English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 01/2024
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. ‘Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 06/20-26/:”Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. ‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. ‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. ‘Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. ‘But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. ‘Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. ‘Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. ‘Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 01/2024
Elias Bejjani/ Video & Text: Lebanon is an Occupied, Failed, and Rogue State with Its Leaders, Politicians, and Religious Figures as Mere Puppets. The Solution is to Place the Entire Country Under International Guardianship.
Israeli forces conduct small-scale incursions into Lebanon - report
Text And Video link for an Interview with Guila, Daughter of Martyr Amer Fakhoury
Audio Pannel Link From FDD
Barrot’s Symbolic Visit to Lebanon: Hezbollah Still Holds Diplomacy Cards
Gallant Asserts Ground Troops Could Join Hezbollah Fight
UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon ‘Not Able’ to Patrol
Elimination of Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah a Watershed Moment in Israel’s War Against Iranian Proxies
Lebanon’s prime minister calls for ceasefire with Israel
Israeli military begins ground invasion of southern Lebanon
WHO has been preparing for ‘worst-case scenario’ in Lebanon, regional chief tells Arab News
Saudi FM discusses developments in Lebanon with French, Lebanese counterparts
This why do we oppose terrorist and don’t agree with their terrorism and savagery?/Habeeb Habeeb/X web site/September 30/2024
Israel strikes Hezbollah leaders and suggests possible ground troop movements, AP explains

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 01/2024
Top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon was a UN employee on administrative leave, UNRWA says
Israeli airstrikes kill 12 in Gaza, but ground fighting less intense
US to announce over $300 million in aid for Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank
Yemeni government condemns Israeli airstrikes on Hodeidah
US forces accounted for after reported rocket attack in Baghdad, official says
Oil prices set to fall for third month despite Middle East conflict
Kremlin, asked on Iran's use of Russian comms devices after pager attacks, says trade is growing

Titles For The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on October 01/2024
Netanyahu rides wave of euphoria over assassinations as his political fortunes turn around/Analysis by Mick Krever, CNN/September 30, 2024
U.S. Should Sanction Iran’s Brutal Judge Iman Afshari/Tzvi Kahn/Real Clear World/September 30/2024
When it comes to Iran’s rulers, there can be no dialogue/Ben Cohen/Jewish News Syndicate/September 30/2024
Analysis: Iran reluctant so far to retaliate against Israel after airstrike kills Hezbollah leader/Jon Gambrell/DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)/September 30, 2024
The ‘Long Campaign’: When Christians (Finally) Took the Offensive Against Encroaching Islam/Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/September 30/2024
Iran's Newest Proxy: Sudan/Pete Hoekstra/Gatestone Institute/September 30, 2024

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 01/2024
Elias Bejjani/ Video: Lebanon is an Occupied, Failed, and Rogue State with Its Leaders, Politicians, and Religious Figures as Mere Puppets. The Solution is to Place the Entire Country Under International Guardianship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBnTHWYCDmI&t=79s
Elias Bejjani/September 30/2024

Elias Bejjani/ Video & Text: Lebanon is an Occupied, Failed, and Rogue State with Its Leaders, Politicians, and Religious Figures as Mere Puppets. The Solution is to Place the Entire Country Under International Guardianship.
Elias Bejjani/September 30/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/09/135066/
Lebanon is a failed, rogue, and occupied state, held hostage by the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah. Its sovereignty has been hijacked, and the nation's institutions have crumbled under the weight of corruption, betrayal, and external control. Lebanon no longer resembles the proud, independent country it once was—it has been twisted into a puppet regime serving Iran's destructive ambitions, with Hezbollah as the tool of its occupation.
This reality cannot be ignored any longer. Lebanon is a collapsed state in every sense of the word: economically, politically, and socially. Its leaders, whether politicians, clerics, or officials, are nothing but castrated puppets, willingly serving Hezbollah’s agenda in exchange for power, personal gains, and the spoils of corruption. The Lebanese state has become a façade, void of any true authority, with its military, security, and judicial institutions rendered ineffective, merely extensions of Hezbollah’s control.
Hezbollah has, for decades, spread its terror under the false pretense of "resistance" and "liberating Palestine," all while entrenching itself deeper in Lebanon’s governmental and civil institutions, devouring the country from within. Meanwhile, the Lebanese people, especially the Shiite community, have been manipulated and victimized by this destructive force. South Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut’s southern suburbs have been reduced to ruins in both spirit and infrastructure, driven into the ground by Hezbollah’s reckless actions and Iran’s expansionist agenda.
The international community cannot remain silent. Lebanon must be placed under the full authority of the United Nations, and we call upon the UN to invoke Chapter VII of its charter to rescue Lebanon from this abyss. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), already present with thousands of troops, must take charge and enforce the implementation of UN Resolutions 1559, 1701, and 1680, which call for the disarmament of Hezbollah and the restoration of Lebanese sovereignty.
The Lebanese people cannot free themselves from this occupation without external intervention. Hezbollah’s reign of terror is too deeply embedded in the country’s political and security structures. This rogue organization, controlled by the Iranian regime, thrives on assassination, intimidation, and the systematic destruction of Lebanon’s national identity. Its dream of establishing an Iranian-style Islamic Republic in Lebanon is a threat not only to the Lebanese people but to the entire region.
Arab nations, once allies of Lebanon, have turned their backs, seeing the country as a lost cause, while the West remains indecisive. But the time for hesitation is over. The world must recognize that a Lebanon under Hezbollah’s control is not just a Lebanese problem—it is a global threat. Terrorist cells, weapons caches, and militia camps flourish under Hezbollah’s protection, endangering peace and stability far beyond Lebanon’s borders.
Lebanon’s sovereign leaders, true patriots who still value independence, are few and far between, and they cannot act alone. It is now the duty of the Lebanese diaspora, especially those who cherish the values of freedom and sovereignty, to step forward. They must mobilize, speak out, and pressure the UN and the international community to declare Lebanon a failed state and place it under international guardianship. The Lebanese army and security forces are powerless under Hezbollah’s domination. Only the international community, through direct intervention, can liberate Lebanon from this occupation.
Hezbollah is a criminal organization, masquerading as a political movement. It does not represent the Lebanese people. It is time to stop pretending that Lebanon can recover on its own or with half-hearted measures. Without international intervention, Lebanon will continue to sink deeper into chaos, corruption, and ruin.
We call upon the world’s leaders, particularly those with ties to Lebanon and its diaspora, to take immediate action. The Lebanese state must be declared rogue and placed under Chapter VII, with UNIFIL given full authority to restore order and enforce peace. This is the only viable solution to end Hezbollah’s stranglehold, dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, and rebuild Lebanon as a free and independent nation. The time for decisive action is now—before it is too late.
Despite the heavy and devastating blows Hezbollah has suffered in recent weeks at the hands of Israel—especially the assassination of its terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah and the elimination of many of its top figures, along with the destruction of most of its Shiite strongholds—Hezbollah remains firmly in control of Lebanon. Incredibly, despite the catastrophic losses, Hezbollah continues to govern the country, dominate its institutions, and maintain its iron grip over Lebanon’s decision-making process.
This grim reality is a direct result of the widespread corruption among Lebanon’s political class. The country’s leaders—whether politicians, religious figures, or military officials—have sold their loyalty to Hezbollah and its Iranian masters in exchange for personal gain, power, and protection. Instead of standing up to Hezbollah and working to reclaim Lebanon’s sovereignty, they have become complicit in its domination. Their betrayal has left Lebanon defenseless, effectively handing the reins of power to a terrorist organization even in its weakened state.
The tragic truth is that Hezbollah, even after these significant Israeli strikes, still holds the country hostage. Lebanon’s government is nothing more than a puppet regime, manipulated by Hezbollah, which continues to act as Iran’s proxy. This unholy alliance between corrupt Lebanese elites and Hezbollah has led to the complete collapse of the state, rendering Lebanon a failed and rogue country.
Therefore, the urgent call for international intervention, specifically under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, is more critical than ever. The Lebanese people are unable to free themselves from this internal occupation without outside help. Hezbollah’s power runs too deep, and as long as the country’s corrupt leaders continue to serve its interests, Lebanon will remain a captive nation. It is time for the world to act, place Lebanon under full international guardianship, and finally end Hezbollah’s reign of terror.

Israeli forces conduct small-scale incursions into Lebanon - report
Jerusalem Post/September 30/2024
The purpose of these operations was to glean information in preparation for a possible invasion, the Israeli forces have been conducting small-scale incursions into southern Lebanon, including into Hezbollah's tunnels, ahead of a possible Israeli ground operation in the area, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing anonymous sources. The purpose of these operations was to gain information in preparation for a possible invasion, the sources reportedly told the WSJ, which could begin as soon as this week. According to the report, such operations have been carried out in the past few months as well as more recently, as part of Israel's attempt at striking the terror group embedded on its border with Lebanon. Israel is yet undecided whether to conduct ground operation  On Sunday, sources told The Jerusalem Post that Israel was yet undecided whether to conduct a ground operation in southern Lebanon. Last week, IDF commanders urged readiness for a possible ground operation. Israel Air Force chief Tomer Bar said the air force was preparing to assist troops in ground operations against Hezbollah, should the need arise. Also last week, IDF Northern Commander Maj.-Gen. Uri Gordon told his troops to prepare for action and a possible

Text And Video link for an Interview with Guila, Daughter of Martyr Amer Fakhoury
Summarized and written by the Editor and publisher of the LCCC website
September 30/2024
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/09/135091/
In a poignant interview, Guila shares the tragic story of her father, Amer Fakhoury, a US-Lebanese citizen who was arbitrarily arrested in occupied Lebanon in 2019 on orders from Hezbollah. He was subjected to brutal torture, which ultimately led to his death shortly after being released due to pressure from the United States.
Guila highlights the grave injustices inflicted upon her family and the larger community. She criticizes Michel Aoun for deceiving the people of southern Lebanon by encouraging their return, only to betray them by allying with Hezbollah. She asserts that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization and an Iranian puppet, emphasizing the need to confront this reality.
She also condemns Hassan Nasrallah as a criminal responsible for countless atrocities. Guila points out that Hezbollah's influence extends throughout the Lebanese state, manipulating politicians who defend its armed presence even in the United States.
Her family's ordeal is documented in their book, "Silenced in Lebanon," which details the wrongful imprisonment and torture of her father. Guila's words serve as a powerful reminder of the suffering caused by Hezbollah's actions and the urgent need for justice and accountability.

