobilized. These rescue teams include the Iranian Red Crescent, the Iranian army and the police.

Several Senior Iranian Officials Involved in Helicopter Crash
Iranian Presidency/AFP/This Is Beirut/May 19, 2024 
A helicopter carrying Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi was involved in “an accident” in poor weather conditions on Sunday, state media reported, with a search underway and no news yet on his condition. “An accident happened to the helicopter carrying the president” in the Jofa region of the western province of East Azerbaijan, state television said. Search and rescue team were headed to the remote mountain area, state media in the Islamic republic reported, adding that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was also aboard the aircraft. “The harsh weather conditions and heavy fog have made it difficult for the rescue teams to reach the accident site,” state TV said in an on-screen news alert. State TV broadcast footage of an Iranian Red Crescent team walking up a slope in thick fog, as well as live footage of crowds of worshippers reciting prayers in the holy Shrine of Imam Reza in the city Mashhad, Raisi’s hometown.
Sunday’s accident happened in the mountainous protected forest area of Dizmar near the town of Varzaghan, said the official IRNA news agency. The site in question is close to a copper mine called Sungun. It is located between Jofa and Varzaqan, in the province of East Azerbaijan, between 70 and 100 km from Tabriz, the aircraft’s destination, according to Al Jazeera. Raisi, 63, was visiting the province Sunday where he inaugurated a dam project together with his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliev, on the border between the two countries. His convoy included three helicopters, and the other two had “reached their destination safely,” according to Tasnim news agency. IRNA said the foreign minister and local officials were travelling in the same helicopter as Raisi. The reformist Shargh daily also reported that “the helicopter carrying the president crashed” while two other helicopters landed safely. Later, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said one of the helicopters “made a hard landing due to bad weather conditions” and that it was “difficult to establish communication” with the aircraft. Iran operates a variety of helicopters, but decades of sanctions have made it difficult to purchase new aircraft or obtain parts. Many of the aircraft currently in service date back to before the country’s 1979 revolution. Due to the difficulty in accessing spare parts, many Iranian aircraft are poorly maintained, making accidents like this more common. Mr. Raisi, 63, is a hardliner who previously headed the country’s judiciary. He is considered a protégé of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and some analysts have suggested that he could replace the 85-year-old after his death or resignation.

What happens if an Iranian president dies in office?
Al Arabiya English/20 May ,2024
Uncertainty hung over the fate of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi after state media said his helicopter had an accident on Sunday in poor weather in a western province. Iran launched a large-scale search and rescue operation in the fog-shrouded mountain area of East Azerbaijan province. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said “the Iranian people should not worry” about the country and voiced hope Raisi and the others aboard would be found in good health. Below is a brief outline of what Iran’s constitution says happens if a president is incapacitated or dies in office:
According to article 131 of the Islamic Republic’s constitution, if a president dies in office, the first vice president takes over, with the confirmation of the supreme leader, who has the final say in all matters of state. A council consisting of the first vice president, the speaker of parliament and the head of the judiciary must arrange an election for a new president within a maximum period of 50 days. Raisi was elected president in 2021 and, under the current timetable, presidential elections are due to take place in 2025. In Iran, it is the supreme leader rather than the president who has the final say on all state matters, including foreign policy and the nuclear program. Therefore, if something were to happen to Raisi, significant changes in the Islamic Republic’s overall policies are unlikely.
With agencies

Who is Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi?
Al Arabiya English/19 May ,2024
Always piously dressed in a black turban and religious robe, Iran’s ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi has been in office during a tumultuous period of confrontation abroad and mass protest at home. On Sunday, there were fears for the 63-year-old after Iranian state media said his helicopter had an accident in poor weather in a remote western mountain region, with no news on Raisi’s condition. As search and rescue teams headed to the suspected crash site in dense fog in an area of East Azerbaijan province, state TV in the Islamic Republic broadcast footage of faithful praying in Raisi’s home city.
The Iranian president -- whose career started in the years after the 1979 Islamic revolution and who is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- took power in a 2021 election that was followed by turbulent years of protests and tensions. Like Khamenei, Raisi has often spoken up defiantly as Iran, the biggest Shia Muslim power, has been in a tense standoff with its declared arch foes the United States and Israel. Raisi took power after an election in which more than half the electorate stayed away and several political heavyweights had been barred from standing. He succeeded Hassan Rouhani, whose signature achievement was a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that gave Iran relief from international sanctions. Like other ultraconservatives, Raisi harshly criticized his predecessor’s camp after then-president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the nuclear pact in 2018 and reimposed punishing sanctions on Iran. Raisi took the reins of a country in social and economic crisis. After portraying himself as a corruption-fighting champion of the poor, Raisi announced austerity measures that caused a sharp increase in the price of some staples, triggering anger at the high cost of living. Then, in late 2022, a wave of nationwide protests erupted following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women. In a landmark event in March 2023, Iran and Saudi Arabia, long-time regional foes, announced a surprise deal that restored diplomatic relations. But the Gaza war that broke out on October 7 between Israel and Hamas sent regional tensions soaring again, and tit-for-tat escalations led to Tehran launching hundreds of missiles and rockets directly at Israel last month. Earlier on Sunday, Raisi emphasized Iran’s support for the Palestinians -- a centerpiece of the country’s foreign policy since the Islamic Revolution -- declaring that “Palestine is the first issue of the Muslim world.”
Head of judiciary
Born in 1960 in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad, Raisi as young man, with a salt-and-pepper beard and thin glasses, studied theology and Islamic jurisprudence under Khamenei. He married Jamileh Alamolhoda, an educational sciences lecturer at Tehran’s Shahid-Beheshti University. They have two daughters. Aged just 20, in the wake of the Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed monarchy, Raisi was named prosecutor-general of Karaj next to Tehran. He served as Tehran’s prosecutor-general from 1989 to 1994, deputy chief of the Judicial Authority for a decade from 2004, and then national prosecutor-general in 2014. In 2016, Khamenei put Raisi in charge of a charitable foundation that manages the revered Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad and controls a large industrial and property asset portfolio. Three years later, the supreme leader appointed him head of the Judicial Authority, and Raisi was also a member of the assembly of experts that selects the supreme leader. His black turban signifies direct descent from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, and a few months after he became president, Iranian media started referring to him by the title of ayatollah in the Shia clerical hierarchy. Raisi has been on Washington’s sanctions blacklist for complicity in “serious human rights violations” -- charges rejected as null and void by the authorities in Tehran. For Iran’s exiled opposition and human rights groups, his name is a reminder of the mass executions of Marxists and other leftists in 1988, when Raisi was deputy prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. Asked in 2018 and again in 2020 about the executions, Raisi denied playing a role, even as he lauded an order he said was handed down by the Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini to proceed with the purge. When the “Green Movement” in 2009 rallied against populist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s winning a disputed second term, Raisi was uncompromising. “To those who speak of ‘Islamic compassion and forgiveness’, we respond: We will continue to confront the rioters until the end and we will uproot this sedition,” he pledged.
With AFP

Saudi Arabia expresses concern over helicopter accident involving Iran’s Raisi
Al Arabiya English/19 May ,2024
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry issued a statement on Sunday expressing concerns regarding an accident involving a helicopter that was carrying Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and other officials, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. President Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province when the helicopter made a “hard landing” near Jolfa, a city on the border with the nation of Azerbaijan, approximately 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital Tehran, Iranian state TV announced. “We affirm that the Kingdom stands by the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran in these difficult circumstances and its readiness to provide any assistance that the Iranian agencies need,” the ministry said in a statement. Rescue teams were attempting to reach the site but faced significant challenges due to poor weather conditions, including heavy rain, fog and wind. Babak Yektaparast, an emergency services spokesman, told Iran’s state news agency IRNA that a rescue helicopter had tried to access the area but was hindered by thick mist. In addition to President Raisi, the helicopter was carrying several other officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, according to IRNA.

