LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
December 30/15

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletins05/english.december30.15.htm 

Bible Quotations For Today
There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 02/19-23: ""When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.’
Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He will be called a Nazorean."

This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up
Acts of the Apostles 07/02.30-37: "Stephen replied: ‘Brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our ancestor Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, ‘Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight; and as he approached to look, there came the voice of the Lord: "I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look. Then the Lord said to him, "Take off the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have surely seen the mistreatment of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their groaning, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, I will send you to Egypt." ‘It was this Moses whom they rejected when they said, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" and whom God now sent as both ruler and liberator through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out, having performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years. This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, "God will raise up a prophet for you from your own people as he raised me up."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on December 29-30/15
As Argentinian 'truth commission' ends before it starts, time to investigate Iranian agents/Matthew Levitt/The Hill/December 29/15
ISIS leader’s latest threats reveal plans for 2016/Dr. Theodore Karasik/Al Arabiya/December 29/15
I want to think freely, and write freely/Jamal Khashoggi/Al Arabiya/December 29/15
A war over who deserves to be called a ‘martyr’/Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/December 29/15
Iranian cleric calls out Egypt's Al-Azhar for anti-Shiite activities/Arash Karami/Al-Monitor/December 29/15
Is Congress empowering Iranian hard-liners/Mahmoud Pargoo/Al-Monitor/December 29/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on December 29-30/15
Israeli Expert Says Hezbollah Retaliation for Kuntar Assassination Likely to Come in Asia, Thailand
Report: Iran appoints new commander in Syria
Tehran names Raafat Al-Bakkar as new Hizballah Golan terror ring chief
Report: Lebanese Army Committed to Completing its Mission in Dar al-Wasaa
Ibrahim: Lebanon Played Humanitarian Role in Zabadani Exchange
Hizbullah Delegation Meets al-Rahi: We Will Not Abandon our Commitment to Aoun
Port Authorities Foil Attempt to Smuggle 3 Tons of Drugs to Egypt
Omar Bakri's Son Killed Fighting alongside IS in Iraq
Abou Taqiyeh's Son Shot and Wounded in Arsal Outskirts
Three Indicted with Spying for Israel, Including Lebanese UNIFIL Employee
Obeid Meets al-Rahi, Says Lebanon 'Deserves a Consensual President'
Syrian Woman Arrested for Transferring Funds to Terror Group
Report: Aoun Forms Small Cell to Follow up on Presidential Initiative
Salam Concerned over his Govt.'s 'Democratic Performance'

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on December 29-30/15
Saudi King Salman meets Turkey’s Erdogan
ISIS leader linked to Paris attacks 'mastermind' killed in Syria: Pentagon
U.S. Says IS Leader Linked to Paris Attacks 'Mastermind' Killed in Syria
Belgium Arrests Two over Suspected New Year Attack Plot
Two Bahraini soliders in Yemen coalition killed in Saudi
23 Saudi women on trial over terrorism charges
We can’t retake Mosul without Kurds, says Iraqi official
Top ISIS commanders killed in Ramadi: who were they?
ISIS docs show rules for treatment of sex slaves
Israel’s ex-PM Olmert gets prison sentence reduced
Strike that killed Syrian rebel chief ‘complicates peace talks push’
450 evacuated from besieged Syrian areas
Aylan Kurdi’s relatives go to Canada to rebuild
Ship with low-enriched uranium leaves Iran for Russia
Egypt arrests 4 leaders of anti-Mubarak movement
After Ramadi’s liberation, PM vows to defeat ISIS

Links From Jihad Watch Site for December 29-30/15
Saudi Grand Mufti: Islamic State jihadis are Israeli soldiers
Islamic State in West Africa murders 52 with jihad suicide bombings
Robert Spencer in FrontPage: House Democrats Move to Criminalize Criticism of Islam
Video: Robert Spencer and Michael Finch on the Glazov Gang: 10 Things America Must Do To Defend Itself From Jihad
Hugh Fitzgerald: The “Ask A Muslim” Girl

Israeli Expert Says Hezbollah Retaliation for Kuntar Assassination Likely to Come in Asia, Thailand
Algemeiner/December 29/15/Hezbollah’s retribution against Israel for allegedly assassinating arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar in Syria will likely be against a target outside the Jewish state, said Professor Uzi Rabi, the director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, according to Maariv on Monday. Predicting a “measured and calculated response” by Hezbollah, Rabi said it could happen in “Thailand, Asia or somewhere abroad.” Because of the volatility in the Middle East, as well as Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war, the group probably would not stage an attack against targets in Israel, said Rabi. “We should remember that Hezbollah is bogged down in the Syrian quagmire,” he told an Israeli radio station, according to Maariv, “which has taken the lives of thousands of its people. I believe one third of their forces met their ends there.” In 2012, a series of explosions in Thailand turned out to be a botched attempt at assassinating Israeli diplomats. Thailand and neighboring Asian countries are also popular tourist destinations for Israelis. On Monday, a UN-brokered truce between Syrian anti-government groups and Hezbollah saw buses evacuating hundreds from border towns for a Sunni-Shia population exchange, underscoring Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war. The group has been fighting Syrian rebels fiercely for several months on the Lebanese border. A recent Israeli report said up to 1,500 of its fighters may have been killed. Some reports have said that at the time of his death, Kuntar, a Lebanese Druze, was operating on behalf of Iran rather than Hezbollah in Syria, organizing in Druze villages in the Syrian Golan. Rabi supported those claims, and said Iran was putting pressure on Hezbollah to respond, “at least on the rhetorical level.” Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned on Sunday meanwhile that his group would certainly retaliate for Kuntar’s death “at the appropriate time and place and in the appropriate method,” which some analysts have taken to imply that the attack will neither be against a target in Israel nor immediate. Rabi mentioned the January assassination of six Hezbollah operatives and an Iranian general in the Golan Heights, also reportedly by Israel, which the group retaliated for rapidly in an attack against an Israeli military patrol that killed two soldiers. Nasrallah also took a moment to encourage the current wave of stabbings committed by Palestinians against Israelis, calling the apparently random terrorist acts a part of the “real resistance.” “The steadfastness of the Palestinians today is the real resistance, the more so is revealed in their continued sit-in, high awareness, solid will, armed resistance, and stabbing operations that are frightening the Israeli soldiers and settlers,” he said. “Those who are staging stabbing operations in Palestine know that they would either be martyred or jailed, but they remain in their resistance to regain their occupied territories,” he said.

Report: Iran appoints new commander in Syria
Staff Writer, Al Arabiya News Tuesday, 29 December 2015/ The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is appointing a new commander for its operations in Syria, replacing a senior general who died in October, according to a report from inside Iran by an opposition group. Following the “large number of IRGC casualties in Syria, especially the death of General Hossein Hamedani, commander of the Iranian regime’s forces in Syria, and injury to Commander of the IRGC Quds Force (QF) Qassem Soleimani, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed IRGC Brigadier General Mohammad Jafar Assadi the IRGC commander in Syria,” the opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran said. The opposition council said that the guards's elite “Quds Force” continues “its extensive dispatch of mercenaries to Syria and that Khamenei.. who considers defeat in the war against Syrian people a lethal blow to the entirety of the velayat-e faqih regime [governance by jurists] is getting the Iranian regime and its Revolutionary Guards exceedingly bogged down in the Syrian quagmire.”It added that “Assadi is one of the most veteran commanders in the IRGC and a close associate of Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Guards' commander-in-chief. Assadi has many years of experience of involvement in the affairs of countries in the region. In Syria, he is known as Abu Ahmad.”Assadi “joined the IRGC in March 1980 and was one of the commanders of the war with Iraq. He was commander of the IRGC in Lebanon from 2003 to 2007 and then commander of the IRGC Ground Forces from 2008 to 2009” according to the statement.