Audio Pannel Link From FDD
After decades of f*cking around, did Hassan Nasrallah just find out?
September 27, 2024 | Generation Jihad
Bill and show regular David Daoud are joined by their FDD colleague Ahmad Sharawi, making his overdue Generation Jihad debut amidst rumors that today’s Israeli strike in Beirut may have killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. They share what they know so far and unpack the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns.
https://soundcloud.com/defenddemocracy/after-decades-of-fcking-around-did-hassan-nasrallah-just-find-out

Barrot’s Symbolic Visit to Lebanon: Hezbollah Still Holds Diplomacy Cards
Samar Kadi/This Is Beirut/September 30/2024
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has stressed that the United States-French proposal for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, which was endorsed by European and Arab countries during the United Nations General Assembly last week “is still standing.”
“It’s still on the table. There’s still hope, but there’s little time left,” Barrot told a press conference at the end of his visit to Lebanon on Monday. He reiterated that a final sustainable diplomatic solution “is well known,” and that is “the thorough and comprehensive application of UN Resolution 1701.”
He drew the roadmap for the resolution’s application which, he said, requires a cessation of hostilities on both sides of the border, a massive deployment of Lebanese armed forces south of the Litani River, a withdrawal of non-state armed actors from the immediate vicinity of the border, a strengthening of the capacity of the UN peacekeeping Force to carry out its mission and a settlement of disputes on the land border. “None of this is impossible provided that the political will is present on both sides,” he affirmed, stressing that Israel should refrain from any terrestrial action and ceasefire, and Hezbollah should do the same. “I recall that the current situation is largely due to the decision of this movement (Hezbollah), which since October 2023 has dragged Lebanon into a situation we have always deplored,” Barrot added. The French minister also urged Lebanese leaders to restore the functioning of state institutions by electing a president of the Republic without delay. Barrot, who is on his first mission abroad since he was appointed in the new French government, brought no new ideas to de-escalate the conflict, which Hezbollah, through his Deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem, vowed on Monday to continue in support of Gaza.
According to an informed source, “Naim Qassem came out at the right time to remind everyone that Hezbollah is still an actor and that no one will be able to carry out diplomatic plans without it.”
Despite the major blow it suffered with the killing of its powerful Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and a large number of its key commanders, “we feel that Lebanese diplomacy is still led by Hezbollah… nothing has really changed,” the source told This is Beirut.
He maintained that Hezbollah and its ally the Amal Movement, still have cards in hand, and they are still strong at the Lebanese level, though they may be less resistant against the Israelis. “Internally there is a loss of morale, but on the ground, they are still able to impose themselves and their will,” the source added. Barrot’s visit to Lebanon could be seen as largely symbolic, but reflects France’s unrelenting efforts and desire to move forward and not to let Lebanon down, according to the source. “France is the only Western country, the only friend of Lebanon that sent its foreign minister there under bombs. It is the only country that is still talking about a diplomatic solution when everyone else, including Arab states, have let go of Lebanon,” the source concluded.

Gallant Asserts Ground Troops Could Join Hezbollah Fight
This Is Beirut/September 30/2024
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday said ground forces could be used against Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, adding military operations will go on despite the killing of the group’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.Gallant made the comments while speaking to Israeli troops deployed to the northern border, where cross-border fire with Hezbollah continued for nearly a year but escalated this month. “We will use all the means that may be required—your forces, other forces, from the air, from the sea, and on land,” Gallant said. “The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one”. Israel killed Nasrallah on Friday in an airstrike on the Iran-backed group’s southern Beirut stronghold. Israeli officials have been hinting at a potential ground invasion into Lebanon, following attacks that decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and communications this month. After Hamas Palestinian militants’ unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that triggered war in Gaza, Hezbollah began firing at Israeli military positions and communities along the border, in what it called “support” for Hamas.Fighting had been relatively contained until the current escalation. Tens of thousands of Israeli residents were evacuated from their country’s northern border area nearly a year ago. “Our goal is to ensure the (safe) return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes. We are prepared to make every effort necessary to accomplish this mission,” said Gallant. Israel said earlier this month that it was shifting its focus from Gaza to securing the northern border with Lebanon. Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Naim Qassem, said Monday the movement was ready to face any Israeli ground operation, and warned that the battle could last a long time.With AFP

UN Peacekeepers in Lebanon ‘Not Able’ to Patrol
This Is Beirut/September 30/2024
United Nations peacekeepers in Lebanon have been unable to conduct patrols because of the intensity of Israeli strikes and Hezbollah’s rockets targeting Israel, a UN spokesman said Monday. With more than 10,000 personnel, the peacekeeping force has been stationed in Lebanon since 1978, with its role strengthened after a 33-day conflict between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. “Our UNIFIL Blue Helmets remain in position in the mission’s area of responsibility, while the intensity of fighting is preventing their movements and ability to undertake their mandated tasks,” Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told a media briefing. “Given the intensity of the rockets going back and forth, they are not able to do patrolling,” he added. Even before the dramatic escalation in fighting seen in recent weeks, several Blue Helmets had been wounded in the crossfire between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. The peacekeepers mission, under Security Council Resolution 1701, is to “control the area” and help the Lebanese government and armed forces establish control south of the Litani River, which is around 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the border with Israel. The resolution ended a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.

Elimination of Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah a Watershed Moment in Israel’s War Against Iranian Proxies
FDD/September30/2024
Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy terrorist organization in Lebanon, confirmed on September 28 that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was eliminated in an Israeli strike on Beirut the previous day. Others killed with Nasrallah include Ali Karaki – a senior Hezbollah commander who narrowly escaped death in an Israeli strike last week – and Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, the deputy commander for operations of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Nasrallah’s death marks a watershed in Israel’s campaign to dismantle Hezbollah’s efficacy as a fighting force. Following the October 7 Hamas atrocities in southern Israel, Hezbollah has launched a relentless series of rocket and missile attacks against northern Israel, displacing 60,000 residents of the area from their homes.
Since the early 1980s, Hezbollah and its precursor groups have been responsible for a slew of bloody terrorist attacks around the world, including the bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 and 1984, the bombing of the U.S. and French Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires in 1994, along with dozens of other outrages that have together claimed thousands of lives. Hezbollah terrorists also played a pivotal role in the Syrian civil war, carrying out massacres of civilians at the behest of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Expert Analysis
“Over just nine days, Israel has decimated Hezbollah’s leadership, culminating in the elimination of the arch-terrorist Nasrallah, whose bloody footprint stretches from Buenos Aires to Bulgaria to Beirut, and who is directly responsible for the murder and maiming of thousands of Americans and Israelis. The ultimate challenge is to Hezbollah’s chief backer, Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose strategy of fighting Israel to the last Palestinian and Lebanese now lies in tatters.” — Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO
“Nasrallah’s death can be a game changer if the White House and Netanyahu government work together to create pressure and leverage on the Iranian regime and its axis of proxies. If the U.S. and Israel don’t work together to use this massive shift in momentum, it will be an opportunity squandered. The ball is in both of their courts.” — Jonathan Schanzer, FDD Senior Vice President for Research
“Tens of thousands of Syrians who were starved and murdered by Hezbollah and their henchmen during the civil war have seen a measure of justice in recent days. These strikes against Hezbollah and its leadership highlight the ongoing struggle in which Israel finds itself — a battle between the forces of good and evil. It is imperative that the United States, as Israel’s ally, acknowledges this crucial moment and extends its unwavering support to its most significant partner in the Middle East.” — Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst and Editor at FDD’s Long War Journal

Lebanon’s prime minister calls for ceasefire with Israel
NAJIA HOUSSARI/Arab News/September 30, 2024
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati called for a ceasefire on Monday in the fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah during a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot in Beirut. According to a statement from his office, Mikati said: “The key to the solution is to put an end to the Israeli aggression against Lebanon and to revive the appeal launched by the United States and France … in favor of a ceasefire.”
As Israel deploys troops in preparation for a potential ground incursion into Lebanon, and amid the ongoing displacement in the south, Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs, Barrot held discussions in Beirut with Lebanese officials, politicians, religious leaders, and the army.
In a statement issued by the French Embassy, Barrot affirmed that “in the face of the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, France stands alongside Lebanon and remains committed to protecting civilians, and the security of its citizens.”Barrot emphasized “France’s support for Lebanon and its people,” adding that “his country is keen on supporting the Lebanese army and helping it during these critical times.”The plane carrying the French official to Beirut had brought “12 tonnes of medicines and medical supplies in response to emergencies and general medical needs, particularly pediatric care.”The embassy said that the relief operation was carried out in cooperation with the EU. During his meeting with Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi, Barrot focused on the “importance of electing a president as a foundation and priority, while emphasizing the need for stopping the war.”
Walid Ghayyad, the media official at the patriarchate, said that Barrot’s visit was “one of solidarity and reconnaissance, aimed at pushing forward key issues.”Mikati reiterated during his meeting with Barrot that “the gateway to a solution is stopping the Israeli aggression against Lebanon and returning to the call made by the US and France, with the support of the EU and Arab and foreign countries, for a ceasefire.”He stressed that “the priority is the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.” He added: “Once the ceasefire is in effect, we are ready to send the army to the area south of the Litani River to fully carry out its duties in coordination with the international peacekeeping forces in the south.”Barrot spoke of the “priority of electing a president and working to stop the armed confrontations.” Barrot announced during his meeting with Health Minister Firass Abiad “the launch of emergency humanitarian aid worth €10 million to support the work of humanitarian organizations on the ground, most notably the Lebanese Red Cross.” The diplomatic meetings went ahead as the UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan ordered urgent relief aid to the Lebanese people, valued at $100 million, the Emirates News Agency reported. In the first appearance of a Hezbollah official since the assassination of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah last Friday, Sheikh Naim Qassem, the group’s deputy secretary-general, said in a televised speech: “We will choose a new secretary-general at the earliest opportunity and we will fill leadership positions. “The brothers continue their work according to the organized structure, and work with alternative plans for individuals and leaders. “In Hezbollah’s structure there are deputies for the leaders and backup alternatives ready if a leader in any position is incapacitated.”
Qassem added: “Despite losing several leaders, the attacks on civilians, and the great sacrifices, we will not budge an inch from our positions. “The Islamic resistance will continue to confront the Israeli enemy in support of Gaza and Palestine and defense of Lebanon and its people.”