Iran Holds Indirect Talks With the US in Oman
(KHAMENEI.IR/AFP)/This Is Beirut
Iran confirmed that it held indirect talks with its arch-foe the United States in Oman, despite the two countries having no diplomatic relations, state media reported. Washington and Tehran have long been at odds, with tensions centered on Iran’s contested nuclear program and heightened by the Gaza war between their respective allies Israel and Hamas. On Friday, American news website Axios reported that US and Iranian officials held indirect talks in Oman “on how to avoid escalating regional attacks.”The official IRNA news agency said late on Saturday that “the representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations confirmed indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States in Oman.”IRNA quoted him as saying that “these negotiations were not the first and will not be the last”, without giving the time and place of the talks. The discussions were held after Iran launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack on Israel on April 13-14. Israel has been Iran’s sworn enemy since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Regional tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, drawing in Iran-backed militant groups in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Switzerland represents Washington’s interests in Iran. In recent years, the two foes have engaged in indirect talks over measures to curb Tehran’s nuclear program, prisoner swaps and releasing Iran’s frozen funds abroad.

Saudi crown prince meets White House national security adviser Sullivan
ARAB NEWS/May 19, 2024
DHAHRAN: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in eastern city of Dhahran, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Sunday. During the meeting, the strategic relations between the two countries and ways to enhance them in various fields were reviewed, SPA said. It said efforts to find a credible solution to the Palestinian issue, including a lasting ceasefire and unhindered entry of humanitarian aid in Gaza, with a view to a “two-state solution that meets the aspirations and legitimate rights of the Palestinian people”, were also discussed.

Death toll from Israeli strike on Nuseirat rises to 31: Gaza officials
AFP/May 19, 2024
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Sunday that an Israeli air strike targeting a house at a refugee camp in the center of the Palestinian territory killed at least 31 people, updating an earlier toll. “The civil defense crew were able to recover 31 martyrs and 20 wounded from a house belonging to the Hassan family, which was targeted by the Israeli occupation forces in the Nuseirat camp,” Gaza civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told journalists. He said rescue workers were continuing to search for missing people under the rubble. Earlier on Sunday the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital had said it had received the bodies of 20 people killed in the strike which witnesses said occurred around 3:00 am local time. The Israeli army when contacted by AFP asked for specific coordinates of the strike. Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported that the wounded included several children. Fierce battles and heavy Israeli bombardments have been reported in the central Nuseirat camp since the military launched a ground operation on the southern city of Rafah in early May. Palestinian militants and Israeli troops have also clashed in north Gaza’s Jabalia camp for days now. Witnesses said several other houses were targeted in air strikes during the night across Gaza, and that strikes and artillery shelling also hit parts of Rafah during the night. The Israeli military said two more soldiers were killed in Gaza the previous day. The military said 282 soldiers have been killed so far in the Gaza military campaign since the start of the ground offensive on October 27.

Israel war cabinet minister says to quit unless Gaza plan approved
AFP/May 19, 2024
JERUSALEM: Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz said Saturday he would resign from the body unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved a post-war plan for the Gaza Strip. “The war cabinet must formulate and approve by June 8 an action plan that will lead to the realization of six strategic goals of national importance.. (or) we will be forced to resign from the government,” Gantz said, referring to his party, in a televised address directed at Netanyahu. Gantz said the six goals included toppling Hamas, ensuring Israeli security control over the Palestinian territory and returning Israeli hostages. “Along with maintaining Israeli security control, establish an American, European, Arab and Palestinian administration that will manage civilian affairs in the Gaza Strip and lay the foundation for a future alternative that is not Hamas or (Mahmud) Abbas,” he said, referring to the president of the Palestinian Authority.
He also urged the normalization of ties with Saudi Arabia “as part of an overall move that will create an alliance with the free world and the Arab world against Iran and its affiliates.”Netanyahu responded to Gantz’s threat on Saturday by slamming the minister’s demands as “washed-up words whose meaning is clear: the end of the war and a defeat for Israel, the abandoning of most of the hostages, leaving Hamas intact and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across the Gaza Strip for more than seven months. But broad splits have emerged in the Israeli war cabinet in recent days after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, an area where Israel previously said the group had been neutralized. Netanyahu came under personal attack from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday for failing to rule out an Israeli government in Gaza after the war.
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s attack on October 7 on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. The militants also seized about 250 hostages, 124 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 37 the military says are dead. Israel’s military retaliation against Hamas has killed at least 35,386 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry, and an Israeli siege has brought dire food shortages and the threat of famine.

Islamic State claims attack in Afghanistan that killed three Spaniards
CAIRO (Reuters)/May 19, 2024
Islamic State on Sunday claimed responsibility for an attack by gunmen on tourists in Afghanistan's central Bamiyan province, the group said on its Telegram channel. Three Spanish tourists were killed and at least one Spaniard was injured in the attack, Spain's foreign ministry said on Friday. Taliban interior ministry spokesman Abdul Mateen Qaniee four people had been arrested over the attack in which gunmen opened fire. In addition to the three foreign tourists, one Afghan citizen had been killed in the attack. Four foreigners and three Afghans were also injured, he added.
Mountainous Bamiyan is home to a UNESCO world heritage site and the remains of two giant Buddha statues that were blown up by the Taliban during their previous rule in 2001. Since taking over Afghanistan in 2021, the Taliban have pledged to restore security and encourage a small but growing number of tourists trickling back into the country. They have sold tickets to see the site of the destroyed Buddha statues. Friday's attack was among the most serious targeting foreign citizens since foreign forces left and the Taliban took over in 2021. The Islamic State claimed an attack that injured Chinese citizens at a hotel popular with Chinese businessmen in Kabul in 2022.

Israel pounds Gaza as top official gives Netanyahu ultimatum for postwar plan
Susan Miller, USA TODAY/May 19, 2024
Israeli forces launched heavy strikes across Gaza on Sunday, hours after a top Israeli official gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an ultimatum to figure out a postwar vision for the embattled enclave. Israeli War Cabinet member Benny Gantz demanded that Netanyahu agree to a plan − one that would specify who would rule Gaza after the war with Hamas ends − by June 8 or Gantz and his centrist party would bolt the wartime coalition. The demands by Gantz, a retired general and former defense minister, show the latest fracture among Israel's top leaders. On Wednesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also pushed Netanyahu for clarity on postwar Gaza. Netanyahu, Gantz and Gallant are the three voting members of the War Cabinet, assembled as a demonstration of unity after the brutal Hamas attacks of Oct. 7. Gantz released a six-point plan that would allow Israel to retain security control of Gaza but bring a temporary U.S.-European-Arab-Palestinian system of civil administration over the territory. It would also require equitable national service for all Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are now exempted from the military draft. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan was scheduled to meet with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders on Sunday. Sullivan was expected to push the longtime U.S. ally to pursue Hamas in a more targeted way, particularly in the southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands have been fleeing after more than 1 million displaced Palestinians sought shelter there from fighting elsewhere in Gaza. Despite global outcries about the Rafah invasion, Netanyahu has vowed to press on to crush militants responsible for the Oct. 7 border attacks that left more than 1,200 Israelis dead and triggered the war.
Netanyahu on Rafah: There's 'no humanitarian catastrophe' in Rafah, Netanyahu insists
Developments:
∎ At least 28 Palestinians were killed Sunday, most in a strike on a house in Nuseirat in central Gaza, health officials and Hamas said. In a statement, the Gaza Civil Emergency Service said rescue teams have also recovered the bodies of 150 Palestinians killed by the Israeli army in recent days, and that 300 houses had been struck by Israeli aerial and ground fire.
∎ At least 35,456 Palestinians have been killed and 79,476 have been wounded in Israel’s military offensive since Oct. 7, the Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement Sunday.
∎ A new poll puts Netanyahu’s job approval rating at 32%, the Times of Israel reported. The job approval rating for Gantz, Netanyahu’s main opponent, was only slightly higher at 35% in the Channel 12 poll. Gallant garnered a 43% rating.
UN court takes case: Israel accused in world court of trying to 'destroy Palestinian life'
Saudi crown prince, US national security adviser meet on Gaza, bilateral deal
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Sullivan met to discuss an almost "finalized" draft of a deal between Washington and Riyadh, the Saudi state news agency said Sunday. The discussions target U.S. security guarantees and a civilian nuclear cooperation pact, Reuters reported. They come amid reports that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are nearing a broader agreement that could allow Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel for the first time and possibly carve a pathway to Palestinian statehood, which Netanyahu has resisted.
Battles intensify in northern Gaza
Fighting raged anew in northern Gaza as Israeli forces advanced into the narrow alleyways of Jabalia on Sunday amid fears that Hamas was re-establishing a foothold in areas cleared earlier in the war. The Israeli military said it was “operating to identify armed terrorist cells and … conducting dozens of strikes to assist the forces operating on the ground” in the Jabalia area, the largest of Gaza's eight historic refugee camps. “The situation is very difficult” in Jabalia, Abdel-Kareem Radwan, 48, told the Associated Press. He said Israeli fighter jets “strike anything that moves.”