Tehran names Raafat Al-Bakkar as new Hizballah Golan terror ring chief
 DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 28, 2015
Tehran Monday, Dec. 28, further ramped up the tension between its Lebanese proxy Hizballah, whose leader Sunday threatened to avenge the death of Samir Quntar, and Israel, which is conducting a military exercise along its northern borders. Four days after Quntar was assassinated in Damascus, Tehran appointed a successor to carry on building a new terrorist network for striking Israel from the Golan. This successor is revealed by DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources as a Lebanese called Raafat Al-Bakkar, about whom very little is known. According to our sources, the Iranians spotted Al-Bakkar as promising talent earlier this year, shortly after the Israeli air strike which on Jan. 18 killed Iranian Gen. Ali Dadi and the high-profile Hizballah leader Jihad Moughniyeh. They were caught touring the Golan around Quneitra in search of a site for a terrorist base. Al-Bakkar was sent to Tehran at that time for a course in building and running terrorist networks, and this week he was given charge of the new “National Resistance on the Golan” organization for deep strikes inside Israel. When Nasrallah boasted Sunday that his jihadists were already on their way to punish Israel, he was looking forward to the arrival of Quntar’s successor.
See DEBKA files’ earlier report from Sunday, Dec. 27. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkott explained why it was necessary to bring forward the launching of the new Commando Brigade by two months, when he addressed the formation ceremony on Sunday, Dec. 27, at the Ein Harod National Park: “The Commando Brigade is more necessary than ever in light of the threats from Hizballah and the Islamic State,” he said, in reference to the boasts heard in the last 48 hours from Hassan Nasrallah and Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi. The Chief of Staff introduced Col. David Zini as the first commander of the new Brigade.
The ceremony took place shortly after the Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah said, “Revenge for the death of Samir Quntar is on the way… The orders have been given and execution is in the hands of resistance fighters on the ground… The Israelis are worried and rightly so - those on the borders [soldiers] and those inside the country…. We shall not let the blood of our Jihadi fighters and brothers to be spilled anywhere in the world,” he said. DEBKAfile’s military sources report: Analysis of the kinds of threats posed by Hizballah (and ISIS) at this time, which are likely to focus more on terrorism than on tank or infantry border incursions, persuaded IDF leaders of the need for a new framework for bringing under one roof some of the top-notch, highly-trained, experienced, well-armed and determined fighting men who are willing to take on new challenges. The self-styled Islamic State's “caliph” Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, also devoted special attention to Israel, or rather “the Jews,” in his first audio speech in seven months Saturday, Dec. 26, the day before Nasrallah sounded off. His message was similar to that of his Shiite enemy, albeit in his own inimitable style: The Islamic State would soon be in Palestine to establish an Islamic state there, he said, "Jews, soon you shall hear from us in Palestine which will become your grave… The Jews thought we had forgotten Palestinian… Not at all, Jews…The pioneers of the jihadist fighters are getting closer every day.” If and when the Shiite Hizballah and Sunni ISIS make good on their similar but separate threats - or sooner - they will encounter Israel’s new Commando Brigade. Its fighting men are trained for combat in miscellaneous conditions of terrain, day or night, under deep cover. They are equipped with high-tech equipment, most of it classified, for gathering visual and electronic intelligence, communications, photography and targeting. They may either kill terrorists or take them captive. In a word, these elite troops will hit the enemy in his back yard or at home, and blow the threats heard from Hizballah and ISIS leaders’ back on their own forces.
The 89th Commando Brigade is composed of four battalions:
Duvdevan specializes in operating amidst an Arab population under deep cover for locating and arresting terror suspects. Egoz is a special kind of infantry battalion, whose commandos operate solo or in very small teams behind enemy lines, especially across the Syrian and Lebanese borders. Maglan is skilled in the use of weaponry designed for precision operations against high quality enemy targets. These elite fighters go deep inside enemy territory to gather intelligence and use their specialized technology, exclusive for the use of this unit, for devastating assaults. Rimon members are desert fighters who gained their experience in the terrain of the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Their experience as back-up for operations against drug smugglers is invaluable for urban combat in civilian environments. Excluded from the new brigade are the separate IDF commando units: Sayeret Matkal, Shayetet 13 (Navy), the Oketz unit which trains dogs for anti-terror work, and Yahalom, of the Engineering Corps.

Report: Lebanese Army Committed to Completing its Mission in Dar al-Wasaa
Naharnet/December 29/15/The army is committed to arresting all wanted suspects in the eastern Bekaa region of Baalbek as part of the raids it carried out on Monday, reported As Safir newspaper on Tuesday.
A security source told the daily: “The military will go ahead with its mission to the end in the Sharawna neighborhood and Dar al-Wasaa area.”“It will continue with its arrests and raids against those who have violated security and assaulted the army in order to bring them to justice,” it stressed. “The army's decision enjoys the cover of the political powers in the area and it is a product of direct contacts between the military and the AMAL and Hizbullah leaderships,” it explained. “The two parties asserted that there will be no political protection to anyone who violated security,” said the source.
Meanwhile, a prominent member of the Jaafar clan, Yassine Jaafar, condemned Monday's attack against the army in Dar al-Wasaa, saying that the family considers the military “a red line.”He added that the absence of the state's authority in the Bekaa has led to the accumulation of several security files in the area, reported As Safir. He hoped that the Internal Security Forces would have led the raids “in order to avoid dragging the army into clashes with citizens.” A soldier was killed and four troops were wounded Monday in a clash with members of the Jaafar family in the Bekaa area of Dar al-Wasaa. The exchange of gunfire erupted as the army carried out a raid linked to the 2014 murder of Sobhi and Nadimeh Fakhri in the nearby town of Btedei. Three suspects wanted in the crime were apprehended, while eight of those who opened fire at the army turned themselves in to the military. The Fakhris were reportedly killed by gunmen from the Jaafar family who were fleeing army raids in Dar al-Wasaa. The armed men were reportedly trying to steal the couple's car. A statement issued by the Jaafar family at the time said the man and the woman were killed in the crossfire. The incident had sparked sectarian tensions in the confessionally-mixed region.

Ibrahim: Lebanon Played Humanitarian Role in Zabadani Exchange
Naharnet/December 29/15/General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim defended the exchange that took place on Monday between the Syrian regime and rebels that saw the transfer of gunmen through Lebanese territory from the Zabadani area, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Tuesday. He told the daily: “Lebanon played a humanitarian, social, and civil role in the operation.”The deal came under criticism by local political sides that said that it “undermined the country's sovereignty.”Ibrahim had overseen the necessary contacts between the concerned Lebanese authorities to ensure the swap's success. A General Security statement issued on Monday night said that the deal was carried out under the supervision of concerned Lebanese powers and in coordination with the United Nations. Government sources meanwhile told al-Mustaqbal daily Tuesday that Prime Minister Tammam Salam was informed of the exchange through the U.N. The necessary contacts were made through U.N. envoy to Syrian Staffan de Mistura and U.N. Special Coordinator for Lebanon Sigrid Kaag, they explained. “Lebanon played the role of a humanitarian passage, nothing more, nothing less,” they said. “Salam is committed to Lebanon's policy of dissociation from the Syrian crisis now more than ever,” they stressed. More than 120 rebels and wounded from the flashpoint Syrian border town of Zabadani traveled Monday from Beirut's airport to Turkey as part of a U.N.-backed truce. A convoy carrying them had earlier in the day crossed from Syria into Lebanon through the Masnaa border crossing. The convoy consisted of seven buses and 22 ambulances and was accompanied by Lebanese security forces. Simultaneously, two planes took off from Turkey's Hatay airport to Beirut, carrying 335 people evacuated from the mainly Shiite Syrian villages of Fuaa and Kafraya. The residents had crossed into Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border point and are to travel overland to Damascus after arriving in Beirut. The Kataeb Party on Monday wondered if the Lebanese government was aware of a U.N.-sponsored deal, demanding that the government and premier “put the public opinion in the picture of the latest security and political developments.” “Was the Lebanese state part of this agreement or was it imposed on it?” it wondered.

Hizbullah Delegation Meets al-Rahi: We Will Not Abandon our Commitment to Aoun
Naharnet/December 29/15/A Hizbullah delegation paid a visit to Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Tuesday where it expressed its commitment to its ally Change and Reform bloc MP Michel Aoun in the presidential race. Sayyed Ibrahim al-Amin al-Sayyed said after the talks: “We will not abandon our commitment to MP Michel Aoun at any political crossroads.”“We do not accept that others reach a political settlement and then ask us to persuade Aoun to abandon the presidential race,” he added from Bkirki. Media reports had spoken that Hizbullah would attempt to convince Aoun to withdraw his nomination as president in wake of an initiative to elect Marada Movement leader MP Suleiman Franjieh as head of state. “We are in agreement with the patriarch over the need to elect a new president,” continued Sayyed. “We should not be the side that should remove obstacles standing in the way of any initiative or settlement,” he remarked. “We are not concerned with such an issue,” he stated. “Al-Rahi understands our position and has asked us to play a role in the presidency,” he revealed. Franjieh's nomination was a product of a proposal spearheaded by Mustaqbal Movement leader MP Saad Hariri. The move has sparked tensions between Aoun and Franjieh, with the latter describing his ties with the MP as “abnormal.”The Change and Reform bloc has also criticized al-Rahi's recent stances on Hariri's initiative. The patriarch urged last week officials to take the proposal “seriously.” Aoun has repeatedly declared that he would not abandon the race as long as he has a chance to win the elections.

Port Authorities Foil Attempt to Smuggle 3 Tons of Drugs to Egypt
Naharnet/December 29/15/Customs authorities at Beirut's port have foiled an attempt to smuggle three tons of Captagon pills and hashish to Egypt, state-run National News Agency reported on Tuesday. The drugs were “hidden in children's tables” destined for Egypt, NNA said. “According to the evaluation of the Customs Administration, the shipment was supposed to be sent to Egypt in the first stage before being shipped to other countries,” Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said at the port during an inspection visit that followed the announcement. “They have resorted to this method as a result of the strict inspection measures that have been taken,” Khalil added. He pledged that the Customs Administration will maintain its efforts in this regard, noting that the fight against narcotics “resemblat es Lebanon's battle against terrorism.”“Drugs are targeted against social stability, people's security and lives, and the lives of youths,” the minister warned. He also noted those involved in the smuggling attempt have been identified in coordination with the relevant judicial authorities.

Omar Bakri's Son Killed Fighting alongside IS in Iraq
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 29/15/A son of the Lebanese, Syrian-born radical cleric Omar Bakri has been killed in Iraq fighting alongside the extremist Islamic State group, security sources said Tuesday. Iraq's Popular Mobilization, a paramilitary group, said that it and the security forces had killed Bilal Omar Bakri. He was "leading a group that tried to attack one of our units," in Salaheddin north of Baghdad, according to a statement from the group, dominated by Tehran-backed Shiite militias. A Lebanese security source confirmed that Bilal Omar Bakri, who was in his late 20s, had been killed "fighting in the ranks of IS" in Salaheddin province. Another of the preacher's sons, Mohammad Omar, who was in his late 30s, died fighting for IS in Aleppo in Syria several months earlier, the source told AFP on condition of anonymity. The brothers had traveled together from Britain to Iraq, the source added. Omar Bakri, who holds Lebanese citizenship, became known in Britain for supporting al-Qaida. The Lebanese judiciary sentenced him in October to six years of hard labor for establishing an organization affiliated with the Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front in Syria and establishing training camps for it in Lebanon. When he was based in London, the Islamist Sunni firebrand was known in the media as the "Tottenham Ayatollah" despite the term applying to a high rank in the Shiite clergy. Omar Bakri fled Britain, where he lived for two decades, to Lebanon after praising the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and the July 7, 2005 bombings in London. He was arrested and sentenced to life in prison in Lebanon on a number of charges but was freed on bail in 2010 pending a retrial, judicial sources said at the time. He had most recently been arrested in May 2014 for his involvement in unrest in the northern city of Tripoli. He has denied any links to al-Qaida although he said he believed "in the same ideology."