Israeli military begins ground invasion of southern Lebanon
ARAB NEWS/AGENCIES/September 30, 2024
BEIRUT/RIYADH: The Israeli military said early Tuesday that it had started a ground invasion of Lebanon in a long anticipated operation that leaders say will support the return of displaced Israelis to northern settlements. Israel’s military said the operation in southern Lebanon was limited and localized and was based on precise intelligence against the Lebanese group Hezbollah, adding that the air force and artillery units were supporting ground troops.The military said that its targets were in villages close to its border with Lebanon that pose “an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.”Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire across the border for months, forcing many residents either side of it to flee or be evacuated from danger zones.
Lebanese residents in Aita al-Shaab reported heavy shelling and the sound of military aerial activity. Lebanese authorities said that 95 people had been killed on Monday due to Israeli actions across the country. Hezbollah said on Monday that it had carried out attacks against the Israeli military. The Lebanese capital was again targeted by Israeli fire on Monday night as at least six strikes hit south Beirut. Residents received messages to evacuate target sites and many continue to sleep outside for safety or because they have nowhere else to go. In Sidon, a strike targeted Mounir Maqdah, commander of the Lebanese branch of the Palestinian Fatah movement’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Reuters reported citing two Palestinian security officials, and his fate was unknown early Tuesday. The strike hit a building in the Ain Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in the south of the city. In neighboring Syria, state media said that three people had been killed, including a journalist, with air defenses intercepting “hostile” targets in the Damascus area on Tuesday. “Our air defense systems are intercepting hostile targets in the Damascus area,” Syria’s official SANA news agency said, using a phrase usually used to refer to Israeli strikes.
Earlier, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel informed the US about the raids, which he said were described as “limited operations focused on Hezbollah infrastructure near the border.” Before the Israeli ground troops entered Lebanon, a Western diplomat in Cairo whose country is directly involved in de-escalation efforts said Israel had shared its plans with the US and other Western allies, and conveyed the operation will “be limited.”
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s army is repositioning troops stationed on its southern border, a Lebanese military official told AFP. The Lebanese army is “repositioning and regrouping forces” at the southern border following threats of an Israeli incursion, the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Britain and Canada announced on Monday plans to get their citizens out of Lebanon amid fears over a wider escalation that may involve Iranian intervention to support Hezbollah. Earlier on Monday, Hezbollah’s deputy leader Naim Qassem said in his first public speech since Israeli airstrikes killed its veteran chief Hassan Nasrallah last week that the group’s fighters are primed to confront any Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon. Israel will not achieve its goals, he said. “We will face any possibility and we are ready if the Israelis decide to enter by land and the resistance forces are ready for a ground engagement,” he said in an address from an undisclosed location. He was speaking as Israeli airstrikes on targets in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon continued, extending a two-week long wave of attacks that has eliminated several Hezbollah commanders but also killed about 1,000 Lebanese and forced one million to flee their homes, according to the Lebanese government. Nasrallah’s killing, along with the series of blows against the organization’s communications devices and assassination of other senior commanders, constitute the biggest blow to the organization since Iran created it in 1982 to fight Israel.
He had built it up into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force, with wide sway across the Middle East. Now Hezbollah faces the challenge of replacing a charismatic, towering leader who was a hero to millions of supporters because he stood up to Israel even though the West branded him a terrorist mastermind. “We will choose a secretary-general for the party at the earliest opportunity...and we will fill the leadership and positions on a permanent basis,” Qassem said. Qassem said Hezbollah’s fighters had continued to fire rockets as deep as 150 km (93 miles) into Israeli territory and were ready to face any possible Israeli ground incursion.
“What we are doing is the bare minimum...We know that the battle may be long,” he said. “We will win as we won in the liberation of 2006 in the face of the Israeli enemy,” he added, referring to the last big conflict between the two foes. Israel, which has also assassinated leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza war, says it will do whatever it takes to return its citizens to evacuated communities on its northern border safely.
“The elimination of Nasrallah is an important step, but it is not the final one. In order to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities, we will employ all of our capabilities, and this includes you,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops deployed to the country’s northern border.
Hours before Hezbollah’s Qassem spoke, Hamas said an Israeli airstrike killed its leader in Lebanon, Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin, along with his wife, son and daughter in the southern city of Tyre on Monday. Another faction, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, said three of its leaders died in a strike in Beirut’s Kola district — the first such hit inside the city limits.
The wave of Israeli attacks on militant targets in Lebanon are part of a conflict also stretching from the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the occupied West Bank, to Yemen, Iraq and within Israel itself. The escalation has raised fears that the United States and Iran will be sucked into the conflict. The latest actions indicated Israel has no intention of slowing down its offensive even after eliminating Nasrallah, who was Iran’s most powerful ally in its “Axis of Resistance” against Israeli and US influence in the region. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said Tehran would not let any of Israel’s “criminal acts” go unanswered. He was referring to the killing of Nasrallah and an Iranian Guard deputy commander, Brig. Gen. Abbas Nilforoushan, who died in the same strikes on Friday. Russia said Nasrallah’s death had led to a serious destabilization in the broader region.
A spokesperson for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain called for a ceasefire, although they added that its support for Israel’s right to self-defense was “ironclad.”
Close ally the US has shown unwavering support for Israel despite concerns over heavy civilian casualties.

WHO has been preparing for ‘worst-case scenario’ in Lebanon, regional chief tells Arab News
EPHREM KOSSAIFY/CASPAR WEBB/Arab News/September 30, 2024
NEW YORK: The escalation in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is of “grave concern” for the World Health Organization, and the agency is exerting substantial efforts in ensuring that countries in the region are “ready for the worst-case scenario when it comes to health preparation,” WHO’s regional chief has told Arab News. Dr. Hanan Balkhy, a Saudi physician who was appointed to the role of director for the Eastern Mediterranean in January this year following a distinguished career in medicine, made the comment while she was in New York City last week to rally support for critical public health initiatives. “When it comes to the health preparation, we were able over the past months to pre-place emergency kits within Lebanon and with a few other neighboring countries to at least sustain some of the commodities that would be needed in case the escalation reached a very high point,” she told Arab News.
“We work very closely with the ministers of health, within the ministries themselves, and we make sure that we can train people on certain skills that we know will be necessary.”
The agency has conducted “hundreds” of training sessions — including mass casualty training, health workforce training and EMT training — within Lebanon and other WHO member states in the region. Some of those countries have already faced significant pressure on their healthcare systems as a result of Israel’s war in Gaza, Balkhy said. An ambulance rushes wounded people to the American University of Beirut Medical Center, on September 17, 2024, after explosions hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon. (AFP)
“There’s big pressure on the member states that are surrounding the Occupied Palestinian Territories, from receiving the (Palestinian) patients and taking care of them, but now there’s actual escalation of war in southern Lebanon. “So, with that in mind, we’re trying to put together at least the basics that are needed for the worst-case scenario.”Balkhy voiced concern over the recent pager and walkie-talkie explosions across Lebanon. On 17 and 18 September 2024, thousands of handheld pagers and hundreds of walkie-talkies intended for use by Hezbollah operatives exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria in an Israeli attack, killing dozens, including two children, and injuring thousands more. Most of the dead are believed to have been fighters, based on death notices posted online by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite militia.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called for an “independent, thorough and transparent investigation” into the mass explosion, adding that “simultaneous targeting of thousands of individuals, whether civilians or members of armed groups, without knowledge as to who was in possession of the targeted devices, their location and their surroundings at the time of the attack, violates international human rights law and, to the extent applicable, international humanitarian law.”
The device explosions led to “very complex injuries in the face and in the hands,” said Balkhy.
Doctors in Lebanon say they had never seen the kind of maiming that resulted from the pager attacks. Described some of the wounds as “horrific,” they said the injuries have ranged from puncture wounds in the face, amputated hands, ruptured eyeballs, abdominal wounds, ruptured bones, and broken jaws. “We’re looking and seeking to find experts that can help us in identifying the best methods of treatment and how we can support the Lebanese Ministry of Health,” Balkhy said, pointing to “empathy” between member states and “a strong sense of solidarity.”
Balkhy also oversees WHO operations in Gaza, where the healthcare system is “on its knees” according to the UN. “None of the healthcare facilities are fully functioning,” said Balkhy who witnessed the stark reality of the situation during a visit to Gaza and the West Bank in July.
Over 500 healthcare workers have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since the beginning of the war in October last year, and where out of 36 hospitals, 17 remain only partially functional. Primary healthcare and community-level services are frequently suspended in the battered enclave, due to insecurity, attacks and repeated evacuation orders. More than 22,500 Palestinians have suffered life-changing injuries since Israel launched its military campaign in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 during which militants gunned down civilians and snatched people in towns, along highways and at a techno music festival.
Medical staff operating in Gaza are under “significant amounts of pressure and stress,” Balkhy said, with surgeons forced to operate in increasingly makeshift facilities, often without access to basic medical equipment. “The healthcare facilities are not just buildings. They are buildings, they are medication and instruments, and commodities, they are also the health workforce.
“There’s not one single individual (in Gaza) who has not been faced (with) being asked to move from one point to another. “Many of them have moved many, many times, but also with the deaths and the losses within their family.”
Yet healthcare workers “continue to stand on their feet and provide care when appropriate,” Balkhy added.
IN NUMBERS
1.9m Palestinians who have fled their homes since Oct. 7, 2023.
41,150+ People killed in Gaza in fighting and Israeli bombardment.
1,200 People killed in Israel during Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack.
However, the type of traumas and injuries inflicted on Palestinians have been “unprecedented” and “devastating,” requiring “very complex healthcare systems” of the type that Gaza lacks, she said.
“Those who have been working in the humanitarian field for over a decade have acknowledged that the types of compound fractures, soft tissue injuries, skull injuries … need neurosurgeons.
“You need very sophisticated orthopedic surgeons. You need very sophisticated equipment.”
In response, the WHO has worked in tandem with member states to organize medical evacuations across the Middle East and beyond.
Since October 2023, over 5,000 patients have been evacuated for treatment outside Gaza, with over 80 percent receiving care in Egypt, Qatar and the UAE, and a further 10,000 patients are currently in need of medical evacuation for specialized care.
This includes newborn babies requiring intensive care whose families are trying to evacuate them following the bombing of specialist maternity units across Gaza.
Another major concern of health officials has been the growing lack of clean water and sanitary conditions in Gaza.
Hundreds of the enclave’s water filtration and sanitation facilities were destroyed by Israeli airstrikes since the beginning of the war.
Balkhy said that the lack of clean water makes it “very difficult” to provide the basics of healthcare.
She also highlighted the worrying proliferation of mental trauma among the population in Gaza.
“The last thing that worries me and that I saw of significance was what we will be facing from the mental stress disorders among the people who remain there and that will continue to work there.
“We will need, as the WHO, with partners, to help support, rehabilitate and address some of these issues. “So, there’s a lot. The environment, which is a crucial part of the health and wellbeing of individuals, is extremely disturbing.
A boy walks through a puddle of sewage water past mounds of trash and rubble along a street in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees in the northern Gaza Strip on August 14, 2024. (AFP)
Balkhy described scenes of sewage “running in the streets” as well as endless rubble, adding: “It’s extremely devastating to be there on the ground.”
A significant breakthrough in the WHO’s Gaza campaign came earlier this month with the completion of the first round of a polio vaccination campaign.
A month earlier, a 10-year-old baby had been left partly paralyzed by the disease, in what was the enclave’s first reported case in 25 years.
The WHO’s campaign in central Gaza involved more than 2,000 health workers operating across 143 sites.
“We’re very happy that we were able to secure these days of tranquillity to ensure that we conducted the first round of the polio campaign,” said Balkhy.
“The whole world has their eyes on this polio campaign because the success is not just a success for the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gazans, it’s a success for the world, because pathogens know no borders, and there’s a risk that polio might again spread.”
“So, I’m very happy that that has happened.”
A second round of vaccination is still needed, however, to ensure optimal levels of immunization, Balkhy added. “Every child needs to receive those two doses, between one to two months apart,” she said. A second round is set for mid-October, and the WHO will look to “replicate what we did in the first round. “The WHO, UNICEF, UNRWA and the Ministry of Health of the Palestinian Authority did amazing work to make this happen together,” Balkhy said.
“But also significant credit goes to the workers on the ground.
“All those lessons learned from the first round of the polio campaign will be very much looked at in order to have a more successful and efficient second round for the polio.”
However, Balkhy gave warning that health authorities are only at the beginning of the campaign to rehabilitate living conditions in Gaza. “As an infectious disease person, as an epidemiologist and as a pediatrician, we have a long way to go to rehabilitate the environment for the people in Gaza to to be living with dignity and with appropriate methods to have proper hygiene, instruments, clean water, soap and so on,” she said. Balkhy is also focused on Sudan, where millions of people have been displaced by the country’s raging civil war, and famine has been declared in the North Darfur region. Her latest visit to the country came two weeks ago, when she called for warring factions to abide by international law and end their attacks on healthcare facilities and workers.
The WHO reported in July that since the outbreak of the war in April 2023, more than 88 attacks in Sudan had targeted health facilities, ambulances, patients and workers.
“It’s very important to sustain the regular people, the civilians who are not engaged in any of these wars, to be able to feel secure and that the humanitarians and the health workers can do their job,” Balkhy said.“We have been able to work with the Ministry of Health of Sudan to come up with very good plans on rehabilitating primary health care and some of the secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities.” Balkhy also visited a site for internally displaced people, warning that the level of access to clean water and sanitation, as well as the risk of cholera, are “huge challenges.”
She added: “It came also during the rainy season. It was expected — none of this is a surprise. We’ve been talking about this for quite a while. “We’ve been able to, of course, with the Ministry of Health, establish cholera treatment centers and rehydration centers.
“So, the immunization program is is moving forward. We’re trying our best — it’s not optimal. But we do hope that we will be able to access as many children as possible.”
At the General Assembly in New York City, Balkhy eyed a breakthrough resolution in a high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance. “It’s the silent pandemic. I have led the Directorate of Antimicrobial Resistance as the first assistant director general in Geneva for close to five years,” she said. “The fruition of reaching to this point of a high-level meeting — hopefully the resolution has clear, objectives, clear commitments and targets for the member states to focus.”
Despite the combined burden of Gaza and Sudan, and fears mounting over a new war in Lebanon, the WHO is “ready to do its full job and its full role in supporting the elevation of health and leaving nobody behind,” Balkhy said.That, however, requires heads of state to meet their own responsibilities, she said. “Secure peace for the world so that we can move on with our agendas and truly walk the talk of leading to our SDGs, leaving nobody behind.
“But without peace and without everybody working together, that is not possible.