Gallant and Halevy authorize a major expansion of the Israeli military operation in Rafah
DPA/Gaza/Tel Aviv/May 19, 2024
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevy authorized a significant expansion of the military operation in Rafah, according to a media report. They agreed to the “next and important phase” of the operation in the city south of Gaza, Israeli government-affiliated Channel 14 reported on Sunday. An Israeli army spokesman said the report was being considered. The report added that senior military officers will present the details of the plan to US President Joe Biden's security advisor, Jake Sullivan, who is in Israel on Sunday for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gallant, and President Isaac Herzog. In Rafah, the Israeli leadership says it wants to dismantle the last Palestinian Hamas brigades that it claims are present there. Allies, including the United States, Israel's strongest backer, have repeatedly warned against launching a large-scale attack on the city bordering Egypt due to the large number of internally displaced people. According to United Nations estimates, about 800,000 refugees have already left the city since the start of the military operation about two weeks ago. Israel intends to inform Sullivan of its figures for the number of Palestinians who have already fled Rafah during the American advisor’s visit, according to Israeli Army Radio. Israeli figures often differed from those provided by the United Nations agency in Gaza, which is the subject of strong Israeli criticism.

UN Aid Chief Warns of Apocalyptic Outcome to Gaza Conflict
KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/This Is Beirut
The stranglehold on aid reaching Gaza threatens an “apocalyptic” outcome, the UN’s humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on Sunday as he warned of famine in the besieged territory. “If fuel runs out, aid doesn’t get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming anymore. It will be present,” Griffiths said. “And I think our worry, as citizens of the international community, is that the consequence is going to be really, really hard. Hard, difficult, and apocalyptic,” he told AFP on the sidelines of meetings with Qatari officials in Doha. Griffith, the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said some 50 trucks of aid per day could reach the hardest-hit north of Gaza through the reopened Erez crossing. But battles near the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings in Gaza’s south meant the vital routes were “effectively blocked”, he explained. “So aid getting in through land routes to the south and for Rafah, and the people dislodged by Rafah is almost nil,” Griffiths added. Griffiths said the military action in the southern Gazan city was “exactly what we feared it would be.”“And we all said that very clearly, that a Rafah operation is a disaster in humanitarian terms, a disaster for the people already displaced to Rafah. This is now their fourth or fifth displacement,” he said. Some relief supplies began flowing in via a temporary, floating pier constructed by the United States. Griffiths said the maritime operation was “beginning to bring in some truck loads of aid” but he cautioned “it’s not a replacement for the land routes.” On Thursday, the Arab League called for a UN peacekeeping force to be deployed in the Palestinian territories and for an international conference to resolve the Palestinian issue on the basis of the two-state solution. Griffiths explained there were a “number of different conferences being potentially planned” to discuss humanitarian arrangements in Gaza. “I feel very strongly that the United Nations needs to be present at the table when all these things are being discussed,” the UN aid chief said. But he cautioned on the likelihood of a UN peacekeeping force for the Palestinian territories. A proposed deployment could be blocked by a veto from permanent Security Council members, while it would also require the acceptance from the warring parties. The UN announced in March that Griffiths, a British barrister, would step down in June over health concerns.*Callum Paton, with AFP

Women and children killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, officials say - as US envoy meets with Benjamin Netanyahu
Sky News/May 19, 2024
Women and children were among 28 people killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Sunday, officials have said. The territory's Hamas-run health ministry said at least 20 people died in the bombing of a house in Nuseirat - a refugee camp in central Gaza. The dead included eight women and four children, including a two-year-old girl called Sabreen, according to records at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. A separate strike on a street in Nuseirat killed another five people, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent emergency service. It came as heavy fighting continued in northern Gaza, which has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months and where the World Food Program says a famine is underway. Just "a fraction" of health centres are still operating in the territory, the United Nations (UN) warned on Saturday. US national security adviser Jake Sullivan was on Sunday due to meet with Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to discuss a plan for Saudi Arabia to recognise Israel and for the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza in exchange for eventual statehood. Netanyahu, whose war cabinet member Benny Gantz is threatening to resign unless a new plan is adopted, has rejected the proposals and wants open-ended security control over Gaza. The UN said on Saturday that 800,000 people have now been forced to flee Rafah since Israel Defence Forces launched an offensive against the city on 6 May - closing off a vital aid supply route. Philippe Lazzarini, commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said last night on X: "Since the war in Gaza began, Palestinians have been forced to flee multiple times in search of safety that they have never found." Each time people move "they are forced to leave behind the few belongings they have: mattresses, tents, cooking utensils and basic supplies that they cannot carry or pay to transport", he said. Mazen Abdel Dayem, who has been displaced from Beit Hanoun, said: "Life is unbearable. There is no sewage network... no one to provide water for us, or the municipality to clean up the dumped garbage and the bombing sites. There is no life."In the UK, Green Party MP Caroline Lucas on Sunday issued fresh calls for the UK to restart funding for UNRWA, as Defence Secretary Grant Shapps appeared on Sunday morning political programmes. The Foreign Office in January paused funding for UNRWA over allegations that 12 staff members had taken part in the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, which killed around 1,200 people. More than 35,000 people have died in Gaza since Israel launched its assault on the territory following the 7 October attacks, according to officials. Israel has claimed that Rafah is the last bastion of Hamas, but recently reignited combat in parts of northern Gaza, which it said it had cleared earlier in the war, to stop its fighters from regrouping there. Israel is yet to accomplish its stated goals of dismantling Hamas and returning the scores of hostages abducted in the 7 October attack. On Sunday Israel confirmed two more of its soldiers had been killed in a battle in southern Gaza. About 125 of the 253 people abducted in Hamas's October raid are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza.