Abou Taqiyeh's Son Shot and Wounded in Arsal Outskirts
Naharnet/December 29/15/A son of fugitive Islamist cleric Mustafa al-Hujeiri was shot and wounded Tuesday in the outskirts of the restive northeastern border town of Arsal. “Obada, a son of Mustafa al-Hujeiri (Abou Taqiyeh), was shot in the leg during a dispute with gunmen in the Arsal area of Wadi al-Hosn,” state-run National News Agency reported. He was admitted into Arsal's field hospital for treatment, it said. In October 2014, an indictment and arrest warrant were issued against Mustafa al-Hujeiri on charges of belonging to the Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front with the aim of carrying out terrorist acts. Ever since the Syrian revolt erupted in March 2011, Arsal has served as a key conduit for refugees, militants and wounded people fleeing strife-torn Syria. Jihadists from al-Nusra and the Islamic State group are entrenched in the town's outskirts. In August 2014, they stormed the town and engaged in bloody battles with the Lebanese army following the arrest of a senior IS militant. The jihadists withdrew after a ceasefire, but took with them several dozen hostages from the army and police, four of whom have since been executed. Al-Nusra freed 16 servicemen on December 1 in a swap deal with the Lebanese government that involved the release of Islamists and women from Lebanon's jails.

Three Indicted with Spying for Israel, Including Lebanese UNIFIL Employee
Naharnet/December 29/15/Hani Matar, a Lebanese employee of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), was indicted on Tuesday on charges of collaborating with Israel, reported al-Jadeed television, citing Military Court documents. It said that Military Examining Magistrate Judge Riyad Abou Ghida indicted him and two other people with working with Israel. The indictment identifies the two others as Syrian national Ramez al-Sayyed and his Lebanese wife Salam Ibrahim Shukur. The three indictees were arrested by the General Security in November. The indictment describes al-Sayyed as an opponent of Damascus who "extremely hates the Syrian regime, Hizbullah and their allies.""Aided by his wife Salam Shukur, they commnuicated via Facebook with Israeli spy Tannous al-Jallad, who lives in occupied Palestine and recruits agents for the Israeli army," the indictment adds. "Through this communication, Ramez al-Sayyed volunteered to work for Israel, telling Tannous al-Jallad that he was willing to carry out any mission requested by the Mossad in the Sidon region since he has a cafe there frequented by a large number of civilians and soldiers," it says. The General Security said at the time that the detainees had confessed to gathering information on various security and military figures for the purpose of assassinations. They photographed roads and other “sensitive” areas in the South, said the General Security in a statement. UNIFIL had said in November that it “will continue to provide the assistance required to facilitate the Government's investigations into the allegations.”“UNIFIL considers it of the utmost importance that the investigative and judicial process is conducted in accordance with the international standards of justice, fairness and due process of law and fully supports the Lebanese authorities in the effort,” it added. Lebanon and Israel remain technically in a state of war, with occasional skirmishes on the ceasefire line. UNIFIL monitors the line and has a force of some 10,000 international peacekeepers. It also employs numerous local staff members serving in non-peacekeeping roles. Between April 2009 and 2014, Lebanese authorities detained more than 100 people accused of spying for Israel, most of them army members or telecommunications employees. But such arrests have since been rare.

Obeid Meets al-Rahi, Says Lebanon 'Deserves a Consensual President'
Naharnet/December 29/15/Former minister Jean Obeid broke his silence on the issue of the the presidential elections on Tuesday, noting that the country “deserves a consensual president.”“I did not discuss this issue with the patriarch,” Obeid told MTV in Bkirki when asked if his chances to reach the presidency have surged. “I'm an advocate of pacification and understanding,” the ex-minister said after his talks with Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi. He noted that in a country like Lebanon, there can be no president “without pacification and understanding.”“Throughout the country's history, there has always been a search for the president who would best reflect consensus among the parties,” Obeid pointed out. Asked if Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh is his friend, Obeid said: “Of course he is.” Asked about Franjieh's presidential nomination and about the latest presidential initiative, Obeid declined to comment, noting that he has informed the patriarch of his stance on the issue. “A president must be elected as soon as possible,” Obeid added. “The country deserves a consensual president,” he underlined. Obeid ran for the presidency in 2008 and was considered to be a possible consensus candidate. Observers and media reports still consider him to be a potential compromise nominee.Franjieh had recently emerged as a possible consensus candidate after he met in Paris with al-Mustaqbal movement chief ex-PM Saad Hariri. But the Franjieh-Hariri initiative ran aground in recent weeks after it drew reservations and objections from the country's main Christian parties. Hizbullah is also still clinging to the nomination of Change and Reform bloc chief MP Michel Aoun.

Syrian Woman Arrested for Transferring Funds to Terror Group
Naharnet/December 29/15/A Syrian woman was arrested on charges of transferring funds to a terrorist group, announced the General Security on Tuesday. The detainee confessed to providing financial and logistic support to the Abdullah Azzam Brigades through a member of the group. She has since been referred to the concerned judiciary for further investigation.Efforts are underway to track down her accomplices. The al-Qaida-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades has been involved in recent years in attacks against Hizbullah targets in Lebanon, which started when the party became involved in fighting in Syria. The party has intervened in the conflict on the side of the Syrian regime. The terror group had also issued warnings against security forces in Lebanon over their crackdown against extremists in the country.

Report: Aoun Forms Small Cell to Follow up on Presidential Initiative
Naharnet/December 29/15/Change and Reform bloc chief MP Michel Aoun has formed a small committee to follow up on the initiative that was launched by Mustaqbal Movement leader MP Saad Hariri to end the deadlock in the presidency and political scene in Lebanon, reported the Kuwaiti daily al-Anba on Tuesday. It said that the cell is tasked with contacting members of the March 8 camp to address the proposal and “its consequences.” It will seek to “persuade several of Aoun's allies in the coalition to stand against the nomination of Marada Movement leader MP Suleiman Franjieh as president.” Hariri's initiative calls for the election of Franjieh as head of state as part of a greater settlement that would revitalize the political scene in Lebanon. The proposal has been met with reservations from the March 8 camp and some of Hariri's allies in the March 14 coalition. The move has also sparked tensions between Franjieh and Aoun, who is also a presidential candidate. The disputes over the initiative have led to its stagnation at this point, with media reports predicting that renewed efforts to resolve the vacuum in the presidency would kick off in the new year. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Ongoing disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls.

Salam Concerned over his Govt.'s 'Democratic Performance'
Naharnet/December 29/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam expressed concern over the performance of his government during 2015, saying that it has “not achieved much”, reported the daily An Nahar on Tuesday. He told the daily: “I am not at ease because my cabinet is under-performing.”“We are eating away at our democratic system,” he lamented. The government witnessed throughout the year various political obstacles that have been linked one way or the other to the vacuum in the presidency. Various disputes among its political blocs have hindered the approval of decrees and resulted in months of paralysis. Salam himself had refrained from calling the government to session on numerous occasions out of concern that the cabinet would be forced to resign. Lebanon has been without a president since May 2014 when the term of Michel Suleiman ended without the election of a successor. Ongoing disputes between the rival March 8 and 14 camps over a compromise candidate have thwarted the polls. In the absence of a head of state, the cabinet assumes the role of the president until a new one is elected.

Saudi King Salman meets Turkey’s Erdogan
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Saudi King Salman on Monday met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who arrived with his accompanying delegation to the capital Riyadh on the same day. Before leaving to Saudi Arabia, Erdogan said that he would discuss the Syrian conflict and economic issues with the king. He said that his country is eager to find a political solution to Syria's long-running civil war. Turkish President Erdogan and his wife and First Lady Emine seen walking with Prince Mansour bin Miteb bin Abdulaziz upon their arrival in Riyadh (Photo courtesy: SPA) He added that he will also discuss other issues, among them bilateral ties and means to develop them, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and others linked to the anti-terrorism effort of the 34-member Islamic military coalition announced earlier this month. Erdogan and the Turkish delegation were received at King Khalid International Airport by Prince Mansour bin Miteb bin Abdulaziz, Minister of State, Cabinet's Member and Advisor to King Salman; Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel Al-Jubeir; Minister of State and Cabinet's Member Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban; and a number of officials, according to the official Saudi news agency. Watch Al Arabiya News Channel's exclusive interview with Erdogan

ISIS leader linked to Paris attacks 'mastermind' killed in Syria: Pentagon
AFP, Washington Tuesday, 29 December 2015/An Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) leader with “direct” links to the alleged ringleader of the Paris attacks was killed in an air strike in Syria as he was plotting additional attacks, the Pentagon said Tuesday. Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told reporters that Charaffe al Mouadan had been killed on December 24. “He was a Syrian-based ISIS member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris attacks cell leader,” Warren said, adding that he “was actively planning additional attacks against the West.”