Saudi FM discusses developments in Lebanon with French, Lebanese counterparts
ARAB NEWS/September 30, 2024
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan discussed developments in Lebanon with his French and Lebanese counterparts in phone calls on Monday. In a phone call with Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Prince Faisal stressed the Kingdom’s support for Lebanon’s security and stability. During a separate phone call, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot and Prince Faisal discussed the consequences of developments in Lebanon and efforts made in this regard.

This why do we oppose terrorist and don’t agree with their terrorism and savagery?
Habeeb Habeeb/X web site/September 30/2024
@habeebhabeeb
https://eliasbejjaninews.com/2024/09/135074/
I was born in Lebanon and was displaced by the terrorists. I have been an American citizen for a long time now. I realize that when I speak my mind as a free human being, there will be responses. I can handle that.
However, people who are of the opposite conviction (mostly from the medieval Middle East) always respond with the same modus operandi... Every single time someone disagrees with them, they answer by calling us names like Donkey, Pig, or Dog (حمار، خنزير، كلب hmar, khanzeer, or kaleb) which they intend as big insults. They also call us either 'Zionists' or 'traitors' or 'agents'.
They simply have no logical answer, and they are so pathetically childish.
My feelings are not hurt. Far from it. But seeing so many here in the US chanting "I am Hamas" causes me to see the need to enlighten those who don't know the detailed history of the past 50 years.
Why do we oppose terrorist and don’t agree with their terrorism and savagery?
Here is the long history recap, told from my personal perspective.
I grew up in Lebanon with friends from all faiths: Druze, Muslim, and various Christians. We laughed and played and got along. Lebanon was generally peaceful and safe.
We welcomed the Palestinians as refugees to Lebanon.
The border between Lebanon and Israel was generally quiet compared with other Arab nations. Many Lebanese did not want war. Instead, we desired to live in peace and tranquility. We wanted prosperity, trade, tourism, and banking. The Lebanese used to be known as having joie de vie and some of the most fun people to be around.
Lebanon was referred to as “the Switzerland of the Middle East” for its beauty and its desire to remain peaceful and neutral and a bridge between the east and west.
Lebanon was also called “the Riviera of the Middle East”, "California on the Eastern Mediterranean", and “Green Lebanon” because trees covered the hills and mountains and there was no desert.
Beirut was known as "the Paris of the Middle East". Lebanon's Golden Age was a period characterized by its natural beauty, including snow-capped mountains, warm beaches, and a pristine coastline. Beirut was a glamorous city with luxury hotels, nightclubs, and a vibrant cultural and intellectual life. It was a popular destination for movie stars.
Tourists flocked to Lebanon. They went snow skiing in the morning then drove 2 hours to Beirut to water ski in the Mediterranean the afternoon of the same day. It was on everyone’s bucket list.
Tourists were safe and they had so much fun that they did not want to leave. Many came back year after year.
Over time, the Palestinians created a state-within-a-state and there were areas where they prevented even the Lebanese army from entering. Which country would accept that? Knowing the trouble it will eventually cause, the Lebanese started to become bitter about the situation.
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to make Lebanon part of the United Arab Republic, causing a civil war in 1958.
I was in Middle School when the six-day war erupted in June of 1967. School was nearing summer break. We went out for our lunch break and heard that war has started. I saw Israeli fighter jets dog fighting with Syrian jets overhead. the Syrian jets lost.
Because Lebanon is very small, we could catch AM radio stations from the surrounding countries. All the Arab stations repeated the same lie: "Our forces have destroyed the enemy's air force, and we have reached the outskirts of Jerusalem." All lies and propaganda from Radio Egypt, Radio Damascus, and Radio Amman. Same garbage from each station. Propaganda in the news continues to this day. If a radio station does not toe the line, the regime will shut it down.
To hear the truth, we turned to Radio Israel, Voice of America, and the BBC.
Three years later, the PLO started fighting against the King of Jordan. Their headquarters were in Amman, Jordan and even though they were refugees in Jordan, they tried to overthrow King Hussein. The king's forces surrounded them and almost killed every single fighter. The world called for a cease fire and forced King Hussein to relent. That was a major mistake. The same mistake is being repeated these days when the world asks Israel to stop firing. When the world does that, the problem never ends. It only becomes a bigger problem. The world had repeatedly made that mistake in the Middle East.
The PLO relocated to Beirut. They started firing at Israel from Lebanese territory, causing Israel to retaliate against Lebanese territory. Who would blame them for retaliating?
Again, we did not want war. We wanted peace.
Knowing that civil unrest was on the horizon, I went to America to study medicine hoping that by the time I completed my studies, the situation would have calmed down. Little did I know what the future held.
In 1975, the PLO caused the devastating civil war that engulfed Lebanon for 15 years. My parents were displaced and lost everything. So did many families. The toll was horrendous.
The town where I was born was located in the mountains outside Beirut, only about 30 minutes by car. My family could not go there because of the civil war and lost access to our house for over 10 years. Because it was a house owned by Christians, it was hit on more than one occasion while other homes nearby were OK. The roof had a hole in it from artillery shells. It was repaired, yet more shells hit it, sending the message not to return to town.
Our orchards used to have apple trees, peach trees, cherry trees, olive trees, sumac, artichoke, pine trees, mulberry trees, fig trees, and other trees. Not being tended to nor watered, they all died. Even the stones used for terracing our orchard were looted. Thus, our neatly terraced land became a worthless desolate wasteland.
My brother was kidnapped, other friends died. We had an apartment in Christian East Beirut. The area was besieged for a while and there were times when there was no bread. Artillery fired from Muslim west Beirut was so intense at times that even crossing the narrow street to the bomb shelter was incredibly dangerous. My mother developed heart disease and Parkinson's from the stress and fear.
My family were on the run from Beirut to the Metn district, then to the Bekaa, then to Cyprus, then back to various areas in Lebanon. The war had made them nomads.
There were so many other stories that my family endured, but I will omit them for brevity's sake.
The Syrian army entered Lebanon as ‘peacekeepers’ and destroyed Lebanon. For many years, the Syrian army occupied our house in the mountains and used it as their headquarters in the town. To remain warm and acting like uncivilized primitives, they lit fires inside the house on our ornate ceramic-tiled floor in the living room.
In the 1980's, Hezbollah came to existence and wanted Lebanon to be part of the Iranian Islamic caliphate.
Syria occupied Lebanon ruthlessly. Many Lebanese were taken to Syrian jails and tortured. Many never returned.
The war "ended", and all factions were disarmed except Hezbollah. Syria and the Shiites were in control and dictated that. Hezbollah kept getting stronger due to intense backing from Iran. For years, Lebanon remained an occupied country. Syria plundered Lebanon and became rich.
Syria and Iran, using Hezbollah and their own agents, began assassinating any leader who opposed them. They killed Christians and Sunnis alike. In 2005, Bashar Al Assad 'summoned' Prime Minister Rafik Hariri (a Sunni Muslim) to Damascus and 'ordered' him to do something, threatening that if he did not toe the line, Assad would 'break his head'. Hariri did not toe the line and was assassinated in February 2005. Hezbollah were the ones who committed the act.
The cowardly Iranian regime had established Hezbollah as a proxy to fight Israel. In essence, cowardly Iran used Lebanon to fight Israel, causing the destruction of Lebanon while Iranian territory remained safe.
So back to my first thought. The opposition cannot handle the truth. The only thing they can do is call us names.
I have thick skin. We have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations and adversity wreaked upon us by these savage terroristic animals.
Thank you, Israel, for Nasrallah's demise. It may create an opportunity for peace, but only if Lebanese leaders have the courage to seize the moment.
I will repeat what the terrorists and their supporters don’t want to hear: The Iranian Regime, The Syrian Regime, all proxies of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis, ISIS, Al Qaeda, The PLO, Islamic Jihad, PJ, PFLP, Syrian Baathist Party, all the Communist parties, all of these and more have been CANCERS in the World. They oppress their own people and us alike. They are savage animals who are stuck in the seventh century with the mentality of brutal conquests and war.
Call me what you like. I was born a Phoenician, not an Arab. The terrorists took away my county, but God gave me America. I am grateful and I am blessed.
I'm going to have an awesome day, and the terrorists are going to get their rears kicked. Have a good night.