The Israel-Hamas war is testing whether campuses are sacrosanct places for speech and protest
LAURIE KELLMAN and JOCELYN GECKER/BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) /May 19, 2024
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Stephen Hawking on the Big Bang. Millions of students for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. They were provocative in their times, products of an ideal that holds universities as sacrosanct spaces for debate, innovation — and even revolution. But Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the resulting war in Gaza are testing that perception, as anger over the brutal military campaign collides with election-yearpolitics and concerns about antisemitism in places where freedom of expression is supposed to rule. “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making,” wrote poet John Milton, an alumnus of Cambridge University, in his 1644 treatise against censorship in publishing. “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”That lofty principle has clashed with the stark reality of the Israel-Hamas war. Hamas militants who crossed the border killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 hostage. Israel’s drive to root out Hamas has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, according to the local health ministry, and left millions on the edge of famine. Administrators on some campuses have called in local police to break up pro-Palestinian protesters demanding that their schools divest from Israel in demonstrations that Israel's allies say are antisemitic and make campuses unsafe. From Columbia University in New York to the University of California, Los Angeles, thousands of students and faculty have been arrested in the past month.
“Columbia,” read one sign held aloft there after arrests on April 30, “Protect your students (Cops don’t protect us).”Historically, universities are supposed to govern — and police — themselves in exchange for their status as “something of a secular sacred ground,” said John Thelin, University of Kentucky College of Education professor emeritus and a historian of higher education. “One has to think of an American college or university as a ‘city-state’ in which its legal protections and walls include the campus — grounds, buildings, structures facilities — as legally protected, along with a university’s rights to confer degrees,” he added in an email. Calling in the police, as administrators did at Columbia, Dartmouth, UCLA and other schools, represents the “break down of both rights and responsibilities within the campus as a chartered academic institution and community,” he said.
The crackdowns are reviving memories of student-led protests during the American civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Student activism in the 1960s led campus officials to call law enforcement. And on May 4, 1970, the National Guard opened fire on unarmed students, killing four at Kent State University. Four million students went on strike, temporarily closing 900 colleges and universities. It was a defining moment for a nation sharply divided over the Vietnam War, in which more than 58,000 Americans were killed. A half-century later, the Israel-Hamas conflict has lit another fuse, with claims that “outside agitators” have infiltrated the protests to inflame tensions. “The scale, fierceness, the short time frame since the Hamas attacks, the irreconcilable demands of current competing protestors, and their occasional violence, has tested university leaders on how to respond,” said John A. Douglass, a senior research fellow and professor of public policy and higher education at the University of California, Berkeley. Most major colleges and universities have their own police departments, “but inviting and soliciting help from local community police departments in riot gear, and not only called on to disperse encampments but protect rival protestors from each other, is a relatively new phenomenon,” he said.
What's lost when the police are called in?
“Trust between the university and significant parts of its most important constituency: its students,” said Anna von der Goltz, a history professor at Georgetown University. The cost, she said, also potentially includes the university's credibility "as a community that is capable of setting its own rules and dealing effectively with violations of those rules."The wave of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses took inspiration from demonstrations at Columbia that began on April 17. As protesters set up their encampment that day, the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, was called for questioning before Congress, where Republicans accused her of not doing enough to fight antisemitism on the school’s Manhattan campus. The next day, university officials called in the New York City police, who arrested more than 100 protesters — among them, the daughter of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who had questioned Shafik in Washington.Similar scenes played out across the country: The University of Southern California canceled its main graduation ceremony after disallowing its student valedictorian, who is Muslim, from giving her keynote speech. Police arrested hundreds of protesters at New York University and Yale. At Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, President Sian Leah Beilock called in police to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment just a few hours after it went up. Inspired by the protests in the United States, pro-Palestinian encampments popped up in the U.K. andEurope earlier this month as administrators there confronted the same question: Allow or intervene? At Cambridge University, idyll of Darwin and Hawking, an encampment of about 40 tents in front of the Gothic spires of King’s College appeared disciplined and orderly after three nights, with a posted schedule that included meals, training, traditional Palestinian kite-making — and strict message discipline as passersby stopped to talk under rare sunshine. Cambridge protester Jana Aljamal, 22, a Palestinian student from Jerusalem, said she doesn't think the U.S. protesters want the focus on themselves: “What’s happening in Gaza is more important.”“We have our own guidelines,” she added of the Cambridge protest. “To protect the freedom of protest, the freedom of expression and the ability to have these conversations, the ability to have a community behind us, the ability to raise action.”The scene was more tense last week at several European universities, with the University of Amsterdam canceling classes after pro-Palestinian demonstrations turned destructive. But the protests haven't yet approached the intensity of demonstrations in the United States. Will there be a reckoning of how administrators handle protests over a conflict with no end in sight? Von der Goltz said the strategies employed at schools like Rutgers and Brown, where administrators negotiated an end to the protests, will get scrutiny. “What did they perhaps do that other administrators didn't?” she wrote. “I expect there to be some kind of reckoning at Columbia, UCLA, etc., because things have clearly gone very wrong there on multiple levels.”

Ukraine said it destroyed a Russian minesweeper. 'Another bad day for the Black Sea fleet' — ministry.
Rebecca Rommen/Business Insider/May 19, 2024
Ukraine says it has destroyed a Russian minesweeper in the Black Sea.
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine celebrated the loss of the Kovrovets minesweeper on X. Ukraine claims to have destroyed or disabled a third of Russian ships in the Black Sea during the war. Ukrainian forces destroyed Russia's Kovrovets sea minesweeper, the Ukrainian Navy reported on Telegram. "The Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, together with their comrades, continue to bring us closer to victory," the Ukrainian Navy wrote on its Telegram channel. No information on where the attack took place or what weapons were used to target the Kovrovets, but Ukraine has had notable success in tormenting the Russian fleet with exploding drone boats. The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine took to X (formerly Twitter) to celebrate the Russian Navy's latest loss. The Kovrovets, a Project 266M Natya class minesweeper, was used for mine-sweeping operations, reconnaissance, and control sweeping, Euromaidan Press reports. It had also been deployed off the coast of in Syria. The Soviet-era minesweepers were built in the 1970s and 1980s and carried a crew of 68. In March, the Ukrainian Navy told AP News that Ukraine had destroyed or disabled one-third of all Russian warships that had been stationed in the Black Sea before the war. The latest sinking of a Russian warship follows attacks on Novorossiysk on Friday. The Russian port has become an important base for the Black Sea Fleet after repeated attacks on its traditional base in Crimea. It appears the attack on Novorossiysk was part of Ukraine's biggest drone attack ever. Satellite images from April indicate that Russia was beefing up its defenses for its Black Sea Fleet naval base in Novorossiysk. However, Novorossiysk was struck by Ukrainian missiles and drones this weekend. As Ukraine maintains pressure on Russia in Crimea and the Black Sea region, its troops have struggled to fend off Russian advances along the eastern front, particularly near Kharkiv. Despite progress made by Russian forces, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine was not experiencing a shortage of artillery shells for the first time since Russia launched its full-scale invasion.

Senior Syrian Officials to Go to Trial for Crimes Against Humanity
(SAUDI PRESS AGENCY/AFP)/This Is Beirut/May 19, 2024 
According to The Guardian, three high-ranking Syrian officials are to go on trial in Paris on Tuesday. They are accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes. In 2013, 20-year-old student Patrick Dabbagh was arrested by the Syrian army at his home in Damascus. Within 24-hours, the army returned for his 48-year-old father. Their fate remained unknown until 2018 when the Syrian government published their death certificates, according to The Guardian. Ali Mamlouk, head of the Syrian secret services, Jamil Hassan, former head of the Syrian air force intelligence, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, intelligence director at the notorious Mezzeh detention centre where father and son are believed to have been held, are accused of complicity in their deaths. This represents the first time that such high-ranking Syrian officials with close links to the Assad family will be held accountable. More than 15,000 Syrians are believed to have been tortured to death by the Syrian intelligence, whilst more than 112,000 people have been forcibly disappeared since 2011, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Last November, France issued an international arrest warrant for Bashar Al-Assad, over his use of chemical weapons against civilians. Three others, including Assad’s brother, were also indicted over the use of sarin gas in two attacks in 2013 that killed more than 1,000 people. European countries have increasingly adopted the principle of universal justice, which empowers them to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes, regardless of the perpetrators nationality or location.