U.S. Says IS Leader Linked to Paris Attacks 'Mastermind' Killed in Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/December 29/15An Islamic State leader with "direct" ties to the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks was among 10 senior figures in the group killed in Syria and Iraq this month, the Pentagon said Tuesday.Baghdad-based U.S. military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren told reporters that French national Charaffe al Mouadan was killed in a U.S.-led coalition air strike on December 24. Mouadan had been actively plotting further attacks against the West, Warren said, without giving additional details. "He was a Syrian-based ISIL member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris attacks cell leader," Warren said in a video call, using an alternative acronym for the IS group. Mouadan, 26, was the son of Morocco-born parents and the last of eight children. He grew up in the suburbs of Paris, and was arrested in October 2012 while getting ready to leave with two neighborhood friends for either Yemen or Afghanistan, via Somalia, a source close to the investigation told AFP. The United States has since August 2014 led an international coalition attacking the IS group in Iraq and Syria. Warren declined to say if France had been involved in the strike against Mouadan. Among the other leaders killed in December was a Syria-based Bangladeshi man who was educated in Britain and was allegedly an IS hacker. "Now that he's dead, ISIL has lost a key link between their networks," Warren said. Warren described another man as a forgery specialist with "links to the Paris attack network," but he declined to offer additional details.

Belgium Arrests Two over Suspected New Year Attack Plot
Naharnet/December 29/15/Belgian police have arrested two people suspected of plotting attacks in Brussels during New Year festivities, just weeks after the jihadist bombings and shootings in Paris which were allegedly planned in Belgium. The federal prosecutor's office in Brussels, the home of the European Union and NATO, said Tuesday that police seized military-style training uniforms, computer hardware and Islamic State propaganda material in raids around the capital Brussels and in the Liege region. But investigators said the police action on Sunday and Monday was not linked to the wave of deadly attacks in Paris in November which were claimed by the Islamic State group and which France says were prepared in Belgium. One of the two was arrested on suspicion of planning attacks as well as "playing a lead role in the activities of a terrorist group and recruiting for terrorist acts," the prosecutor's office said in a statement. The second faced charges of planning and "participating in the activities of a terrorist group," it said.
'Emblematic sites'
"The investigation cast a light on serious threats of attacks believed to be aimed at several emblematic sites in Brussels and carried out during the end-of-year celebrations."In response, Belgium's OCAM national crisis centre late Monday raised its alert level for police and soldiers in Brussels, "which could be symbolic targets," a spokesman told AFP. The Belga news agency, citing an internal police memo, said there "exists a possible and credible threat of Paris-style attacks" against the high-profile Grand Place, the neighbouring central police station as well as soldiers and police in uniform. Tourists and others flock to the Grand Place, the opulent central square of Brussels. Media reported that the city authorities will decide Wednesday whether to go ahead with a New Year's Eve fireworks display at Place de Brouckere, another central square. In the last year, the Belgian authorities have deployed troops in addition to police reinforcements outside many locations in Brussels, including European Union buildings and foreign diplomatic missions, amid growing fears of jihadist attacks. The raids, which were ordered by an investigating magistrate in Brussels who specializes in terrorism cases, turned up neither weapons nor explosives. A total of six people were detained, including the two suspected of plotting attacks, but the four others were later released, the prosecutor's office said.
Probe ongoing
It said investigators were examining seized computer hardware, uniforms and Islamic State propaganda material but declined to release any details about the suspects. Prime Minister Charles Michel was in permanent contact with security officials about the case but had no immediate plans to make a statement, his office told AFP. The Belgian authorities are still looking for suspects linked to the November 13 attacks on a Paris concert hall, restaurants, bars and the national stadium which left 130 people dead and hundreds more injured. The top fugitive is Brussels-born Salah Abdeslam, 26, who is suspected of having played a key role in the Paris carnage and understood to have returned to the Belgian capital the day after the bloodshed. Nine men have been detained including four accused of helping Abdeslam get away in the hours after the attacks. Since the end of November, Brussels has remained at alert level three, one notch below the maximum alert of a serious and imminent terrorist threat. For four days before then, officials fearing a repeat of the Paris attacks closed schools and underground train service as they put Brussels on maximum alert. Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon told Tuesday's edition of Le Soir newspaper that Abdeslam has been able to evade capture for so long because he has surprising "support in the communities". In the European Union, Belgium is per capita the source of the highest number of fighters in Syria and Iraq with an estimated 500 of its citizens having gone to wage jihad there.One of them is the alleged Paris attacks mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was killed in a police raid a few days after the massacre.

Two Bahraini soliders in Yemen coalition killed in Saudi
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Two Bahraini soliders taking part in the Arab military coalition in Yemen died on Tuesday inside Saudi Arabia’s southern borders, the tiny Gulf kingdom’s state news agency reported on Tuesday. The two soldiers, Captain Ahmed Mohammed Ameen and Captain Mubarak Sa'ad Al-Rumaihi, died during an “incident” on border with Yemen. Saudi shares a 1,800 kilometer frontier with its war-wracked neighbour. The two were “performing their sacred national duty” to “defend legitimacy in Yemen,” the statement said. The statement gave no further details. Since late March, the Saudi-led coalition has bombed Iranian-backed Houthi militias and forces allied to deposed leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, in a bid to put the government of internationally recognized President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi back in power.

23 Saudi women on trial over terrorism charges
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Sources told Al Arabiya News that twenty-three Saudi women accused of association with Al-Qaeda and ISIS are currently being tried in the Kingdom. Some of them have been convicted and jailed. According to official sources, the Special Criminal Court began hearing the cases of these female extremists two years ago. They added that the most noteworthy case was that of Haila Al-Qaseer, who is known as “Lady Al-Qaeda,” and who was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to 15 years in jail. The court tried in October another woman, 27-year-old Um Oweis, who joined ISIS after pledging allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi and helping provide logistical services to terrorosm via media and found communicating with ISIS members and leaders of Al-Nusra Front through Twitter. Umm Oweis has a master’s degree from a Saudi university. In December, the criminal court opened the case of “Al-MohajIra,” 25-year-old female member of Al-Qaeda and ISIS who also served as a media member. She was charged with supporting and pledging allegiance to Al-Baghdadi, as well as encouraging killing in conflict zones and inside the Kingdom.

We can’t retake Mosul without Kurds, says Iraqi official
Reuters, Baghdad Tuesday, 29 December 2015/The Iraqi army will need Kurdish fighters’ help to retake Mosul, the largest city under the control of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said, with the planned offensive expected to be very challenging.
Mosul, 400 km north of Baghdad, has been designated by the government as the next target for Iraq’s armed forces after they retook the western city of Ramadi. “Mosul needs good planning, preparations, commitment from all the key players,” Zebari, a Kurd, said in an interview on Monday in Baghdad. “Peshmerga is a major force; you cannot do Mosul without Peshmerga,” he told Reuters, referring to the armed forces of Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous northern region close to Mosul. The mostly Sunni city had a population of two million before it fell to the militants in June 2014 in the first stage of their sweeping advance through northern and western Iraq. The battle of Mosul would be “very, very challenging”, Zebari said. “It will not be an easy operation, for some time they have been strengthening themselves, but it’s doable.”Given the extent of the area that needs to be secured around Mosul during the attack, the army may also need to draw, in support roles, on local Sunni forces and possibly the Shiite Popular Mobilisation, he said. The Mobilisation, known in Arabic as Hashid Shaabi, is a loosely knit coalition of Iran-backed Shi’ite militias set up to fight Islamic State. It was barred from the week-long battle to retake Ramadi to avoid tension with the Sunni population. The retaking of Ramadi by Iraq’s army marked the first major success of the U.S.-trained force that initially fled in the face of Islamic State’s advance 18 months ago. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Monday that ISIS would be defeated in 2016 with the army planning to move on Mosul. “We are coming to liberate Mosul and it will be the fatal and final blow to Daesh,” he said in speech praising the army’s “victory” in Ramadi. Retaking Mosul would effectively mark the end of the caliphate proclaimed by Islamic State in adjacent Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria, according to Zebari. “It’s there where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate,” he said, referring to the group’s leader. “It is literally their capital.” The Iraqi Kurdish president, Massoud Barzani, discussed plans for the liberation of Mosul with Lieutenant General Tom Beckett, Britain’s senior defense adviser, in September, according to Kurdish TV Rudaw.

Top ISIS commanders killed in Ramadi: who were they?
By Staff writer Al Arabiya News Tuesday, 29 December 2015/The Iraqi interior ministry revealed the names of the ISIS members killed in two airstrikes carried out Monday in Anbar, pointing out that the militants killed included three Russians, one of whom was an expert in making missiles.
The ministry's statement reported that among those killed is Abu Ahmad al-Alwani, an ISIS military council official who used to work in Iraq's Saddam-era former Republican Guard. According to the statement, Alwani, who hails from Ramadi and who was previously detained in U.S. army-run detention center Camp Bucca, was close to ISIS's self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Among those killed is Abdulrahman al-Yemeni, aka Abu Maysara, who at the age of 23 began to work with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the late al-Qaeda leader, and then left to Syria and returned to Yemen later with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Abu Maysara later traveled to Syria in 2013 where he was assigned in Aleppo. He then went back to Iraq with Abu Ali al-Anbari - a former member of Saddam's Baath Party and now top ISIS official - to help the militants bolster their leadership in Ramadi. "Among those killed is also Abu Saad al-Anbari, a top ranked commander in the so-called Islamic police in the Euphrates province. He's a resident of al-Qa'im district and was previously sentenced to death. He was previously detained by U.S. troops, and he's also a fugitive who escaped the Badush prison," the statement said. The airstrikes also killed Omar Abu al-Atheer al-Shami, a Syrian national who was supervising the media in the Syrian governorate of Deir az-Zour. Shami was detained by the regime in Syria but was released in 2013 following a presidential pardon. "Abu Anas al-Samarrai, governor of the Euphrates province and who supervised targeting the American consulate in Istanbul, was injured in the attacks and was transferred to Syrian territories for treatment," the statement added. The ministry said that the air strikes carried out in Akashat killed Abu Arkan al-Aameri, who was handling the security and intelligence issues in the Syrian governorate of Deir az-Zour. Aameri is an Iraqi national, and he was detained by the coalition forces during the invasion of Iraq. He was transferred to Ramadi to empower ISIS in Ramadi following Baghdadi's orders. The strikes in Akashat also killed Abu Mansour al-Shami, an Iraqi national, and Abu Omar, a Russian national who was an expert in making missiles. Abu Khaled al-Shami, a resident of Syria's Homs and who was in charge of a factory that produces missiles, was also killed in addition to two other Russian militants.