Israel strikes Hezbollah leaders and suggests possible ground troop movements, AP explains
Daniel Bellamy/Euronews/September 30/2024
Israel's assassination of a seventh senior Hezbollah official is confirmed
The Israeli military said Nabil Kaouk, the deputy head of Hezbollah's Central Council, was killed on Saturday. Hezbollah confirmed his death, making him the seventh senior Hezbollah leader assassinated in Israeli strikes in a little over a week. They include founding members who had evaded death or detention for decades. The Israeli military said it carried out another targeted strike on Beirut later on Sunday, with details to follow. Hezbollah had earlier confirmed that Ali Karaki, another senior commander, died in Friday's strike that killed Nasrallah. The Israeli military said earlier that Karaki was killed in the airstrike, which targeted an underground compound in Beirut where Nasrallah and other senior Hezbollah figures were meeting.
Israel said at least 20 other Hezbollah militants were killed in the strike, including two close associates of Nasrallah, one of whom was in charge of his security detail.
Wreckage from the strike was still smouldering more than two days later. On Sunday, Associated Press journalists saw smoke over the rubble as people flocked to the site, some to check on what’s left of their homes and others to pay respects, pray or simply to see the destruction.
Hezbollah has also been targeted by a sophisticated attack on its pagers and walkie-talkies that was widely blamed on Israel. A wave of Israeli airstrikes across large parts of Lebanon has killed at least 1,030 people — including 156 women and 87 children — in less than two weeks, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. Hundreds of thousands of people have been driven from their homes in Lebanon by the latest strikes. The government estimates that around 250,000 are in shelters, with three to four times as many staying with friends or relatives, or camping out on the streets, Environment Minister Nasser Yassin told the AP. The United Nations’ refugee agency said 70,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria to escape Israeli bombardment.
The total includes both Lebanese citizens and Syrians who had moved to Lebanon but are now returning. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets and missiles into northern Israel, but most have been intercepted or fallen in open areas. No Israelis have been killed since the latest wave of strikes targeting top Hezbollah leaders began on Sept. 20.Kaouk was a veteran member of Hezbollah going back to the 1980s and served as Hezbollah's military commander in southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Israel. He often appeared in local media, where he would comment on politics and security developments, and he gave eulogies at the funerals of senior militants. The United States announced sanctions against him in 2020.
Hezbollah began firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack out of Gaza triggered the war there. Hezbollah and Hamas are allies that consider themselves part of an Iran-backed “Axis of Resistance” against Israel. Israel has responded with waves of airstrikes, and the conflict has steadily ratcheted up to the brink of all-out war, raising fears of a region-wide conflagration. Israel says it is determined to return some 60,000 of its citizens to communities in the north that were evacuated nearly a year ago. Hezbollah has said it will only halt its rocket fire if there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which has proven elusive despite months of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas led by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.
US airstrikes in Syria
In Syria, 37 militants affiliated to the extremist Islamic State group and an al-Qaeda-linked group were killed in two strikes, the United States military said on Sunday. Two of the dead were senior militants, it said. U.S. Central Command said it struck north-western Syria on Tuesday, targeting a senior militant from the al-Qaeda-linked Hurras al-Deen group and eight others. They say he was responsible for overseeing military operations. They also announced a strike from earlier this month on Sept. 16, where they conducted a “large-scale airstrike” on an IS training camp in a remote undisclosed location in central Syria. That attack killed 28 militants, including “at least four Syrian leaders.” “The airstrike will disrupt ISIS’ capability to conduct operations against U.S. interests, as well as our allies and partners,” the statement read. There are some 900 U.S. forces in Syria, along with an undisclosed number of contractors, mostly trying to prevent any comeback by the extremist IS group, which swept through Iraq and Syria in 2014, taking control of large swaths of territory. U.S. forces advise and assist their key allies in north-eastern Syria, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, located not far from strategic areas where Iran-backed militant groups are present, including a key border crossing with Iraq.
Israeli airstrikes in Yemen
On Sunday afternoon Israel's military posted on X that it had struck Houthi targets in Yemen.
"In a large-scale air operation today, dozens of air force aircraft including fighter jets, refuelling and intelligence planes, under the direction of the intelligence wing, attacked military targets of the Houthi terrorist regime in the areas of Ras Issa and Hodeidah in Yemen. The IDF attacked power plants and a seaport, which are used to import oil."The Houthis are an Iranian backed rebel group made up of Shiite Muslims who regard Israel as their enemy. The strikes appeared to be retaliation after the Houthis launched a failed missile attack on Tel Aviv on Friday, and a failed missile attack on Ben Gurion airport on Saturday when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was arriving.
Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip
Palestinian officials say an Israeli airstrike has killed at least four people in a school sheltering the displaced in northern Gaza. The Israeli military said it carried out a precise strike Sunday on Hamas militants who were using the Umm al-Fahm school in the northern town of Beit Lahiya as a command-and-control centre, without providing evidence. The Civil Defence, first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, confirmed the toll and said several others were wounded. It did not say whether those killed and wounded were civilians or combatants. Israel has repeatedly struck schools-turned-shelters in Gaza, accusing militants of hiding out in them. Some 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people have been displaced by the nearly yearlong war, with hundreds of thousands living in shuttered schools or squalid tent camps.
Iran's Response
Iran’s Vice-President Mohammad Javad Zarif says Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will decide on a response to Israel’s strikes in Lebanon “at the appropriate time.”
The semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Zarif as saying that “Iran’s reaction will be done at the appropriate time and according to Iran’s choice against the crimes of the Zionist regime, and decisions will be made at the leadership and high level of the government in this regard.”
Zarif made the comments when he attended Hezbollah’s office in Tehran to express condolences over the killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 01/2024
Top Hamas commander killed in Lebanon was a UN employee on administrative leave, UNRWA says
Associated Press/September 30, 2024
GENEVA (AP) — A Hamas top commander in Lebanon who was killed in an Israeli strike was a United Nations employee placed on administrative leave, said the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. Fatah Sharif was killed with his wife, son and daughter in an airstrike on Al-Buss refugee camp, one of 12 dedicated to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, in the southern port city of Tyre on Monday. The Israeli military confirmed it had targeted him. Sharif was not open about his affiliation with the Palestinian militant group and its armed wing. Critics of UNRWA have repeatedly blasted it for not doing enough to root out Hamas militants from its ranks, and some seized on Sharif’s ties to both organizations. Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva posted on X saying that Hamas announced Sharif's death, "And guess what was the second job of Mr Sharif? He was a principal, head of @UNRWA teachers association in Lebanon.” The mission added: “This case proves that there is a deep problem in @UNRWA, the way they do due diligence about who they are hiring.”
UNRWA spokesman Jonathan Fowler said Sharif “was an UNRWA employee who was put on administrative leave without pay in March and that he “was undergoing an investigation following allegations” the agency received "about his political activities.”A Hamas statement praised Sharif for his “educational and jihadist work” and called him “a successful teacher and an outstanding principal” for generations of Palestinian refugees. The UNRWA teachers’ union and other Palestinian groups had periodically staged protests in front of the U.N. agency's office in Beirut since Sharif’s suspension, alleging it targeted him for his political stances. Earlier this month, the union staged a sit-in during a visit to Lebanon by UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, saying it awaited “positive and fair outcomes” in the case of his suspension.

Israeli airstrikes kill 12 in Gaza, but ground fighting less intense
REUTERS/September 30, 2024
CAIRO: Israeli airstrikes pounded areas across the Gaza Strip on Monday killing 12, including a journalist and her family, medics said, although the intensity of the ground offensive has subsided as Israel steps up its fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Palestinian health officials said Wafa Al-Udaini, who wrote articles about the war in English advocating the Palestinian viewpoint, was killed when a missile struck her house in the central city of Deir Al-Balah, also killing her husband and their two children. There has been no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
Udaini’s death raised the number of Palestinian journalists killed in the Israeli offensive since Oct. 7 to 174, the Hamas-run Gaza government media office said. In another strike, a Palestinian was killed and several were wounded in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, while in the northern town of Beit Hanoun an airstrike killed one man and injured others, medics said. While later on Monday, an Israeli air strike on a house in Nuseirat, one of Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, killed six people, health officials said. Some residents said fighting and Israeli military activities in Gaza have declined slightly in the past week as Israel has escalated its military offensive against Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in an airstrike on Friday. The group announced Nasrallah’s death on Saturday. While the intensity of the ground offensive has been lower, Israel has kept up its airstrikes in the enclave, they added. Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel for almost a year, in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. In the southern Gaza Strip, Israeli authorities released 12 Palestinians, including Khaled Al-Ser, head of the surgery unit at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, medics and Hamas media said. Palestinians freed by Israel have complained of torture and ill-treatment in Israeli jails, charges Israel denies. Israel and Hamas have been fighting since gunmen from the Palestinian militant group stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing about 250 hostages, going by Israeli tallies. Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced by the war, in which more than 41,500 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health authorities.

US to announce over $300 million in aid for Palestinians in Gaza, West Bank
Daphne Psaledakis/WASHINGTON (Reuters)/September 30, 2024
The United States on Monday will announce nearly $336 million in additional humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, according to a U.S. Agency for International Development statement seen by Reuters. The funding, first reported by Reuters, will enable USAID's partners to continue to provide humanitarian aid, including food assistance, healthcare, nutrition and other services, according to the statement. The funding will also support emergency shelter assistance to displaced Gazans ahead of winter, the statement said. "Over the last year, this conflict has cost the lives of innocent Palestinians and Israelis and has left Gaza and the West Bank in a state of humanitarian crisis and dire humanitarian need," the statement said. "The United States continues to call on all parties to agree to a ceasefire deal and an immediate release of hostages, and to allow for the immediate scale-up of humanitarian aid moving into and throughout Gaza."The war began last Oct. 7 when Hamas gunmen stormed Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, Israel's military has leveled swaths of the besieged Palestinian enclave, driving nearly all of its 2.3 million people from their homes, giving rise to deadly hunger and disease and killing more than 41,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities. The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been trying unsuccessfully to broker a ceasefire and the release of hostages held by Hamas. A USAID spokesperson said that agency partners have continued to reach people in Gaza with aid, but added that "barriers to access and insecurity prevent the necessary scaling of assistance to adequately meet the needs of the 2.3 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance in Gaza." The agency is continuing to work with partners to resolve issues impacting the ability for assistance to reach communities in need, the spokesperson said. The U.N. has long complained of obstacles to getting aid into Gaza during the war and distributing it amid "total lawlessness" in the besieged enclave. Nearly 300 humanitarian aid workers, more than two-thirds of them U.N. staff, have been killed.

Yemeni government condemns Israeli airstrikes on Hodeidah
SAEED AL-BATATI/Arab News/September 30, 2024
AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s internationally recognized government on Monday condemned Israeli airstrikes on the Houthi-held west-coast city of Hodeidah, and warned Israel and Iran not to use the country as a battleground. It said the attack on Sunday was a violation of Yemen’s territorial sovereignty, as well as international norms and charters, and made the already dire humanitarian situation in the country even worse. The Yemeni government “warns the Iranian regime, its agent militias and the Zionist entity that they risk escalating the situation and turning the region into a staging ground for their absurd wars and destructive projects,” the official Yemeni state news agency SABA reported. The strikes caused large explosions and smoke hung over the area in the aftermath. The Houthi Ministry of Health said that four people were killed and 40 wounded, many of whom were in critical condition. The attack came a day after the Israeli military said it shot down a ballistic missile outside Israel’s borders that had been launched by the Houthi militia in Yemen. The Houthis said they had targeted Ben Gurion International Airport with the missile as part of their ongoing campaign, in support of the Palestinian people, to put pressure on Israel to end its war in Gaza. This campaign has also included months of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea and other waters off the coast of Yemen. The attack on Sunday was the second time Israeli forces have targeted Hodeidah. The first was on July 20, when power plants and port facilities, including one with an oil terminal, were hit in response to a Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv in which 10 Israelis were killed or injured.

US forces accounted for after reported rocket attack in Baghdad, official says
REUTERS/October 01, 2024
BAGHDAD: Multiple Katyusha rockets were fired near Baghdad International Airport, two Iraqi military officials told Reuters early on Tuesday, but a US official disputed reports that US military forces were targeted in the incident. “All military personnel are accounted for and military forces were not targeted as had been reported,” the US defense official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. The incident was a reminder of the soaring tensions in the Middle East, as speculation swirled about whether Iran and Iran-backed groups would make good on threats to retaliate after a series of Israeli major blows against Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah. Two Iraqi security sources said an initial investigation showed three rockets were fired, including one that landed near buildings used by Iraqi counter-terrorism forces, causing damages and fire to some vehicles but no casualties. The sources had previously said at least two Katyusha rockets were also fired at a military base hosting US forces and that air defenses intercepted the rockets. But the US official said Washington was aware of reports of an attack instead on the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Complex, which is a Department of State facility. “For details about the incident we refer you to the State Department,” the official said. A US Department of State is assessing the damage caused by the attack, according to a spokesperson, who said there were no casualties. Iraq, a rare regional partner of both the United States and Iran, hosts 2,500 US troops and also has Iran-backed armed factions linked to its security forces. Iran-aligned armed groups in Iraq have repeatedly attacked US troops in the Middle East since the Gaza war began.

Oil prices set to fall for third month despite Middle East conflict
Paul Carsten/LONDON (Reuters)/September 30, 2024
Oil prices declined on Monday and were on track to fall for the third month in a row as a strong supply outlook and questions around demand outweighed fears that Israeli strikes in Lebanon and Yemen could escalate conflict in the Middle East.
Brent crude futures for November delivery, expiring on Monday, lost 35 cents, or 0.5%, to $71.63 a barrel as of 1344 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures fell 12 cents, or 0.2%, to $68.06.
Both benchmarks had earlier gained more than $1.
Brent was on track to lose more than 9% month-on-month, which would be its biggest decline since November 2022. WTI was set to decline more than 7% since the end of August.
On Monday prices had been supported by the possibility that Iran, a key producer and member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, may be directly drawn into a widening Middle East conflict. Since last week Israel has escalated attacks, conducting strikes which have killed Hezbollah and Hamas leaders in Lebanon and hit Houthi targets in Yemen. The three groups are backed by Iran. "We suspect that some oil market participants will look past this escalation given that there still has not been a major physical supply disruption and Iran has not demonstrated any appetite to enter this nearly year-long conflict," said Helima Croft of RBC Capital Markets. Oil prices also had a muted response to Beijing's announcement last week of fiscal stimulus measures in the world's second-biggest economy and top oil importer.
Traders question whether the measures would be enough to boost China's weaker-than-expected demand so far this year. Data on Monday was not encouraging for demand, showing China's manufacturing activity shrank for a fifth straight month and the services sector slowed sharply in September. The prospect of Libyan oil output recovering was also weighing on the market. Libya's eastern-based parliament agreed on Monday to approve the nomination of a new central bank governor, a move that could help end the crisis that slashed the country's oil output.