Latest English LCCC  analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on May 19-20/2024
Iran's New Proxy: American Universities
Robert Williams/Gatestone Institute/May 19, 2024
"We are watching the demonstrations, and we like what we see, but it should not end with this.... These protestors are our people and will support Iran in an Iran-U.S. confrontation; Iran can repeat in the U.S. what it did in Lebanon but on a grander scale because the 'Hizbullah -style' groups in the U.S. are 'much larger' than in Lebanon.... America is the Great Satan and our enemy, but we have hope in these areas." — Foad Izadi, Teheran University, who studied at University of Houston and Louisiana State University, Ofogh TV (Iran), April 26, 2024.
[Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim] Qassem – who appeared almost taken aback at the eagerness of students on US campuses to join Hamas in its call for the genocide of Jews – was hopeful about the ability of America's students to help Hezbollah destroy Israel by turning the U.S. against its ally. "We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the [Alavi] foundation," Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, November 22, 2009.
The Alavi Foundation, according to its website, has indeed funded many of the universities where protests were taking place. The universities include those of the Ivy league, such as Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, as well as UCLA and many others.
In 2016, Harvard employed Ali Akbar Alikhani – who had warned about "the Jewish threat" -- from Tehran University's Faculty of World Studies, which is reportedly closely tied to the Iranian ruling regime, as a visiting scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern studies....
Hooshang Amirahmadi, the founder of the American Iranian Council (AIC), has admitted that the lobbying organization was created by the Islamic Republic of Iran to work for its interests in the US. Amirahmadi has had and continues to enjoy a successful academic career at Rutgers University....
Some faculty members at Rutgers recently called for the genocide of Jews.
In addition, at least five US universities -- Virginia Tech University, the University of Washington, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clarkson University, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette -- have allegedly been cooperating with Iranian entities that are sanctioned by the US and the European Union, including the Iranian Aerospace Research Institute, Iran University of Science and Technology, and the Sharif University of Technology.
Iran can only be rejoicing at the moral and educational collapse they have helped create on American university campuses, which are grooming America's future teachers, judges and political leaders. Now, however, these campuses appear to be incubating America's future terrorists and creating a national security threat. Iran can only be rejoicing at the moral and educational collapse they have helped create on American university campuses, which are grooming America's future teachers, judges and political leaders. Now, however, these campuses appear to be incubating America's future terrorists and creating a national security threat. Pictured: Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protesters outside of Columbia University on April 24, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
"Iran, you make us proud" and "Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around," were among the chants by the pro-Hamas college students and the paid activists who organized them on U.S. campuses. They declared a "student intifada," conducted a Hamas-inspired "Day of Rage," bowed down to Allah and called for "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."
Meanwhile, Iran and the mouthpieces of its Islamist regime were paying extremely close attention. According to Tehran University Professor Foad Izadi, who is American-educated and considered one of Iran's main experts on the U.S. and a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime:
"...the demonstrations [on U.S. campuses] are important. What we in the Islamic Republic should do is... We are watching the demonstrations, and we like what we see, but it should not end with this...These protestors are our people and will support Iran in an Iran-U.S. confrontation; Iran can repeat in the U.S. what it did in Lebanon but on a grander scale because the 'Hizbullah -style' groups in the U.S. are 'much larger' than in Lebanon."
Izadi was educated at the University of Houston and received his doctorate from Louisiana State University before returning to Iran. In the West, he falsely poses as a peace activist, as a board member of the radical organization World Beyond War which calls itself "a global movement to end all wars."
Izadi urged the Iranian government to engage "on an operational level" with protesting students in the U.S. to try to "recruit connections and build networks" among them, adding
"Personally, I think that the potential to repeat in the U.S. what Iran did in Lebanon is much higher. Our Hizbullah-style groups in America are much larger than what we have in Lebanon. America is the Great Satan and our enemy, but we have hope in these areas."
Hezbollah in Lebanon is also paying extremely close attention. In a May 3 interview, Hezbollah's Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem praised the pro-Hamas protests on American campuses.
"We appreciate and value this very much. Perhaps in the future, there will be cooperation among the youth of the world – in America, France, Britain, Germany, and all the activists. The [campus protests] are important, especially because they will have an impact on the U.S. elections. They will have an impact on the American position. Even if Biden says that he will not be influenced by this, he will whether he likes it or not. We will see him taking actions because of the protesters' influence on him."
Qassem – who appeared almost taken aback at the eagerness of students on US campuses to join Hamas in its call for the genocide of Jews – was hopeful about the ability of America's students to help Hezbollah destroy Israel by turning the U.S. against its ally.
"Where do the members of Congress come from? From among the people. If the people's perspective changes... There were never such level [of protests] in America... This would mean embarking on a new stage, and maybe one of these days, America will no longer support Israel to such an extent. Without support, Israel is nothing. We would not have to work hard in order to destroy Israel. Without support, it will be destroyed."
The Iranian regime – the patron and sponsor of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis -- has been working on just such an outcome since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Now, Iran and others appear to be actively seeking to turn American youth against the US by infiltrating American campuses.
The New York Post wrote as early as 2009:
"The deep-pocketed Alavi Foundation has aggressively given away hundreds of thousands of dollars to Columbia University and Rutgers University for Middle Eastern and Persian studies programs that employ professors sympathetic to the Iranian dictatorship...
"In one of the biggest handouts, the controversial charity donated $100,000 to Columbia University after the Ivy League school agreed to host Iranian leader and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to the foundation's 2007 tax filings obtained by The Post."
"We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation," Adam Kaufmann, investigations chief at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office told the Post at the time.
The Alavi Foundation, according to its website, has indeed funded many of the universities where protests were taking place. The universities include those of the Ivy league, such as Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, as well as UCLA and many others.
"This is all about Iran laundering their policies through academe," said Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "And the ivory tower is prostituting itself for money."
According to Influence Watch, the Alavi Foundation has been investigated by the US government since 2003, and has funded several other institutions apart from American universities:
"It donated $50 million from its founding through 2014, including to non-Muslim groups such as the Clinton Foundation, to which it sent $30,000; Action Against Hunger, to which it sent $500,000; New York State World Trade Center Relief Fund, to which it sent $100,000; Harvard University, which received over $600,000; and the Catholic University of America, which received $375,000."
In 2020, the Education Department asked Harvard University to disclose more information about donations it received from the Alavi Foundation.
In 2016, Harvard employed Ali Akbar Alikhani – who had warned about "the Jewish threat" -- from Tehran University's Faculty of World Studies, which is reportedly closely tied to the Iranian regime, as a visiting scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern studies. At Harvard, he claimed to be a "professor of peace," centered on a project about "peaceful coexistence in Islam."
In November 2023, the U.S. House Committee of Education and the Workforce launched an investigation into former Iranian official Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who is a Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.
"Higher education has bowed down to the radical left and enemies of America for far too long, and the mere fact that a former member of the Iranian regime is given a platform at Princeton is proof," said House Rep. Lisa McClain.
Mousavian served as Iran's ambassador to Germany from 1990-1997, during which time the Islamic Republic assassinated Iranian dissidents living in Germany. He remains employed at Princeton, while continuing to have close ties to the Iranian regime. According to Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists:
"During his time at Princeton, Mousavian has continued to support the Iran regime's hostile foreign interests. During a 2016 interview, Iran's then-foreign minister Javad Zarif told state television that he 'worked closely with [Mousavian] for many years,' adding that the professor 'is some[one] who is completely tied to the regime' and is 'currently working hard' for it."
Mousavian, who attended the funeral of the deceased arch-terrorist Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Qassem Soleimani in Tehran in 2020, also appeared in an Iranian TV tribute to him.
"Individuals who are aligned with malignant regimes continue to permeate America's postsecondary education system," said U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, who chairs the Education and the Workforce Committee.
"Seyed Hossein Mousavian's refuge at Princeton for 15 years is a textbook example. These individuals pose a grave threat to America's national security posture, and they are left to fester without any intervening action or diligent oversight efforts. It's time for some much-needed sunlight to expose the blatant corruption and influence peddling that has become far too commonplace."
Similarly, Oberlin College, employed Iran's former UN ambassador, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who reportedly covered up the mass murder of 5,000 Iranian political prisoners in 1988 when he was the regime's ambassador to the UN. While at Oberlin, he called himself the "professor of peace." Mahallati taught at Columbia in the 1990s, where he was found guilty of sexually harassing a female student. Oberlin suspended him only in December 2023 after a three-year campaign by Iranian dissidents in the US. He taught students support for Hamas. According to the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists.
"We demanded Mahallati's immediate termination after an Amnesty International report identified him as a chief conspirator in the Iran regime's attempts to hide the 1988 massacre of an estimated 5,000 political prisoners. In late September, the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights revealed that it was investigating a complaint that Mahallati taught students 'support for Hamas and terrorism' as part of a larger probe into anti-Semitism on Oberlin's campus."
The list of Iranian professors working on behalf of Iran's regime continues to grow. Hooshang Amirahmadi, the founder of the American Iranian Council (AIC), has admitted that the lobbying organization was created by the Islamic Republic of Iran to work for its interests in the US. Amirahmadi continues to enjoy a successful academic career at Rutgers University, where he is Distinguished Service professor, former director of the Rutgers' Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the founder of the Rutgers Center for Iranian Research and Analysis, on which he served as director for many years. Rutgers describes him as:
"Acclaimed for his contributions to improving United States-Iran relations through promoting world peace and humanistic studies... and founder of the American Iranian Council, a nonprofit research organization devoted to improving dialogue and understanding between the peoples of Iran and the United States."
"The problem of terrorism is a true myth. Iran has not been involved in any terrorist organization. Neither Hezbollah nor Hamas are terrorist organizations," Amirahmadi claimed in 2008. Between 2005 and 2007 alone, the Alavi Foundation donated $351,600 to the Rutgers Persian-language program, according to a spokesman for Rutgers. Students there may literally have been indoctrinated to love Hamas for at least a decade and a half. Some faculty members at Rutgers recently called for the genocide of Jews.
In addition, at least five US universities -- Virginia Tech University, the University of Washington, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clarkson University, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette -- have allegedly been cooperating with Iranian entities that are sanctioned by the US and the European Union, including the Iranian Aerospace Research Institute, Iran University of Science and Technology, and the Sharif University of Technology.
Iran can only be rejoicing at the moral and educational collapse they have helped create on American university campuses, which are grooming America's future teachers, judges and political leaders. Now, however, these campuses appear to be incubating America's future terrorists and creating a national security threat.
*Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
© 2024 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Who Has Priority in Lebanon... a President or a Republic?
Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 19/2024
Amid the persistent confusion in the Lebanese political situation, some local parties continue to suggest that deciding on a president is the desired solution. However, electing the president does not mean much and the republic is eroding and dissolving day after day. Undoubtedly, the election of the president will constitute a positive dose, especially if the concerned parties - internally, regionally and internationally - are able to agree, even implicitly, on the future framework and role of Lebanon, and if the difficulties that have prevented filling the presidential vacuum since the end of October 2022 are overcome. These obstacles - and their entanglements at the regional level - are well known to the concerned parties who are currently represented by the ambassadors of the Quintet Committee (the United States, France, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar). Here, of course, it is inevitable to add a new factor to the complexities of the Lebanese situation. The “Gaza displacement war” and its consequences, which include:
First: The escalation of ferocious Israeli aggression sparked by the Hamas attack in the Gaza Strip. There are those who say today that unless the current Israeli “war government” falls through a serious rift between its president, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (and his bloc of 5 representatives), leading to the holding of new elections... there will be no way to contain the boisterous forces deeply rooted in the extremism that Netanyahu relies on.
Second: The fever of the Iranian “unity of arenas” project may have cooled somewhat, but Tehran is still capable of negotiating with Washington by fire and drones along the Lebanese-Israeli border. This destructive “negotiation” amid an American “presidential election year” has had a number of repercussions:
1- The tragedy of displacement from South Lebanon.
2- An increase in the “radicalism” of the residents of the northern Israeli settlements and their enthusiasm for a military solution.
3- Mounting political and security pressures on Arab countries, whether surrounding Israel or facing Iran in the Gulf region.
4- A better chance for former US president and prospective Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to outbid a Democratic president who is besieged on the one hand by supporters of Israel in Congress... and on the other by its opponents among the youth of America’s universities.
Third: “Internal displacement” in Lebanon from the border areas targeted by Israeli bombing coincides with campaigns to return refugees and displaced Syrians “voluntarily” (!). These calls are in fact based mainly on sectarian considerations and calculations, but they are reinforced today by a pressing economic and living reality. Last week, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah made his contribution, proposing to push Syrian refugees and displaced persons to Europe, thus completing the “demographic mission” undertaken by Tehran, starting with Iraq (after 2003) and passing through Syria (after 2011) to redraw the Arab Levant map, perhaps through an intersection of interests with Israel’s “transfer” projects. These are interests that observers fear will not stop at Gaza, but will include the West Bank, and may extend to the “alternative homeland” plan!
Fourth: It may be difficult to count the accumulation of dangerous regional complexities in the current circumstances. It does not seem logical to ignore the possibility of slipping into catastrophic, uncalculated “scenarios.” At the same time, it may also not be wise - at least for Washington - to postpone defusing the violence until after the US presidential elections, in which Trump’s victory may open the door to all possibilities.
Therefore, the countries represented by the Quintet Committee are seeking to address the Lebanese situation, taking into account all the factors affecting the fabric of the country and its reality, but in the end, they do not hold all the cards.
The two non-Arab parties, namely the United States and France, have so far adopted a flexible approach towards Tehran’s policies in the region, and have preferred to coexist with its regional tools, in order to avoid an open war with no boundaries.
On the other hand, despite the limited “punitive” American strikes against Iran, the leadership in Tehran believes that the blackmail strategy it has adopted, and controlled its momentum according to need, is a strategy that has proven successful. On this basis, it sees that there is absolutely no need to abandon it.
Most of the American and French initiatives towards Lebanon since late 2022, when dealing with the issues of the presidency and the army, in particular, deliberately avoided addressing with the reality of the “mini state that is stronger than the state,” preferring instead to focus on resolving fleeting problems and resorting to temporary remedies while waiting for circumstances to change.
But regional developments helped maintain that reality, and even accelerated the collapse of the “state” in favor of the “mini state.” The reluctance to impose a permanent and just political solution by the ruling Israeli right has increased the “credibility” of the Tehran axis. Leniency towards Iran and its proxies has encouraged the Israeli right to become stubborn, escalate, and undermine all chances for peace and stability in the region.