ISIS docs show rules for treatment of sex slaves
Reuters, Washington Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when “owners” of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females. The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond ISIS' previous known utterances on the subject, a leading ISIS scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls. The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by U.S. Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top ISIS official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which have not been previously published. Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as “part of a joint ownership.” The United Nations and human rights groups have accused the ISIS of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls as young as 12, especially members of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves. Far from trying to conceal the practice, ISIS has boasted about it and established a department of “war spoils” to manage slavery. Reuters reported on the existence of the department on Monday. In an April report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 female escapees who recounted how Islamic State fighters separated young women and girls from men and boys and older women. They were moved “in an organized and methodical fashion to various places in Iraq and Syria.” They were then sold or given as gifts and repeatedly raped or subjected to sexual violence. Dos and don’ts Fatwa No. 64, dated Jan. 29, 2015, and issued by Islamic State’s Committee of Research and Fatwas, appears to codify sexual relations between IS fighters and their female captives for the first time, going further than a pamphlet issued by the group in 2014 on how to treat slaves. The fatwa starts with a question: “Some of the brothers have committed violations in the matter of the treatment of the female slaves. These violations are not permitted by Sharia law because these rules have not been dealt with in ages. Are there any warnings pertaining to this matter?”It then lists 15 injunctions, which in some instances go into explicit detail. For example: “If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter suitable for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is permanently off limits to him. Should he have intercourse with her mother then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her daughter and she is to be off limits to him.”Islamic State’s sexual exploitation of female captives has been well documented, but a leading ISIS expert at Princeton University, Cole Bunzel, who has reviewed many of the group’s writings, said the fatwa went beyond what has previously been published by the militants on how to treat female slaves.
“It reveals the actual concerns of ISIS slave owners,” he said in an email.
Still, he cautioned that not “everything dealt with in the fatwa is indicative of a relevant violation. It doesn’t mean father and son were necessarily sharing a girl. They’re at least being ‘warned’ not to. But I bet some of these violations were being committed.”The fatwa also instructs owners of female slaves to “show compassion towards her, be kind to her, not humiliate her, and not assign her work she is unable to perform.” An owner should also not sell her to an individual whom he knows will mistreat her. Professor Abdel Fattah Alawari, dean of Islamic Theology at Al-Azhar University, a 1,000-year-old Egyptian center for Islamic learning, said Islamic State “has nothing to do with Islam” and was deliberately misreading centuries-old verses and sayings that were originally designed to end, rather than encourage, slavery. “Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the status quo when Islam came around,” he said. “Judaism, Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually remove it.”In September 2014 more than 120 Islamic scholars from around the world issued an open letter to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi refuting the group’s religious arguments to justify many of its actions. The scholars noted that the “reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam.”

Israel’s ex-PM Olmert gets prison sentence reduced
The Associated Press, Jerusalem Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Israel's Supreme Court has partially accepted an appeal from former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and reduced his prisoner sentence from six years to 18 months. The court announced on Tuesday that Olmert will begin serving his sentence on Feb. 15. He will become the first Israeli leader to ever serve behind bars. The 70-year-old Olmert was convicted in March 2014 in a wide-ranging case that accused him of accepting bribes to promote a controversial real-estate project in Jerusalem and sentenced to six years. He was charged for acts that happened while he was mayor of Jerusalem and the country's trade minister, years before he became prime minister in 2006. Olmert has denied any wrongdoing and was allowed to stay out of prison until the verdict on his appeal was delivered.

Strike that killed Syrian rebel chief ‘complicates peace talks push’
By Reuters, Washington Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Russian air strikes like the one that killed a top Syrian rebel leader last week send the wrong message to groups engaged in a political dialogue to end the conflict and complicate efforts to begin negotiations, the U.S. State Department said on Monday. Syrian rebel chief Zahran Alloush, the leader of Jaysh al Islam who commanded thousands of fighters in the Damascus suburbs, was killed on Friday in an air strike that rebel sources said was carried out by Russian warplanes. Jaysh al Islam was a participant in the Riyadh conference where Syrian opposition groups agreed on common aims for proposed political negotiations to end the country's civil war and chose a former Syrian prime minister to represent them in the dialogue. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the United States did not provide support to Alloush's group and had concerns about its "behavior on the battlefield," but noted that Jaysh al Islam had fought Islamic State rebels and was participating in the political dialogue to end Syria's civil war. "So the strike on Alloush and others in Jaysh al Islam and other opposition groups do in fact complicate efforts to bring about meaningful political negotiations and a nationwide ceasefire," Toner said in response to questions at a State Department briefing. "We need progress on both these efforts in the coming weeks.""It doesn't send the most constructive message to carry out a strike like that," he added, noting that the United States hoped the attacks would not reverse progress toward negotiations. Asked if Washington had raised the issue with Moscow, Toner said there had been conversations between the two sides but he was not certain whether that specific issue had been discussed directly. The U.N. mediator for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, plans to convene representatives of the Syrian government and a broad spectrum of Syrian opposition groups for negotiations in Geneva on Jan. 25. De Mistura's spokesman announced the timing for the meeting on Saturday, just a day after Alloush was killed. The statement urged participants not to be deterred by developments on the ground. Toner said the United States would "encourage the opposition to fully participate in this process" and not to be swayed by the air strike that killed Alloush.

450 evacuated from besieged Syrian areas
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi Reuters Beirut Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Around 450 Syrian fighters and their families were evacuated from two besieged areas on Monday under the kind of operation that the United Nations hopes can be a stepping stone towards a wider peace accord in the country's civil war. U.N. and airport sources said two planes with 330 Syrian Shiite fighters and civilians evacuated from two pro-government towns in northwestern Syria arrived in Beirut airport. Hundreds of Hezbollah supporters there set off fireworks in celebration. Another plane carrying 126 mostly Sunni Muslim rebel fighters trapped in Zabadani near the Lebanese border landed at Hatay airport in southern Turkey, the sources said. The evacuations took place under a U.N.-sponsored agreement brokered by regional powers, part of efforts by the United Nations to set up local deals on ceasefires and safe passage. In return for allowing the rebels to leave, the deal allows the government of President Bashar al-Assad to restore control over areas that had been in rebel hands for the past four years. In Zabadani, a once popular resort city now in ruins, relief workers and rebel fighters who have been holed up for months helped carry wounded young men in wheelchairs onto ambulances. Relatives and well-wishers who had waited for hours on the Lebanese border cheered buses carrying the fighters as they drove by towards Beirut airport, and some families wept as they strained for glimpses of their loved ones, a witness said. Zabadani, northwest of the capital Damascus, was one of the rebels' last strongholds along the border. Much of the town was devastated in a major offensive launched in July against the insurgents by the Syrian army and its Lebanese Hezbollah allies. Only several hundred rebels remain in the town, where most civilians have fled to nearby Madaya.
Food and aid
The evacuation deal was the most significant of several localized truces to date, involving months of mediation among warring parties. Under the next stage, trucks loaded with humanitarian goods and basic foodstuffs will be allowed through in the next few days to reach thousands of civilians still trapped, Yacoub El Hilo, U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria, told reporters. "As the United Nations and international community, these agreements and truces are the foundations for building something bigger that could cover all of Syria," El Hilo said. "We support these accords as they have a positive impact on civilians and help bring aid and the return of normality." However years of government siege of rebel held areas with large civilian populations to force insurgents to enter into truces has impeded the flow of food and humanitarian aid, starving many people to death in what rights group Amnesty International has described as a war crime. The U.N.'s Syria mediator aims to convene peace talks in Geneva on Jan. 25 in the latest effort to end nearly five years of civil war in which more than 250,000 people have died. Iran, which backs Assad's government, and Turkey, which backs the rebels, helped organize local ceasefires in Zabadani and the two villages in Idlib in September in the first phase of the deal, overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The mostly Sunni Muslim rebel fighters going to Turkey from Zabadani would then be able to go back to rebel-held areas in Syria through the northern Turkish border or stay for treatment, according to rebel sources close to the negotiations. The Shi'ite Syrians leaving the besieged towns in the north where at least 25,000 civilians still live would be able to get to Lebanon, where Hezbollah would be able to watch over them, added the sources. They are then expected to go back to other parts of Syria, Syrian Minister of National Reconciliation Ali Haider said on Hezbollah's Manar TV station on Monday. In another local deal earlier this month, Syrian government officials said they had agreed for rebel fighters to withdraw with their weapons from the last insurgent-held area of the city of Homs. Despite that, there have been two major bomb attacks in the city in the last two weeks. Another deal, which sought to extract over 2,000 ISIS fighters from south Damascus, ran aground last week, a day after a top rebel commander was killed in an air strike.