Kremlin, asked on Iran's use of Russian comms devices after pager attacks, says trade is growing
Reuters/September 30, 2024
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin, commenting on a Reuters report that Iran's Revolutionary Guards were mostly using homemade or Russian- or Chinese-made communications devices, said on Monday that Moscow's trade links with Tehran were developing. An Iranian security official told Reuters that Iran was concerned about infiltration by Israeli agents following deadly pager attacks on Lebanon's Hezbollah this month. A large-scale operation to inspect all communication devices used by the Revolutionary Guards was underway, the official added. "I do not know how reliable these sources are," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about the Reuters report. "The only thing I can say is that our trade and economic relations with Iran are developing. They are developing in all areas, and in trade too. The volume of trade is growing mutually." Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is due in Tehran on Monday for talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref, according to the Russian government.

The Latest English LCCC analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources on October 01/2024
Netanyahu rides wave of euphoria over assassinations as his political fortunes turn around
Analysis by Mick Krever, CNN/September 30, 2024
On October 7, Israeli Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s self-styled image as “Mister Security” seemed irrevocably shattered by the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The Jewish homeland and its leader had failed to protect the people. How could he possibly survive?
The polls told us as much. He had formed an extremist coalition government in November 2022 on the back of the 32 seats his Likud party secured in the 120-seat Knesset. After Hamas’ attack, a string of opinion polls suggested that were elections held, Likud would get just 17 seats, putting the government’s long-term survival in jeopardy.
Nearly a year later, Netanyahu has staged a remarkable turnaround. Though Likud would still struggle to form a government were elections held today, a brutal campaign of airstrikes in Lebanon and assassinations across the Middle East in recent weeks have buoyed the prime minister to heights unimaginable in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ attacks almost a year ago.
A poll released Sunday by Israel’s Channel 12 showed that Likud would win 25 seats were elections to be held today, making it the largest party. Netanyahu enjoys 38% support, according to the survey.
“The regional confrontations are good for Netanyahu,” veteran pollster and analyst Dahlia Scheindlin told CNN. “They seem quite clearly to be the contributing factor to his recovery.”
Israel’s aggressive military maneuvers against its enemies, she said, have helped restored a sense of agency and strength destroyed by Hamas’ October 7 attack. The war in Gaza is popular in Israel, but it brings with it complex questions around long-term occupation, relations with the Palestinians, and most importantly for Israelis, the fact that 101 hostages are still held there.
Israel’s military attacks elsewhere are seen at home as more black and white. “It’s clear enemies of Israel,” she said, referring to those whom Israel says it is targeting. “There’s no ambiguity around this question of occupation, et cetera.”The aggressive military campaign began in April, when an airstrike on Iran’s embassy complex in Syria killed a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards. Israel did not comment but was widely understood to be responsible. That was followed by a July airstrike on Beirut that killed Hezbollah’s most senior military official, Fu’ad Shukr. The next day, an explosion in a Tehran government guest house killed Hamas’ political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
Relentless bombing campaign
Earlier this month pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah in Lebanon exploded across the country, killing dozens and maiming thousands – marking a new phase in that conflict, which began when Hezbollah attacked Israel on October 8, in solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza. Around 60,000 civilians have since been forced from their northern Israeli homes by Hezbollah’s rocket attacks.
Israel has for weeks now operated a relentless bombing campaign across Lebanon against Hezbollah’s infrastructure and leadership. Massive airstrikes in southern Beirut have killed a string of Hezbollah leaders, including its elusive and powerful secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as more than 1,000 people in Lebanon. It has also forced about 20% of the population – about 1 million people – from their homes, according to aid agencies and the Lebanese government. The families of hostages in Gaza, meanwhile, lead the charge in accusing Netanyahu of prioritizing his political survival over the national interest – an accusation he strenuously denies.
And yet it is undeniable that at a time when Israel is waging war in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, the prime minister continues to devote significant attention to domestic political machinations.
On Sunday he brought a former rival, Gideon Sa’ar, into his government as a minister without portfolio. The fact that Sa’ar has no ministerial responsibilities underlines the fact that his appointment was largely political. “When I ordered the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, we all knew that an entire nation was behind this decision,” Netanyahu said Sunday evening alongside Sa’ar. “The cohesion of the ranks is a necessary condition for us to stand firm in these testing days, and for us to achieve the goals we have set.”
Netanyahu had for weeks been intending to fire his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, in favor of Sa’ar. But that scheme drew withering criticism from national security veterans and was finally quashed when Israel escalated the war in Lebanon.
Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who has worked closely with Netanyahu, told CNN that bringing Sa’ar into government was intended to have three effects. First, he said, bringing in Sa’ar – a veteran right-wing politician – would give Netanyahu leverage over far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was previously convicted for inciting terrorism. Ben-Gvir is not Netanyahu’s “cup of tea, and he’s not reliable,” Shtrauchler said. Second, Sa’ar could help protect Netanyahu from the ultra-Orthodox parties who have the power to bring down the government. Those parties – with whom Sa’ar is said to be close – want to pass a law exempting ultra-Orthodox men from mandatory military service, a change that would threaten Netanyahu’s coalition. The defense minister opposes the move, but Netanyahu “thinks that Gideon Sa’ar can be with him and soften Gallant,” Shtrauchler said. Finally, he told CNN, broader political support is important as the war with Hezbollah escalates, and the possibility of a ground invasion looms.
It is of course impossible to say to what degree political considerations are playing into Netanyahu’s decision to escalate the war in Lebanon, though returning the Israeli civilians to their homes in the north is a real policy imperative. “It wouldn’t surprise me if part of one of his considerations was so that Israelis feel like – after a year of having been through this horrible shock and trauma and surprise – that they have responded,” Scheindlin, the pollster and analyst, said. “That makes Israelis feel that they have a kind of catharsis, a sort of closure.”Netanyahu’s most viable rival has long been Benny Gantz, a military heavyweight who for years served as Israel Defense Forces’ chief of the general staff, with his party polling second in recent opinion polls. His backing for Israel’s escalating attacks around the region underlines the degree to which Netanyahu has neutered his opposition.
“I would like to congratulate the political echelon, led by the prime minister and the minister of defense, who made the decision on the action in Lebanon,” Gantz said on Sunday. “Better late than never.”Netanyahu is the beneficiary. But it is undeniable that a deep depression affects this country, despite a wave of euphoria in the wake of Nasrallah’s assassination that saw TV reporters toasting his death on national television. “There’s no real joy in Israel now,” Scheindlin said. “Even a sense of satisfaction for the moment or even a momentary euphoria – nothing’s going to take away the reality that this is a very somber time, especially because of the hostages.”
Eugenia Yosef and Dana Karni contributed reporting.

U.S. Should Sanction Iran’s Brutal Judge Iman Afshari
Tzvi Kahn/Real Clear World/September 30/2024
The death sentences keep coming from Branch 26 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court. In July, the court’s presiding judge, Iman Afshari, pronounced the dreaded verdict for Pakhshan Azizi, a prominent Iranian women’s rights activist and social worker, who had already spent the previous year in prison. The trumped-up charge: “Rebellion” against the Islamic Republic. The reality: She had angered the theocracy with peaceful activism for human rights.
For Judge Afshari, it was a routine day in court. In his six years on the job, he has repeatedly imposed draconian sentences — including capital punishment, lengthy prison terms, exile, and even lashes — for the crime of expressing disagreement with the clerical dictatorship. His cruelty has drawn the attention of Western nations like Canada and the United Kingdom, both of which sanctioned the judge in 2022 as part of a name-and-shame campaign. However, while the United States has previously attempted to apply diplomatic pressure on Tehran by sanctioning other Iranian judges, it has yet to target Afshari. It should.
Iran’s judiciary purports to consist of independent and impartial courts of law that dispense justice. They’re anything but. The very existence of the Revolutionary Court system — a parallel judicial body, separate from the country’s criminal and civil courts, that tries political prisoners and dissidents, among others — reflects Tehran’s ideological agenda, which seeks to enforce the laws and norms of radical Shiite Islam. In a 2023 human rights report, the U.S. State Department noted that the Revolutionary Courts were responsible for “routinely holding grossly unfair trials without due process, handing down predetermined verdicts, and rubberstamping executions for political purposes.”
Afshari helps perpetuate this system. According to the California-based nonprofit United for Iran, the judge has issued more than 330 sentences over the course of his tenure, imposing a combined total of some 1,060 years of prison terms. He has targeted dissidents, human rights activists, artists, journalists, and ethnic and religious minorities. He has directed particular ire at women who defy the regime’s mandate to wear the hijab, or headscarf, in public.
For example, in 2019, the judge sentenced Saba Kord Afshari (the two are not related), at the time only 20 years old, to 24 years in jail for a range of charges that included protesting the hijab laws — or, as the court put it, “inciting and facilitating corruption and prostitution” by promoting “unveiling.” In a rare stroke of good luck, however, the regime ultimately released her in 2023 as part of a general amnesty for hundreds of prisoners to mark the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.
In another prominent case, Afshari sentenced two Bahai women, Mahvash Sabet and Fariba Kamalabadi, in 2022 to 10-year prison terms for their leadership roles in their religious community. Their trial lasted only one hour. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned the ruling, noting that the Islamic Republic has subjected the Bahai to systematic religious discrimination for decades. Most jarringly, both Sabet and Kamalabadi previously served a decade-long prison sentence between 2008 and 2017 for their religious activities. That didn’t stop Afshari from imposing another one.
Christians in Iran haven’t fared any better. For example, in February 2024, Afshari sentenced Hakop Gochumyan, an Armenian Christian, to 10 years in prison for allegedly “engaging in deviant proselytizing activity that contradicts the sacred law of Islam.” In March, Afshari sentenced Laleh Sa’ati, a Christian convert, to a two-year jail term for allegedly “acting against national security through association with Zionist Christian organizations.” Score of other Christians have received prison sentences in recent years merely for practicing their faith.
Afshari’s fabricated charges often lack any meaningful evidence. In January 2024, Tehran hanged four ethnic Kurds, after 18 months in prison, for allegedly plotting with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency to blow up a missile and weapons factory belonging to Iran’s defense ministry. Tellingly, the court announced the sentence only after a brief, secret trial devoid of due process. The regime even broadcast the four defendants’ forced confessions, extracted through torture, on state television.
In another case with implausible charges, Afshari sentenced Iranian-Swedish dual national Saeed Azizi to five years in jail in January 2024 for alleged “assembly and collusion against national security.” In a trial beginning in December 2023, Afshari also advanced spurious charges of espionage and “corruption on earth” against Swedish diplomat Johan Floderus, whom Tehran had imprisoned in 2022.
In reality, the regime and Afshari were apparently working together to use both men as bargaining chips to secure the release of a former Iranian official from a Swedish jail. Tehran’s scheme succeeded. In June 2024, before Afshari could announce Floderus’s sentence, Iran traded the two Swedes for Hamid Nouri, whom Stockholm had previously sentenced to life in prison for his role in Iran’s 1988 massacre of thousands of political prisoners.
Afshari’s victims are legion, and they deserve support from Washington. While U.S. sanctions are unlikely to exert any significant economic impact on Afshari, naming and shaming him would send a powerful message to the Iranian people that America stands with them in the face of severe domestic repression. It’s long past time for the Biden administration to act.
*Tzvi Kahn is a research fellow and senior editor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on X @TzviKahn.