Beware: The Final, Most Brutal War
Tariq Al-Homayed/Asharq Al-Awsat/May 19/2024
With Israel intensifying its operations against Hezbollah and achieving significant security breaches, there is a strong belief that any new conflict between Israel and Hezbollah could be their last and most devastating.
An Israeli-Hezbollah war, coming on the heels of the Gaza conflict, would provoke a severe confrontation with the West and the broader international community. If Israeli generals, not just Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, proceed with such a conflict, it would signal an intent for a barbaric war.
Readers might wonder, how? The ferocity displayed by Israel in Gaza was indicative of its post-“Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” stance, akin to the United States post-9/11—a rampaging bull that led to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the Taliban.
Israel's brutal tactics aim to restore its deterrence credibility and ensure Hamas cannot regain control over Gaza, a region Israel has vengefully devastated. This conflict is being waged despite clashes with the international community, particularly the US.
A conflict with Hezbollah now would be even more violent. Israel would approach it with the mindset that this must be the final war with Hezbollah, as the next would likely involve Iran directly. Israel has, albeit temporarily while awaiting political solutions, neutralized the Gaza front that Iran exploited through Hamas and other factions. Is Lebanon likely to fare better? I doubt it. Israel seeks to dismantle Hezbollah’s stronghold as a prelude to confronting Iran. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has revealed that Israeli jets over Lebanon are armed with heavier bombs for deeper targets. He indicated a readiness to strike up to 50 kilometers deep, including areas in Beirut and Syria.
This has led to a noticeable calm from Iran in Syria, suggesting Tehran understands the serious threat and is acting cautiously to protect the Syrian regime and Hezbollah.
Should a war between Israel and Hezbollah occur, it would be devastating, not merely to reassert deterrence or reset balances but as a lethal chess move to eliminate a key adversary. Both Iran and Hezbollah seem to recognize this reality, which is why Hezbollah is enduring these blows, particularly the assassinations resulting from embarrassing security breaches. Moreover, the Lebanon-based group’s base is increasingly anxious and restless. The situation in southern Lebanon is critical. Israel now views Hezbollah, once Iran’s regional strength, as its weakness. This isn’t just about Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s strategy but also about Netanyahu’s political survival. Netanyahu, who challenges Biden politically, would not hesitate to confront Nasrallah militarily.