Aylan Kurdi’s relatives go to Canada to rebuild
AFP, Montreal Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Relatives of Aylan Kurdi -- the toddler whose limp body was photographed on a Turkish beach, becoming a heartbreaking symbol of the Syrian refugee crisis -- arrived Monday in Canada where they hope to rebuild their lives. Canadian media showed the boy's aunt Tima Kurdi, who now lives in Vancouver after emigrating to Canada in 1992, in tears as she welcomed her brother Mohammed, his wife Ghousun and their three children, at the airport. Tima Kurdi, from Canada, stands next to a painting of her late nephew, Aylan Kurdi, on a board outside of EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, Sept. 14, 2015. (AP). "Thank you to the Canadian people," Kurdi said. "Thank you to our Prime Minister (Justin) Trudeau for opening the door and showing the world how everyone should welcome refugees and save lives. Thank you very much for doing this." The refugee policy became a political issue some months back, when the Canadian government earlier was accused of refusing asylum to some members of the family who since drowned. Ottawa said it never received the applications. Abdullah Kurdi, 40, father of Syrian boys Aylan, 3, and Galip, 5, who were washed up drowned on a beach near Turkish resort of Bodrum on Wednesday, cries as he waits for the delivery of their bodies outside a morgue in Mugla, Turkey. (AP) Trudeau's Liberal government has pledged to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February. The prime minister earlier this month personally welcomed the first group to arrive at the Toronto airport aboard a military transport plane. Syrian refugees are greeted by Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on their arrival from Beirut at the Toronto Pearson International Airport. (Reuters)

Ship with low-enriched uranium leaves Iran for Russia
Reuters, Washington Tuesday, 29 December 2015/A ship carrying more than 25,000 pounds (11,000 kg) of low-enriched uranium materials left Iran for Russia on Monday in an Iranian step toward honoring a July 14 nuclear deal with major powers, the United States said. Under the landmark nuclear accord, certain U.S., European Union and U.N. sanctions are to be removed in exchange for Iran accepting long-term curbs on a nuclear program that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb. A key provision of the agreement, negotiated by Iran with the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany, is Tehran’s commitment to reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to below 660 pounds (300 kg). If much further refined, low-enriched uranium can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons. “The shipment included the removal of all of Iran’s nuclear material enriched to 20 percent that was not already in the form of fabricated fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a written statement. “This removal of all this enriched material out of Iran is a significant step toward Iran meeting its commitment to have no more than 300 kg of low-enriched uranium,” Kerry added.

Egypt arrests 4 leaders of anti-Mubarak movement
AFP, Cairo Tuesday, 29 December 2015/Egyptian authorities Monday arrested four leaders of a youth movement that spearheaded the 2011 revolt against former president Hosni Mubarak, judicial officials said. The arrests of the leaders of the April 6 movement come less than one month before the fifth anniversary of the January 25, 2011 revolt that ousted Mubarak. Sherif Arubi, Mohamed Nabil, Ayman Abdel Megid and Mahmud Hesham were arrested at their homes on Monday morning, a judicial official said. “The four are accused of inciting violence” and will be held for 15 days under preventative detention, the official said on condition of anonymity. Since the army toppled Mubarak’s Islamist successor Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, the authorities have cracked down on all forms of opposition. They adopted a new law in November 2013 outlawing demonstrations that have not been given advance authorization by the police. Hundreds of Islamist protesters -- as well as dozens of secular and leftwing demonstrators -- have been jailed under the legislation. Alaa Abdel Fattah, a leading secular activist in the protests that led to Mubarak’s downfall, was sentenced to five years in prison. His sister Sanaa Seif was sentenced to two years. The founder of the April 6 movement, Ahmed Maher, received a three-year term. There have been calls for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi -- who was army chief when Morsi was ousted -- to pardon figures from the 2011 uprising. Following Morsi’s removal, his supporters were targeted in a campaign of bloody repression in which hundreds were killed and thousands imprisoned. Hundreds, including Morsi, have been sentenced to death in speedy mass trials the United Nations has said are “unprecedented in recent history.”

After Ramadi’s liberation, PM vows to defeat ISIS
By Stephen Kalin and Maher Chmaytelli Reuters | Baghdad Monday, 28 December 2015/A triumphant Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared on Monday that the coming year will see his forces defeat Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) , after his military achieved its first major victory since collapsing in the face of the fighters 18 months ago. Iraqi forces flew the national flag above the main government complex in Ramadi earlier in the day, declaring they had recaptured the city, a provincial capital west of Baghdad which fell to ISIS fighters in May. “2016 will be the year of the big and final victory, when Daesh’s presence in Iraq will be terminated,” Abadi said in a speech broadcast on state television, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS that the hardline group rejects. “We are coming to liberate Mosul and it will be the fatal and final blow to Daesh,” he added. Mosul, northern Iraq’s main city, is by far the largest population centre in the self-proclaimed caliphate Islamic State rules in Iraq and Syria. The army’s apparent capture of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province in the Euphrates River valley west of Baghdad, marks a major milestone for U.S.-trained force that crumbled when ISIS fighters charged into Iraq in June 2014. In previous battles since then, Iraq’s armed forces operated mainly in a supporting role beside Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias. Soldiers were shown on state television on Monday publicly slaughtering a sheep in an act of celebration. Gunshots and an explosion could be heard as a state TV reporter interviewed other soldiers celebrating the victory with their automatic weapons held in the air. A separate plume of smoke could be seen nearby. U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for a U.S.-led coalition backing Iraqi forces, said in a statement: “The clearance of the government centre is a significant accomplishment and is the result of many months of hard work.” He said the coalition had provided more than 630 airstrikes in the area over the past six months as well as training, advice and equipment to the army, counter-terrorism forces and police.The U.S.-led coalition, which includes major European and Arab powers, has been waging an air campaign against ISIS positions in both Iraq and Syria since a third of Iraqi territory fell to the fighters in mid-2014. The Iraqi army was humiliated in that advance, abandoning city after city and leaving fleets of American armored vehicles and other weapons in the militants’ hands. One of the main challenges of the conflict since then has been rebuilding Iraq’s army into a force capable of capturing and holding territory.Baghdad has said for months that it would prove its forces’ rebuilt capability by rolling back militant advances in Anbar, a mainly Sunni province encompassing the fertile Euphrates River valley from Baghdad’s outskirts to the Syrian border. After encircling the provincial capital for weeks, Iraqi forces launched an assault to retake it last week and made a final push to seize the central administration complex on Sunday. Their progress had been slowed by explosives planted in streets and booby-trapped buildings. Security officials said the forces still need to clear some pockets of insurgents in the city and its outskirts.
Keeping Control
Authorities gave no immediate death toll from the battle for the city. They have said most residents were evacuated before the assault. Finance Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told Reuters the capture of Ramadi was “a done deal” but said the government had to do more to rebuild the city and encourage displaced people to return. “The most important thing is to secure it (Ramadi) because Daesh can bounce back,” he said in an interview in Baghdad. Iraq’s army took the lead in the battle for Ramadi, with the Shiite militias prominent in other campaigns held back from the battlefield to avoid antagonizing the mainly Sunni population. Washington had also expressed reluctance about being seen as fighting alongside the Iranian-backed groups. Abadi took office in September 2014 after the ISIS advance, pledging to reconcile Iraq’s warring sectarian communities. While he initially swung behind Shiite militias to help halt ISIS’s onslaught, he has since tried to implement reforms to reduce the power of sectarian parties, angering many political leaders. ISIS are ultra-hardline Sunnis who consider all Shiite Muslims to be apostates. They swept through northern and western Iraq in June 2014 and declared a “caliphate” to rule over all Muslims from territory in both Iraq and Syria, carrying out mass killings and imposing a draconian form of Sunni Islam. Since then, the battle against the group in both Syria and Iraq has drawn in most global and regional powers, often with competing allies on the ground in complex multi-sided civil wars. The Baghdad government says the next target after Ramadi is Mosul. Washington had hoped that a potentially decisive battle for that city would take place in 2015 but it was pushed back after the fighters seized Ramadi in May. Abadi’s government plans to hand over Ramadi to local police and a Sunni tribal force once it is secured, to encourage Sunnis to resist ISIS. Such a strategy would echo the U.S. military’s “surge” campaign of 2006-2007, which relied on recruiting and arming Sunni tribal fighters against a precursor of ISIS. Anbar, including Ramadi, was a major focus of that campaign at the height of the 2003-2011 U.S. war in Iraq.
U.S. and British reaction
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond congratulated the Iraqi government after the national flag was raised over Ramadi once it was liberated. “This is the latest in a series of significant losses for Daesh. These barbaric terrorists have lost 30 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq,” Hammond said in a statement. “They have been driven out of cities across the country by Iraqi forces, with support from the UK and the global coalition.” The United States also welcomed the Iraqi forces' victory. “We commend the government of Iraq and the brave Iraqi forces who have displayed such tremendous perseverance,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