When it comes to Iran’s rulers, there can be no dialogue
Ben Cohen/Jewish News Syndicate/September 30/2024
Two years have passed since the murder of Jina (“Mahsa”) Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman, at the hands of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s morality police. Amini was brutalized and killed for allegedly wearing her hijab, or head-covering, improperly—the sort of “crime” that sends a backward theocracy apoplectic with rage. Her death sparked the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, the latest and perhaps most significant wave of protest among the millions of ordinary Iranians who have been clamoring for regime change for well over a decade, but who have so far been unable to dislodge the ruling mullahs.
Those ruling mullahs duly rolled into New York City last week to attend the U.N. General Assembly. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, addressed a gathering largely dominated by Third World kleptocrats, and various Russian and Chinese stooges, on the same day as Turkey, Jordan, South Africa and Qatar did the same—all of whom delivered viciously anti-Israel speeches laced with antisemitic tropes from the General Assembly podium. Pezeshkian’s remarks stuck rigidly to his regime’s talking points, among them the conspiracy theory that ISIS was created by Israel; that Iran’s proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen are “popular liberation movements”; and, most laughably of all, the contention that Iran only “seeks to safeguard its own security, not to create insecurity for others. We want peace for all and seek no war or quarrel with anyone.”
The fate of Amini and the thousands of protesters who followed in her wake went unmentioned. Rather inconveniently, around the time that Pezeshkian was extolling Iran’s peaceful nature, Reuters broke the story that the Iranians have been mediating secret talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and the Houthis with the aim of supplying the latter with Russian-made Yakhont missiles to continue their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. But this, too, passed unnoticed and unmentioned at the U.N. circus, where the only “rogue state” judged worthy of that appellation is the State of Israel.
Outside the environs of the General Assembly, the Iranian delegation conducted some public diplomacy, hosting a meeting of religious figures that included a smattering of Jewish attendees. Contrary to the assessment of the correspondent of Israel’s liberal Haaretz newspaper, this wasn’t remotely “surprising.” With the predictability of the earth revolving around the sun, at every General Assembly, a delegation of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect dutifully meets with the Iranians at whichever Manhattan hotel they happen to be staying at. Whether we should consider Jews who traffic in Holocaust distortion, and who spend every Jewish Sabbath in the ranks of the Hamas mob that devotes its weekends to demonstrating in favor of Israel’s elimination, to be Jews in the sense that the vast majority of us understand the term is beyond the scope of this week’s column. What matters for these purposes is that this year was no different from past years.
More noteworthy was the presence of an Israeli— Lior Sternfeld, a professor of history and Jewish studies at Pennsylvania State University—at that “dialogue.” Sternfeld is hardly the first Israeli to have met with representatives of the Islamic Republic, despite the impression conveyed by the media coverage of this encounter; to cite one example, Moti Maman, a 73-year-old Israeli businessman who went on trial in Israel last week charged with plotting terrorist actions and assassinations on Tehran’s behalf, traveled to Iran on at least two occasions. I’m not suggesting that Sternfeld was being recruited to carry out similar work, but whether he realizes it or not, he has become a useful propaganda tool for the Iranians, gushing following his meeting with Pezeshkian, “Are there new faces in Iran? The answer is yes.” Sternfeld would have us believe, on the basis of a choreographed encounter, that Pezeshkian is a genuine moderate who wants to orchestrate a deal that would secure the release of the 101 Israeli hostages still languishing in Hamas captivity in Gaza. But literally everything that Iran’s current rulers say and do—domestically, regionally and globally—flies in the face of that conclusion.
The overriding point is this: More than anything else, the U.N. General Assembly projects a worldview in which pretty much every member state is law-abiding, peace-loving and respectful of human rights—with the exception of Israel. So it’s not exactly shocking that Iran slides with ease into those parameters, as do other states like Turkey, which over the last century has conducted genocides against Armenians and Kurds, and Qatar, where just 10% of the population are fully-fledged citizens, and the remainder are disenfranchised slaves and domestic servants imported from developing countries. If some on the Jewish left aspire to be accepted in these circles, then that, frankly, is their funeral. Let them conduct their “dialogue.” Doing so won’t liberate a single hostage nor persuade Israelis that they are the wronging party and not the wronged.
After all, the vast majority of Jews who identify as Zionists and pray fervently for an Israeli victory in the present multi-front war also have partners and sympathizers. The Iranian people, who risk the death penalty every time they defy their regime by chanting that the cause of Gaza is not their cause. The Kurds, who know better than anyone the brutality of Arab domination and Arab colonization of their homeland. The other religious minorities of the Middle East—from the Yazidis of Iraq to the Christians of Lebanon and Egypt, who reject the misery of life in a state ruled by Islamic Shari’a law. They are our partners in conversation and in the broader project of reconstructing the Middle East as an open society.
We don’t need to engage with Pezeshkian and his cohorts, nor do we seek their approval. What we seek is their overthrow. And I’m willing to bet, as we approach a New Year that will hopefully be kinder and gentler than the previous year, that a decade from now, Israel will still be thriving, and that it is the mullahs who are far more likely to have been consigned to the past. With that in mind, as we gear up for the struggles and battles of the coming months, allow me to sign off with a heartfelt Shanah Tovah.
*Ben Cohen, a senior analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column for JNS on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics.

Analysis: Iran reluctant so far to retaliate against Israel after airstrike kills Hezbollah leader
Jon Gambrell/DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)/September 30, 2024
Iran lost its most reliable ally in the Middle East when an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. But Iran isn’t leading the charge to retaliate.
“By the grace and power of God, Lebanon will make the transgressing, malicious enemy regret its actions,” Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in the wake of Nasrallah's death Friday. But the 85-year-old paramount ruler in Iran gave no mention of his country taking action over the death of a man he once praised as "an exceptional face in the world of Islam” after the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006.
That reluctance continued into Monday, as Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told journalists that “the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian people are not after war" but rather “peace and stability in the region.”
Though Kananni added that, “any adventurous move or action against our national security or interests and our hands will never be tied,” at one point wearing a checkered Palestinian keffiyeh scarf during his remarks.
These comments highlight a reticence in responding to Nasrallah’s death. Though his leadership of Hezbollah was the crown jewel in Iran’s decades-long strategy of arming regional militias to counter both Israel and the United States, Iran remains cautious about when — or if — it will strike back.
That's not to say that it hasn't launched retaliatory strikes during the yearlong Israel-Hamas war that's riven the Middle East and threatens to erupt into a regional conflict. Iran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel in April. It even launched a missile strike against sites in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan in January. But those attacks stemmed from direct attacks on Iranian targets, like the suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic post in Syria.
“Iran I think in its priorities have been very much misunderstood since Oct. 8,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the London-based international affairs think tank Chatham House. “There was a misconception Iran would pile in.”
Instead, it hung back after Hamas — another militant group it has armed — launched its Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw another 250 taken hostage. Even as millions of Iranians purportedly volunteered online to fight on behalf of the Palestinians, Iran didn't enter the war as an Israeli offensive devastated the Gaza Strip, killing over 41,000 people.
In the time since, an increasingly emboldened Israel has attacked Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthi rebels and other groups. In marking Nasrallah's killing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited a line in the Jewish Talmud fitting that strategy — "If someone rises up to kill you, kill him first."
For Netanyahu, whose political career has revolved around the threat he perceives from Iran, that includes striking back at those Iranian allies Tehran refers to as the “Axis of Resistance.” Those militias grew in prominence and power in the chaos that followed the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the 2011 Arab Spring and the rise of Yemen's Houthi rebels.
That created what Iran's opponents feared would become a “Shiite crescent” of influence that Tehran would be able to wield, something Israel may be aiming to roll back.
“An increasingly emboldened Israel appears to be considering a more expansive plan to confront Iran across the Middle East with the ambition of creating a new regional order,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “This is a dangerous illusion. Despite Iran’s current weakness, this will be seen as an existential threat by Tehran and its regional allies."
Iran could encourage more asymmetric attacks, targeting Jewish tourists, synagogues or Israeli diplomatic missions as it has done in the past.
Tehran also could weaponize its nuclear program. It already enriches uranium to near-weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Hard-line voices within Iran's theocracy, like its daily Kahyan newspaper, already are calling for a response “harsher” than its April attack, which caused very little damage. That, however, runs directly counter to the plans of Iran's new reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who campaigned on a promise to get crushing economic sanctions lifted against Iran. That's grown in importance as energy prices continue to fall and Iran likely sells its oil at a discount due to being locked out of many nations.
If nuclear deal “commitments are implemented fully and in good faith, dialogue on other issues can follow,” Pezeshkian told the United Nations General Assembly last week.
Ending the sanctions requires a deal with the West on the nuclear program, something that will become nearly impossible if Iran enters an all-out war with Israel. Relieving that economic pressure remains crucial for Iran's domestic stability as well, as authorities remember the months of protests that followed the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini.
“For the time being it appears the president and the supreme leader, the latter who is abundantly cautious, want to keep the line open to dialogue and negotiations,” Vakil said.
And to keep that line open, Iran needs someone else to take the lead against Israel.
“Tehran apparently is content to allow Hezbollah to respond to the Nasrallah killing on its own, and perhaps in concert with the Houthi movement in Yemen, which has recently begun firing some of their Iran-supplied missiles against Israel,” the New York-based Soufan Center security think tank said Monday.
**EDITOR’S NOTE — Jon Gambrell, the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press, has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the world since joining the AP in 2006.