Turkiye-Greek ties continue to warm as leaders meet again
Yasar Yakis/Arab News/May 19, 2024
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis last week paid a six-hour visit to Turkiye to return Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit that took place last December. A relative calm now prevails between the two neighbors, apart from some discordant voices coming from the opposition parties in Greece.
Greek media outlets underlined that the general atmosphere of the talks was warm. The two leaders sat at a table together with their interpreters, unaccompanied by other members of the delegation. This allowed the leaders to dig deeper into the subjects of their choice. Ever since Greece declared its independence from the Ottoman state in 1821, it has expanded its borders at the expense of Turkiye. Now it is coveting the last uninhabited rocks and geographic formations that are less than a mile away from the Anatolian mainland and hundreds of miles from the Greek mainland.
The main peace treaty that drew the present borders between Turkiye and Greece was the Treaty of Lausanne. International law provides that, if an island is not mentioned by name in an agreement, that island, rock or geographical formation has to belong to its original owner. Late Greek Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis brought this anomaly to the attention of his public by commenting: “What would the Greeks think if an island in Piraeus harbor were to belong to Turkiye.”
Turkish-Greek relations have the potential and means to improve if wise and strong governments come to power in both countries. In the last few years, Turkiye, quoting the refrain of a Turkish song, used a threatening tone in its relations with Greece by saying, “We may come one night all of a sudden.” In return, Mitsotakis had used the US Congress to place all types of blame on Turkiye.
Fortunately, relations have normalized recently. Both leaders have grown calmer and wiser and a period of relative stability seems to be dawning. Major issues, such as the delimitation of the continental shelf, the width of the two countries’ territorial waters and the control of air traffic, are still taboo and both avoid touching them. These files will be opened again when relations become more reasonable. Some of the subjects that dominated this year’s meeting are the following.
One was the renovation of Istanbul’s Kariye (Chora) church, an outstanding cultural site built in the early fourth century. Later additions transformed it into a majestic building inlaid with intricate mosaics and frescoes. After the conquest of Istanbul by the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the church was converted into a mosque in 1511. In 1948, Thomas Whittemore and Paul Underwood from the Byzantine Institute of America and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies sponsored a restoration program and it became a museum. In 2020, Erdogan’s government changed its status to a mosque again. Mitsotakis did his best to bring the question to Erdogan’s attention, but there is little chance that the Turkish president will change his mind.
If the dialogue between Turkiye and Greece is to be maintained, the best way will be to keep it low-profile.
There is a striking imbalance between the number of mosques and churches located in Istanbul and Athens. While the Greek Orthodox Church’s Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople is operating in Istanbul together with dozens of churches scattered throughout the city, Athens was, until 2020, the only European capital with no mosque at all. Mitsotakis carefully avoided any reference to the Turkish minority in Greece. The two neighboring countries have different perceptions regarding the Turkish minority in Western Thrace. Mitsotakis insistently referred to them as the Muslim minority, even though the Muslim minority in Greece is composed mainly of Turks, with few exceptions. There is a clear imbalance between the size of the Turkish minority in Greece and the Greek minority in Turkiye, which is mainly located in Istanbul and two islands close to the Dardanelles, Imbros and Tenedos. The size of the Greek minority in Turkiye is going down continuously and survives almost with artificial respiration. It will probably be extinguished in a few generations. On the other hand, the Turkish minority in Greece is still sizable.
The Gaza question became the most controversial issue in the talks between Erdogan and Mitsotakis. Erdogan said that more than 1,000 Hamas members were being treated in Turkish hospitals. Mitsotakis insisted that his government considers Hamas a terrorist organization, while Erdogan believes that it is the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Both leaders insisted on their positions and Erdogan had to take the floor again to elaborate in further detail Turkiye’s position on Hamas. Mitsotakis concluded that the parties had no choice but to agree to disagree on this subject.
Erdogan and Mitsotakis are also not on the same page regarding Cyprus. Turkiye believes that the solution to the Cyprus problem has to be based on the reality on the island, meaning a two-state solution, while Mitsotakis believes that the solution has to be based on UN parameters.
In a statement to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, Erdogan stated that, thanks to the Athens Declaration signed last year between the two leaders, Turkish-Greek relations had reached their highest level. Another positive was that Erdogan said Greece’s project to establish maritime park areas in various parts of the Aegean and Ionian seas would not harm Turkish-Greek relations. On the question of hydrocarbon cooperation between the two countries, Erdogan believes that this is not an area of confrontation but an area of cooperation. He believes that an energy platform in the Eastern Mediterranean that ignored Turkiye would create a vacuum. On the American role in ties between Turkiye and Greece, Erdogan said that these two countries have their own properly functioning channels of communication.
If the dialogue between Turkiye and Greece is to be maintained, the best way will be to keep it low-profile.
• Yasar Yakis is a former foreign minister of Turkiye and founding member of the ruling AK Party. X: @yakis_yasar