As Argentinian 'truth commission' ends before it starts, time to investigate Iranian agents
By Matthew Levitt/The Hill/December 29/15
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international/264299-as-argentinian-truth-commission-ends-before-it-starts-time
In his first press conference as Argentina's newly elected president, Mauricio Macri announced his intention to officially nullify the deal the previous government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed with Iran to form a "truth commission" to jointly probe the 1994 bombing of the AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. That deal — from its inception, a travesty of justice — is now dead. Macri also removed the embarrassingly incompetent prosecutor assigned to the case by the Kirchner government after the mysterious murder of former prosecutor Alberto Nisman. But there is still more work to be done, including investigating the Iranian agents in Argentina who pursued the deal on Tehran's behalf. Before his death, Nisman identified two Iranian agents in particular who were acting under the direct orders of none other than Mohsen Rabani, the fugitive Iranian agent who masterminded the AMIA bombing.
In the wake of the bombing, investigators determined that Rabani had been using local Shiite scouts to assess Jewish and American targets in Buenos Aires since 1983. According to prosecutors, Rabani's surveillance reports were "a determining factor in the making of the decision to carry out the AMIA attack." Iran sent funds for the plot to Rabani's personal accounts at three different banks in Argentina. Rabani helped procure the van used in the attack, and then two days before the bombing, he placed a call from his cellphone while in the vicinity of the garage where the truck bomb was parked, near AMIA, to the Iranian-owned Government Trade Corporation (GTC), which was believed to be a front for Iranian intelligence.
Rabani was indicted for his role in the bombing, and fled to Iran, but remained active in Iranian operations in South America. According to court documents, Rabani helped four men of Latin American descent who were plotting to bomb John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. In a handwritten letter that one of the plotters, Abdul Kadir, wrote to Rabani in 2006, Kadir agreed to perform a "mission" for Rabani to determine whether a group of individuals in Guyana and Trinidad were up to some unidentified task. Kadir, authorities would later determine, was running an intelligence collection operation in Guyana and Rabani was his handler. Kadir was ultimately arrested on June 2, 2007 in Trinidad aboard a plane headed to Venezuela, en route to Iran.
In April 2011, the Brazilian magazine Veja ran an article citing FBI, CIA, Interpol and other documents on terrorist activity in Brazil, warning that Rabani "frequently slips in and out of Brazil on a false passport and has recruited at least 24 youngsters in three Brazilian states to attend 'religious formation' classes in Tehran." In the words of one Brazilian official quoted by the magazine, "Without anybody noticing, a generation of Islamic extremists is appearing in Brazil."
That same year, Argentina and Iran agreed in 2011 to form a "truth commission" to jointly investigate the bombing, despite the standing Argentinian indictments of Iranian officials. The merits of this "partnership" were questionable from the outset, but were cast into severe doubt after Nisman suddenly turned up dead in January 2015 under extremely suspicious circumstances just after filing charges that the Argentinian administration, specifically Cristina Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, planned a cover-up of Iran and Hezbollah's role in the AMIA bombing in exchange for a political deal between the government of Iran and Argentina. The day before Nisman was due to present his case to the Argentinian parliament, he was found dead in his apartment. In 2015, after Macri's election, a secret recording of a 2012 conversation would surface in which Timerman privately acknowledged that "Iran planted the bomb that blew up AMIA."
In May 2013, Nisman released a 500-page report focused on how the Iranian regime has, since the early 1980s, built and maintained "local clandestine intelligence stations designed to sponsor, foster and execute terrorist attacks" in the Western Hemisphere. The report found that Rabani continued to oversee Iran's Latin American operations. His task was to set up intelligence and espionage networks, direct propaganda operations, and in general "export the revolution." He also played a direct role in negotiating the AMIA truth commission deal with Argentina.
In one intercepted conversation, Rabbani's man on the ground, Jorge Khalil, reported to Rabbani by phone on a meeting he had had with an Argentinian official. "Send me the details so I can evaluate them," Rabbani responded. In another conversation, Rabani tells Khalil "don't mix things up. You work for me." Exchanges such as this made "it completely clear that Rabbani retains decision-making authority within the regime in all matters related to the Argentine Republic," Nisman concluded. In another intercepted telephone exchange, Khalil assures Rabbani further reports are forthcoming: "Sheikh, don't worry because tonight when I get home I'll send you a report on everything that I'm doing." Such assurances, Nisman determined, demonstrate Khalil's subordination to Rabbani: "Khalil has been Rabbani's man of confidence who has constantly reported back to him from Buenos Aires."
Also implicated in the intercepted transcripts is Abdul Karim Paz, sheikh of the Tauhid mosque and, according to Nisman's report, "right hand of Mohsen Rabbani, who was in Iran." Khalil regularly updated Paz on the status of the negotiations, who assessed that the deal would likely proceed, but griped at one point about the way "Argentina is, you know, brown-nosing the United States." Khalil similarly reassured Rabani on the deal's trajectory: "[E]verything is going to be fine, relax because everything is going to be all right."
In May, Rabbani told Argentinian TV that Nisman's investigation was based on nothing more than "the inventions of newspapers without any proof against Iran." In fact, the most powerful proof against Iran was evidence of Rabbani's own role in the plot, from running a network of intelligence agents in Buenos Aires to purchasing the van used as the car bomb in the attack. His confidence, it appears, stems from the efforts of his agents on ground, chief among them Khalil and Paz, who, according to Nisman's last report, were conspiring to concoct fake "new evidence" to supplant the real evidence implicating Iran in the bombing. With this conspiracy revealed, and the "truth commission" dead, the investigations into the AMIA bombing and the Nisman murder can resume under credible investigators. Meanwhile, the Macri government should also investigate the roles Iranian agents in Argentina played in this near travesty of justice.
Levitt directs the Stein program on counterterrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is the author of "Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God."

ISIS leader’s latest threats reveal plans for 2016
Dr. Theodore Karasik/Al Arabiya/December 29/15
I believe that ISIS is looking forward to the Gregorian New Year. The dozens of videos released by multiple arms of the ISIS media empire in the past weeks, capped with ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s audio speech a few days ago, all point to the current state of ISIS and its plans and objectives for 2016. It is almost as if ISIS is conducting an end of year report to see where it’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are and what comes next on its horizon. Yes, ISIS is getting hammered in the Levant relentlessly by a combination of the U.S.-led Operation Inherent Resolve and Russian strikes. To boot, former stronghold Ramadi was recaptured by Iraqi security forces, with Mosul next on the Iraqi list to roll back ISIS. Other anti-ISIS operations and tactics are notable for destroying ISIS’s economy and seizing strategic chokepoints. Baghdadi implied that he acknowledges setbacks, as his followers “may find more adversity” which perhaps only gives them more resolve. This type of comment sounds like ISIS is beginning to suffer. This good news needs to be balanced by the bad news: ISIS is still going strong in the information sphere, including its eschatological outlook, as well as in its regional and global plans for disruption. Baghdadi’s taunts America and allies who are afraid to put boots on the ground against ISIS to fight because of “what waits in Dabiq and Ghouta,” which is a reference to what the leader describes as the “Final Battle.” This type of language plays well with ISIS’ audience, wherever they may be.
Running rampant
To be sure, ISIS is following its script announced in 2014 to expand in the Levant into the upper tier of the Arabian Peninsula by 2019. These heathens still run rampant and firmly believe in their stated goals. While many of us see the change of year as “turning over a new leaf,” ISIS may do the same
ISIS wants to destabilize Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Gulf states. The messaging is clear: ISIS is continuing to challenge its enemies near and far. Baghdadi’s threats should be taken seriously as we enter 2016. In addition, ISIS’s branches, notably the Sinai and Libyan outfits, are still active and are seemingly not planning on degrading their capabilities in the new year. In addition, ISIS is energetic in other parts of North Africa, Yemen and in Afghanistan where shifting religio-political alliances are omnipresent against al-Qaeda affiliates and brigades and the Taliban’s many sub-divisions. Let’s remember that there are close to 40 ISIS affiliates globally with millions of adherents and believers around the world. The new year may ring in with more troubling and disturbing terror attacks in the name of uncivilized group. ISIS’s media is teasing and taunting its enemy to come to fight their “final battle.” But first, ISIS wants to show its global reach with zeal. Baghdadi’s warning to nations taking part in the war against ISIS was a call to his followers — from cells, to lone wolves, to bedroom jihadists – to target landmarks and crowds in dozens of countries across the world. The abundance of potential targets is based on the haunting patterns of numerous 2015 attacks – Paris, San Bernardino, Beirut, Ankara and Baghdad stand out. The threat is real, and the requirement for international, regional, and local cooperation is truly necessary and will be tested again and again in perhaps unexpected places in 2016. Overall, ISIS isn’t going away anytime soon, with or without Baghdadi. The level of ISIS’s destructiveness, to force confrontations across the world, indicates that 2016 is likely to be more chaotic than 2015. ISIS is an airborne disease and still remains robust as the movement enters into a new combative and aggressive phase. While many of us see the change of year as “turning over a new leaf,” ISIS may do the same.

I want to think freely, and write freely
Jamal Khashoggi/Al Arabiya/December 29/15
I have been affected by the Arab Spring. Some criticize me for calling it a “historical inevitability,” as if by attacking the Spring we can put an end to it. My problem began after what happened in Egypt in the summer of 2013. I have been losing friends since. I did not call it a coup - I believe the military regained a power it had held for 1,000 years. Maybe they were not friends, as a real friend cannot be lost just because your opinions differ. Some also claim I misled them because I portrayed myself as a liberal but did not welcome the “popular revolution” that brought down the Muslim Brotherhood. I was unable to convince them that my stand is based on the principles of freedom and democracy, because they are the best solutions for Arab states that have failed due to military rule. Some said my enthusiasm for the Egyptian revolution of Jan. 2011 was due to me being a latent supporter of the Brotherhood. The numerous articles in which I have criticized the Brotherhood and blamed it for the collapse of democracy did not change their opinion. At editor-in-chief at a prominent newspaper disapproved that I applauded the Friday sermon by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Tahrir Square a week after the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak. I was astounded by the symbolism of the moment, and considered it a sign of the rise of freedom of expression in Egypt. However, the editor-in-chief only saw the Brotherhood in this picture. He wrote an article entitled “The deceivers,” in which he said I had fooled him and others because they knew me as a liberal. He, who was supposed to be a friend, was unable to understand that liberalism is for everyone, and if applied selectively will no longer be liberal. The holder of a free pen defends principles and refuses to be restricted.
I wrote articles in which I urged stable Arab countries to help their neighbors, and called for an Arab Marshall Plan. “You want a Marshall Plan to support the Muslim Brotherhood,” replied a colleague in an article in the same newspaper, who is proud to support non-transparent rule and describes his position as courageous and noble. In the Arab world, everyone thinks journalists cannot be independent, but I represent myself. What would I be worth if I succumbed to pressure to change my opinions? A few weeks ago, my friend Nawaf Obeid admonished me, saying: “You need to write an article in which you confirm that you are not a supporter of the Brotherhood.” I replied: “Whatever I say, I’ll never convince those who suffer from Brotherhood-phobia. They say I support this party because I criticize their favorite regime. Do that and you too will be accused of being a Brotherhood supporter.”
Journalistic independence
In the Arab world, everyone thinks journalists cannot be independent, but I represent myself, which is the right thing to do. What would I be worth if I succumbed to pressure to change my opinions? The atmosphere of freedom must be preserved, and I am happy that my government is doing so. A public meeting I had with a group of youths in Riyadh to discuss the volatile regional environment was recorded and broadcast online without any curtailment. That was the best cure for the articles that were attacking me and the friends who were abandoning me. I talked to the youths for more than two hours, and answered their questions freely. I felt then that the world cannot bring down someone who is free on the inside. I want to be free, to think freely and write freely. I am free to do so.