The ‘Long Campaign’: When Christians (Finally) Took the Offensive Against Encroaching Islam
Raymond Ibrahim/The Stream/September 30/2024
This week in history witnessed the launch of a daringly amazing campaign dedicated to defending and liberating Christian lands from Islam.
The year was 1442. After suffering countless atrocities from the invading Turks, “everyone [in the West] spoke of making war on the infidels and driving them out of Europe.” The turning point was entirely due to the martial exploits of John Hunyadi, the Transylvanian-born hero who had singlehandedly bested the Turks in several recent engagements.
After putting an army of some 25,000 Christians together — mostly from Hungary, Poland, Wallachia, Moldavia, and Serbia — Hunyadi took the initiative by doing the unthinkable: He led them into Turkish-held territories at the end of September 1442, when campaigning season was supposed to end, not begin, due to the start of the usually harsh winter.
Hunyadi was always in the vanguard, a day ahead of the main army and Hungarian king, Ladislaus III, its formal leader. The Christian army marched south of the Danube, scourging the Turks in every encounter and liberating town after Christian town. The deeper the Christians penetrated into Ottoman territory, the larger their army became, as overjoyed Christian subjects, casting off the yoke of their Muslim masters, rushed to augment the ranks of their saviors.
The First Win
After Hunyadi took Niš in early November, in an attempt to trap and annihilate the Christians, three different Muslim armies converged on the town. With lightning speed, Hunyadi defeated all three, one by one, before they could unite.
By late November, the Christians had reached Sophia in Bulgaria — more than 450 miles from where the Crusaders had first started marching. Considering that Sophia had been under Islamic rule for more than half a century, since 1382, the long-oppressed “Bulgarians went wild with joy.” Liberator and liberated reconverted the mosques back into churches and gave thanks in them.
The long-cherished dream of freedom from Islamic domination was becoming palpable:
The Balkan peoples became excited by the hope of their liberation which appeared close…. [T]he local population welcomed them everywhere with gifts and food, so that the soldiers hardly used the supplies they had brought along. The camp of the king became filled with Bulgarians, Bosnians, Serbians, and Albanians…. According to the sources from that time, the population was very much set against its [Turkish] oppressors.
Town by Town
The victorious Crusaders next set their sights on Adrianople (Edirne) — the very capital of the Ottoman Empire, and the sultan’s own seat of power. Once a beautiful Greek city, Adrianople was now a major center of the Muslim slave trade. Its markets were so inundated with Christian flesh that children sold for pennies, “a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse.”
Outside the Ottoman capital often lay the remains of the unwanted or undesirable people. As Bartolomeo de Giano had observed four years earlier, “so great a quantity of [European] bodies lay consumed, partially rotted, partially devoured by dogs, that it would seem unbelievable to anyone who had not seen it with their own eyes.”
Between the marching Christian army and the Thracian plain leading to Adrianople stood the vast and snow-covered mountains of the Balkan range. Although it was by now December (when no one campaigned), Hunyadi forced the march through the frigid cold and harsh terrain, even as panicked Turks did everything to stall him, including blocking the already narrow passes with stones and felled trees and creating walls and narrow paths of slippery ice.
Still the Christians came on. Before long, the sultan was advised to retreat from his own capital, so terrified were the Turks.
The Turning Point
On December 12, 1443, Hunyadi and his advance cavalry got entrapped at the Zlatitsa Pass; many perished of cold and starvation. On arriving to ambush them, the grand vizier remarked with contempt that he owned more cows than the Christian army had men.
After haranguing his exhausted and frozen men with words of violence and hope, “Hunyadi again led that battle himself, and, despite being outnumbered, drove the Turks back to their fortifications in the mountains.”
Due to the fierce and unrelenting winter, and with their supply lines stretched thin, Hunyadi finally ordered a withdrawal — and not a moment too soon. Many men had died of starvation, and many more would die on the long trek back home. Sources record the emaciated men “staggering from side to side as though about to fall; with their pallid faces and sunken eyes, they are more like skeletons than humans.”
To make the march easier, all worn-down horses were killed and eaten, and all heavy weapons and nonessential equipment was buried or burned, lest the Turks get them.
The skeleton army finally arrived in Buda, led by their king — barefoot, singing Christian hymns, and brandishing captured Islamic banners. After receiving a hero’s welcome, they fell to their knees and gave thanks for their victories in the main cathedral.
A Righteous Cause
“This march of the crusaders,” historian Patrick Balfour correctly observes, “was a military feat seldom paralleled in history.”
It is now known as “the Long Campaign,” as the Christian army was in nonstop action for more than six months — most of which was in winter and hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory — at a time when campaigns usually lasted no more than two months and rarely went past fall. It consisted of seven major battles, all Christian victories.
Reflecting on Hunyadi’s “insane strategy” of taking the war to the much stronger enemy, Romanian historian Camil Mureșanu writes,
He was aware of the plans of conquest of the Ottomans and understood that limiting himself to defense meant to expose the country to constant incursions and plunders and to harassment that would eventually lead to exhaustion. That is why he preferred to take the offensive, involving deep penetration into enemy territory, to defeat the adversary decisively on his own territory, thus putting an end to the war that had been going on, with interruptions, for more than half a century. His preference for the offensive was also justified by the support that he was certain he would find in Ottoman lands from the subject [Christian] populations: Romanians, Serbians, Bulgarians, who were waiting for help to come from the north for their liberation.
At any rate, “never had the Muslims suffered so much from the cunning and malice of the [infidels],” wrote a Turkish chronicler of the Long Campaign. Not only was “the Ottoman world terrified,” with Muslim cities everywhere hunkering down and refortifying themselves, but even the Mamluk sultan in distant Egypt across the Mediterranean made preparations “to defend Cairo if they heard that John Hunyadi entered Asia Minor.”
The fact that the Christians had taken the initiative and gone on the offensive against encroaching Islam — and against such implacable odds offered by the winter season — utterly dismayed and overwhelmed the Muslims. Before that, it had always been the other way around.
Perhaps modern-day Christians can learn from this vis-a-vis the gathering spiritual darkness of our own times and culture.
**Raymond Ibrahim is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum. Portions of this article were excerpted from his book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam.

Iran's Newest Proxy: Sudan
Pete Hoekstra/Gatestone Institute/September 30, 2024
Iran, having just had two of its major proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, seriously degraded, is apparently setting its sights on a new, "consolation prize" proxy to use as an additional base of operations: Sudan.
Iran's strategy of supporting and infiltrating other countries and terrorist groups -- as it has done in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Venezuela and Yemen -- appears as yet another extension of its strategy of moving into territories with weak or unstable governments to expand its influence throughout the Middle East, to create new fronts for its campaign to destroy Israel and bring down the world order led by the West.
A major port and foothold in Sudan will enable Iran to accomplish two of its goals: to continue encircling Israel in a "ring of fire" by opening yet another front from which to attack the small Jewish nation from the southwest, and to further control all international shipping in the Red Sea.
The Sudanese Armed Forces, led by [Sudanese General Abdel Fattah] Al-Burhan... although invited [for peace talks], was not represented. "We will not go to Geneva," Al-Burhan told reporters in Port Sudan, at the time; "we will fight for 100 years."
Al-Burhan nevertheless showed up at the UN recently, asking for talks. Why did he not respect the offer from the US and the international community when they gave him that opportunity in Geneva? Might the incident suggest a lack of candor?
Openly stating its ambition to dominate the Middle East -- and to drive US forces out of the region presumably to make it easier to do so – Iran, for 40 years, through force and intimidation, has been seeking to dominate its neighbors in the Middle East, not just Israel, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Iran's militias and proxies have been firing, as well, on American assets in the region, more than 160 times just in the last year, with virtually no response from the US. Iran has also been extending its reach into Africa, especially with the increasing collaboration of two powerful allies: China and Russia.
Iran's influence is not presently confined to any region. Iran has, for instance, been "exporting the revolution" to the Western Hemisphere, particularly, as mentioned, Venezuela, an ideal base from which to harass the "Big Satan," especially when Iran will have nuclear weapons, which are reportedly close to being "taken public."
This new, potential land-grab by Iran, in collaboration with Russia and China, poses yet another serious security threat not only to Israel, but also to the entire region and the United States. It is hoped that the US government, and whoever wins the November election, will give this emerging flashpoint urgent attention.
Iran, having just had two of its major proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, seriously degraded, is setting its sights on a new, "consolation prize" proxy to use as an additional base of operations: Sudan. Recently, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps formed a close relationship with General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces. Pictured: Al-Burhan arrives to speak at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images)
Iran, having just had two of its major proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, seriously degraded, is setting its sights on a new, "consolation prize" proxy to use as an additional base of operations: Sudan.
Iran has, for a while, been trying to establish a port in Sudan's major coastal city, Port Sudan. Iran's strategy of supporting and infiltrating other countries and terrorist groups -- as it has done in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Venezuela and Yemen -- appears as yet another extension of its strategy of moving into territories with weak or unstable governments to expand its influence throughout the Middle East, to create new fronts for its campaign to destroy Israel and bring down the world order led by the West.
A major port and foothold in Sudan will enable Iran to accomplish two of its goals: to continue encircling Israel in a "ring of fire" by opening yet another front from which to attack the small Jewish nation from the southwest, and to further control all international shipping in the Red Sea. Currently, most ships, unable to buy insurance thanks to the massive disruption created by Iran's proxy, the Houthis, are forced to go around the entire continent of Africa rather than speed through the Suez Canal. This detour costs every vessel up to an additional $800,000 for each trip. Commercial traffic in the Red Sea is consequently down by nearly 80%.
Recently, Iran's wealthy private militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), formed a close relationship with General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, the chief of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). For more than a year, it has been engaged in fighting the paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, commonly known as Hemedti. In 2019, the two generals had worked together to stage a coup, but 17 months ago, started fighting each other. Last week, the SAF began trying to retake the Sudanese capital city, Khartoum.
In August 2024, peace talks were called, aimed at ending the civil war between the SAF and he RSF. US Special Envoy for Sudan Tom Perriello wrote on X that delegations from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), African Union, United Nations and Egypt convened in Geneva for talks facilitated by the United States. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield hailed the fresh round of negotiations as an important step to end the bloody war.
The Sudanese Armed Forces, led Al-Burhan, however, although invited, was not represented. "We will not go to Geneva," Al-Burhan told reporters in Port Sudan at the time; "we will fight for 100 years."
Al-Burhan nevertheless showed up at the UN recently, asking for talks. Why did he not respect the offer from the US and the international community when they gave him that opportunity in Geneva? Might the incident suggest a lack of candor?
In the meantime, the IRGC, while working to establish a naval base in Port Sudan, has been providing SAF with drones and advanced military equipment. This support positions Sudan as a possible new base of operations for Iran against Israel. Iran's strategy of embedding itself within weak or unstable nations, such as Sudan, seems a clear attempt to duplicate its proliferation of proxy states, expand its reach, and create new fronts in its global against the West.
The threat, however, does not stop at Israel: Iran's ultimate target is clearly the United States. "Death to Israel" and "Death to America," are aspirations the Iranian regime has been advocating since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah with the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and vowed, "We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry 'There is no god but Allah' resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle." [1]
Openly stating its ambition to dominate the Middle East -- and to drive US forces out of the region presumably to make it easier to do so – Iran, for 40 years, through force and intimidation, has been seeking to dominate its neighbors in the Middle East, not just Israel, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran's militias and proxies have been firing, as well, on American assets in the region, more than 160 times just in the last year, with virtually no response from the US. Iran has also been extending its reach into Africa, especially with the increasing collaboration of two powerful allies: China and Russia.
Iran's influence is not presently confined to any region. Iran has, for instance, been "exporting the revolution" to the Western Hemisphere, particularly, as mentioned, Venezuela, an ideal base from which to harass the "Big Satan," especially when Iran will have nuclear weapons, which are reportedly close to being "taken public."
China and Russia, ironically, appear to be using Iran as their proxy, a "pacesetter," in a larger geopolitical race, distracting the United States while they advance their own strategic goals. Iran, through its proxy Hezbollah, has also been actively expanding its presence across Africa, creating potential threats to Western personnel and interests as part of a strategy of horizontal escalation.
While Iran's focus remains largely on the Middle East, its financial networks in Africa, backed by Hezbollah's extensive involvement in illicit activities -- such as money laundering, smuggling, and fundraising from the Lebanese diaspora -- position it as a latent threat. Hezbollah's foothold in countries such as Guinea, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo provides it and Iran with the financial resources to disrupt U.S. interests in Africa. In the event of future tensions, Tehran could leverage these assets to escalate conflicts by targeting Western interests on the continent.
This new, potential land-grab by Iran, in collaboration with Russia and China, poses yet another serious security threat not only to Israel, but also to the entire region and the United States. It is hoped that the US government, and whoever wins the November election, will give this emerging flashpoint urgent attention.
*Peter Hoekstra is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. He was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He also served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Second District of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.
[1] February 11, 1979 (according to Dilip Hiro in The Longest War p.32) p.108 from Excerpts from Speeches and Messages of Imam Khomeini on the Unity of the Muslims.
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