Kuwait needs political stability to implement reforms
Dr. Bashayer Al-Majed/Arab News/May 19, 2024
Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah ascended to power in December 2023, with Kuwait’s National Assembly pledging allegiance. Now, Sheikh Mishal has decided to dissolve the current parliament, which was due to hold its first session this week. This is not the first time this has happened in recent history, but the emir has taken the further step of suspending the National Assembly for its whole term of four years, while also suspending the relevant constitutional articles. This measure essentially suspends the entire parliament and the legislative arm of the country. This situation understandably raises significant concerns throughout the nation regarding the functioning of the country over the next four years and its impact on democratic rights, economic reforms and overall national development. Kuwait’s emir is the head of state who selects the prime minister and, together, they select the council of ministers. However, legislative power is held by up to 50 members of the National Assembly, who are elected by the people. The National Assembly has the power to hold ministers to account, publicly and directly during Question Time, and it can call a vote of no-confidence in the Cabinet. In turn, the emir and the Constitutional Court can dissolve the National Assembly.
The constitution of Kuwait was drafted in 1962 and became operational in 1963 alongside the first National Assembly. An attempt was made by the parliament in July 2023 to revoke the Constitutional Court’s right to dissolve the National Assembly (Article 102 of the constitution), as attempts made by the court that spring to reinstate the previous parliament, following a national election, caused political chaos. This gives a flavor of the political unease that has sat in Kuwait for some time. Sheikh Mishal has released a royal decree changing seven constitutional articles, most notably Article 107, which allows a maximum of two months to elect a new National Assembly following a dissolution, and Article 181, which disallows suspending the constitution. When it was dissolved last Friday, Kuwait’s parliament had only just formed following the public elections held in April this year. There have been 12 dissolutions of parliament since 2006, so it has been quite a destabilized time, politically. However, this is only the third suspension of the National Assembly since it was established in 1963.
There had been much abuse of the democratic rights and tools of the assembly, with legislators overstepping their positions.
Parliament was first suspended in 1976 by Emir Sheikh Sabah Al‐Salem Al‐Sabah. The suspension lasted five years. Sheikh Sabah also altered constitutional articles to revoke press freedoms in an effort to prevent attacks on various regimes. The second suspension was in 1986 due to constant clashes between parliament and the Cabinet, caused mainly by heavy political tensions, bomb threats and dropping oil prices. It lasted for six years. These suspensions eventually ceased due to public pressure.
Even prior to the formation of the most recent parliament, there had been much abuse of the democratic rights and tools of the assembly, with legislators interfering and imposing conditions that overstepped their positions. Question Time was abused, with disrespectful and even threatening behavior aimed at the Cabinet and threats made due to the emir’s choice of crown prince. There were also constant stalemates and legislative blocks, preventing progress on international business deals and much-needed national economic reforms to deal with oil divestments.
Additionally, the general public fears that the instability of recent years has encouraged corruption in state institutions. The emir had openly given numerous requests and warnings for more respectful behavior, as befitting of democratic processes, but they were not heeded.
A new Cabinet has been installed, with Sheikh Ahmad Abdullah Al-Sabah as prime minister. It will now work out how it is going to run the country over the next four years. Sheikh Mishal announced that he would explore how best to move forward in terms of reforms to Kuwait’s democratic system.
It is true that Kuwait has temporarily lost its parliament, an institution elected by the Kuwaiti people and secured through the struggles of our grandparents. The absence of elections over the next four years will undermine Kuwait’s unique position in the Gulf Cooperation Council as a nation with a democratic legislative parliament. Preserving this democratic framework is crucial for our future.
While this period of change is necessary, it will inevitably be a time of concern for many. However, the mechanisms of democracy were being severely exploited for selfish and political purposes and corruption cannot be allowed to take root. This abuse was having a detrimental effect on our country and economy. It is hoped that, in four years’ time, we will have developed a more effective system of governance that serves the entire nation. In the interim, it is imperative that political stability enables Kuwait to implement serious reforms to address major geopolitical challenges and develop its economy and infrastructure, facilitating a transition away from oil dependency.
• Dr. Bashayer Al-Majed is a professor of law at Kuwait University, and a visiting fellow at Oxford. X: @BashayerAlMajed

How Trump vs. Biden debates might impact US election
Dalia Al-Aqidi/Arab News/May 19, 2024
Presidential debates are a pivotal element of the democratic process in the US. They offer a platform for candidates to present their policies, challenge their opponents and engage directly with the electorate. These debates are more than just political theater; they have the potential to sway public opinion, solidify or dismantle narratives and ultimately influence the outcome of elections. With the 2024 election on the horizon, the prospect of a rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden brings heightened anticipation, as their debates could significantly impact the political landscape.
The tradition of presidential debates dates back to the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858, though the modern format was established with the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960. These debates are crucial moments in election campaigns, often remembered for their memorable lines, dramatic confrontations and the clarity (or lack thereof) with which candidates articulate their visions for the country.
Historically, debates have sometimes led to significant shifts in public perception. For instance, Ronald Reagan’s affable “There you go again” retort in 1980 or Barack Obama’s commanding performance in the second debate in 2012, after a lackluster first appearance, played crucial roles in their respective victories. Conversely, poor debate performances can spell disaster, as evidenced by Michael Dukakis’ unemotional response to a question about capital punishment in 1988.
This year’s rematch between Trump and Biden is particularly charged, given their contentious first encounter in 2020, which was marked by frequent interruptions and personal attacks. These chaotic debates set a new precedent for confrontational politics and left many voters frustrated with the political discourse. Given the high stakes involved, a second round of discussions between these two figures is likely to draw even more intense scrutiny and higher viewership.
One of the key aspects of any presidential debate is the stark contrast in policy and vision between the candidates. The two leaders represent two very different ideologies and visions for the future of America.
Trump’s platform will focus on continuing his “America First” policies, emphasizing economic nationalism, deregulation and a hard-line stance on immigration. He would also highlight Biden’s handling of the economy, foreign policy and social issues, leveraging his ability to connect with a segment of the electorate that feels disenfranchised by the current administration.
Biden, on the other hand, must defend his record. He is expected to focus on issues he claims as victories, such as the COVID-19 pandemic response, economic recovery efforts, climate change initiatives and social justice reforms.
Mixed results could lead to a highly unpredictable election campaign, with momentum swinging back and forth.
He needs to articulate a clear vision for his second term, addressing concerns and criticisms while presenting a roadmap for continued progress. However, he will find it difficult to convince voters of his ways of dealing with inflation, which is destroying the lives of millions.
The debates will provide a platform for Biden to counter Trump’s narrative and reengage voters who may be disillusioned or uncertain about his presidency. Trump has been challenging Biden to face him in a presidential debate for a while. His call to action, delivered via his Truth Social social media platform, urged Biden to set up the debates immediately. “I’m ready to go anywhere that you are,” Trump posted.
Ultimately, the White House agreed to a pair of presidential debates hosted by television networks, circumventing the schedule and traditional format proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The first debate, scheduled for June 27, will be hosted by CNN at its Atlanta studios and the second, hosted by ABC News, is set for Sept. 10. Biden’s campaign insisted on holding the debates without an audience, recognizing that Trump’s charisma and ability to connect with live audiences could give him an edge.
Biden’s campaign also demanded that one debate be held before the start of early voting and that the hosts not come from outlets with an ideological bent toward Trump. These conditions reflect a strategic approach to mitigating Trump’s strengths and minimizing Biden’s potential mishaps.
The outcomes of the Trump-Biden debates in 2024 could have far-reaching implications for the election and the future of American politics. Several scenarios are possible, each with its own set of consequences.
If Trump performs exceptionally well in the debates, effectively landing blows on Biden’s record and presenting a compelling vision for the future, it could energize his base and sway undecided voters in his favor. A strong debate performance could also help Trump overcome some negative perceptions surrounding his previous term, particularly if he presents himself as more disciplined and presidential. However, a dominant Trump performance could also galvanize the opposition to him, motivating Democrats and independents to turn out in higher numbers to prevent a second Trump presidency.
If Biden holds his ground in the debates, effectively countering Trump’s attacks and presenting a clear, positive vision for the future, it could reinforce his incumbency advantage and reassure voters who are on the fence. However, given his decreasing approval numbers and poor performance on several issues, this might be hard for him to achieve.
A steady performance by the current president could maintain the status quo, keeping the race competitive but without any dramatic shifts. This scenario would likely result in a close election, with the outcome hinging on turnout and the effectiveness of each campaign’s ground game.
It is also possible that the debates produce mixed results, with each candidate having strong and weak moments. In this scenario, the impact of the debates may be less pronounced, with voters relying more on other factors, such as campaign ads, grassroots organizing and media coverage, to make their decisions.
Mixed results could lead to a highly unpredictable election, with momentum swinging back and forth in the campaign’s final weeks. Voter turnout, particularly among key demographics and swing states, would become even more critical in determining the outcome.
• Dalia Al-Aqidi is executive director at the American Center for Counter Extremism.