A war over who deserves to be called a ‘martyr’
Diana Moukalled/Al Arabiya/December 29/15
Media outlets affiliated with the “Axis of Resistance” have described Lebanese militant Samir Qantar as a "martyr" after he was killed in Syria in a suspected Israeli attack earlier this month. Many in the Arab world are quick to label those killed by Israel as a “martyr.” But this description angered opponents of the Assad regime; how can someone who professed support to Assad’s criminal regime and fought alongside it be called a martyr, even if "the enemy" Israel killed him? Many took to social media to voice their anger about this, pointing to Qantar’s “involvement in the killing of the Syrian people.”But again, it was only few days later that media outlets who oppose the Assad regime described leader of the Jaish al-Islam rebel group, Zahran Alloush, as a martyr when he was killed in a suspected Russian strike. Alloush is the warlord whose name was associated with the kidnapping of many symbols of the Syrian revolution, such as Razan Zaitouneh, Samira al-Khalil, Wael Hamada and Nazim al-Hamadi. Alloush was also linked to the execution of a photojournalist and to the jailing of Alawite civilians in metal cages on rooftops a few weeks ago. This is in addition to the detentions and executions witnessed in areas under his control. Media outlets affiliated with the “Axis of Resistance” and who tried to avenge the murder of Qantar tried to rejoice in the murder of Alloush and ridiculed those who considered him a martyr. It seems we've begun to grant titles of "martyrdom" while overlooking the biographies of these “martyrs”
And so, the war of the martyrs began and arguments surfaced over who deserves to be called a "martyr," Qantar or Alloush. What made this even more surreal was how the people who opposed Qantar's role in Syria sided with those describing him as a "martyr" – just because it was Israel that killed him. The same applied to those who were criticizing Alloush and his practices; they decided to describe him as a "martyr" because Russian warplanes targeted what they viewed as a spearhead of the Syrian opposition. In the space of two weeks, we have witnessed two extreme examples of political and moral schizophrenia. In both of the killings, the murderer's identity played a role in purging the victim of all his sins. It’s as if it has become essential to condemn a murder while declaring the victim as innocent of the crimes and violations they committed, simply because the identity of the murderer is the focus of our disputes.
Playing enemies against each other
What added to this was how the Russian air force played opposing parties against each other. On one hand, it was easy for Israel to assassinate Qantar, on the other, it was also easy for Russia to assassinate Alloush. It’s a tragedy that opposing sides can be played against each other so effortlessly. It seems we've begun to grant titles of "martyrdom" while overlooking the biographies of these “martyrs.” For some people, an Israeli airstrike is enough to purge Qantar of his sins for supporting a criminal regime, and for others, a Russian airstrike is enough for to elevate Allouch to martyrdom and to overlook all the kidnappings and murders he played a part in. Those who were biased to Qantar refused to engage in a discussion on his previous practices. I am not just referring to his support of the Syrian regime but prior to that, since his military career began when he was a young man, participating in the Nahariya attack in Israel, in which the fatalities were a father and his daughter. The Israeli judiciary said Qantar killed them, but he denied this. Even if we assume he was telling the truth, Qantar still remained committed to using murder and kidnapping as acts of "resistance," and when he was released by Israel, he said he would continue what he'd begun as a young man. It's the same conviction which led him to defend the Syrian Baathist regime. Zahran Alloush had also denied kidnapping one of the most noble group of people to come out of the Syrian revolution. I am referring to Razan Zaitouneh, Samira al-Khalil, Wael Hamada and Nazim al-Hamadi. He even ridiculed those searching for them despite evidence at the time linking him to their abduction. Wasn't it Alloush who justified putting civilian men and women in cages and used that as an excuse to prevent Assad's airstrikes? Those rejoicing in the "martyrdom" of Qantar seemed oblivious when they decided that being killed by Israel exempts the victim from being held accountable and turns those suggesting to hold the person accountable into traitors and agents. Meanwhile those who hate Vladimir Putin and despise the evil protection he's offering his ally, Bashar al-Assad, simply decided that Alloush's death by Russian airstrike allowed them to chat about fake heroic acts by a figure who insulted the Syrian revolution and dealt its deathblow.

Iranian cleric calls out Egypt's Al-Azhar for anti-Shiite activities
Arash Karami/Al-Monitor/December 29/15
Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi wrote an open letter to Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, warning him about the dangers of the recent anti-Shiite activities at the university. Makarem Shirazi wrote that Al-Azhar has been a “bright spot” in the history of Islam, but he said that recent activities risk a “deviation at Al-Azhar from its moderate path.” He cited a number of recent events as the reason for his letter, such as an essay competition organized by the university to combat the spread of Shiite Islam in Muslim countries, comments by Tayeb that there was no need to have Shiites in parliament because there were no Shiites in Egypt “except a few peddlers of religion,” and the media attributing false beliefs to Shiite Muslims. Makarem Shirazi asked, “According to Sharia and reason, is the path to resolving the challenges between the Islamic religion a scholarly discourse between the leaders of the religion or media wars and competitions against one another?” Makarem Shirazi added that since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, there has not been one grand ayatollah to criticize Sunni Islam on state television, nor have there been essay competitions against Sunni Islam organized by the center for Shiite seminaries. He continued, saying that in Afghanistan and Iran, Sunni and Shiite officials work alongside each other with no difficulty.
In the instance that these competitions and activities incite Sunnis of Egypt against Shiites, leading to retaliatory attacks, "Would not the leaders of Al-Azhar be responsible for this blood spilling?" he asked rhetorically.  Makarem Shirazi said he has been and always will be optimistic about Tayeb and hopes that he will prevent the “deviation and downfall” of Al-Azhar and continue the path of former heads of Al-Azhar in their path of moderation. Al-Azhar in Cairo is often referred to as the “highest seat” of learning in Sunni Islam. It oversees millions of students and has thousands of affiliated universities. Founded by an Ismaili Shiite caliphate in the 10th century, the head of the university, Sheikh Mahmood Shaltoot, in 1959 ruled that Shiite Islam "is a school of thought that is religiously correct to follow in worship as are other schools of thought.” However, in recent years, due to the “drift toward Salafism,” Al-Azhar has taken a harder line against the second-largest sect in Islam. Religious differences between Sunnis and Shiites have been aggravated by a number of wars in the region, including in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. While having started for a number of reasons, these wars have taken on stronger religious overtones in the last several years, pitting Sunni and Shiite Muslims against one another with Shiite majority Iran and Sunni majority Saudi Arabia leading competing camps. Given the tense political climate, attempts at intra-faith dialogue have been nearly impossible. Even artistic projects have been challenging. On Dec. 28, Iranian film director Majid Majidi accused Saudi Arabia of attempting to prevent the screening of his latest film, "Muhammad: The Messenger of God." Scholars at Al-Azhar and Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti both objected to the film, citing various religious reasons.

Is Congress empowering Iranian hard-liners?
Mahmoud Pargoo/Al-Monitor/December 29/15
For years, many in Iran have seen the anti-American discourse of domestic hard-liners as the cause of Washington’s antagonistic policies against the Islamic Republic in recent years — including the sanctions targeting the Iranian nuclear program. Some analysts from both the Iranian conservative and Reformist camps have been of the belief that with softening of the rhetoric and engagement with the United States, some of the tensions will be eased.Indeed, in the final year of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s second term (2009-13), the atmosphere in Iran was such that except for Saeed Jalili — the former chief nuclear negotiator — all other candidates in the 2013 presidential election expressed their willingness to revise nuclear policies and to engage in serious negotiations with the West. Hassan Rouhani, who sternly criticized Ahmadinejad’s nuclear policies, won the election and appointed Mohammad Javad Zarif as foreign minister. Consequently, and as a result of the softening of the rhetoric and engagement in talks with the United States, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed between Iran and six world powers in July. The agreement was seen as evidence that if Iran engages in serious talks with the United States, issues can be gradually solved. Even Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pointed to the likelihood of extending negotiations to other non-nuclear issues if the United States proves to be trustworthy. This line of thinking, however, is changing with the recent series of US measures — including the recent congressional vote to restrict visa-free travel to the United States for those who have visited Iran in the past five years. Indeed, many in Iran are coming to the conclusion that no matter what rhetoric or action the Islamic Republic may assume, the United States will continue its enmity with Iran. Thus, a new consensus is being formed — but this time, against the United States. People from almost all political orientations have interpreted the new Visa Waiver Program (VWP) changes as running counter to the JCPOA. Ali Larijani, the parliament speaker and a powerful conservative supporter of the nuclear negotiations, has criticized the law, while many Reformist politicians have also condemned it as being against Iranian goodwill in engaging with the United States. Zarif, the foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, has additionally said that the new law breaches the JCPOA.
When seen in the light of historical parallels, the recent developments could be an alarming sign that certain elements in the US foreign policy establishment are seeking to paralyze any effort to normalize relations with Iran.
Indeed, the reality is that previous efforts on the part of Iran to engage in strategic dialogue with the United States have been to no avail. In 2001, two weeks after the fall of Kabul, an Iranian delegation attended the Bonn Conference, where it engaged in talks with the United States over the future of Afghanistan. Describing the Iranian delegation’s cooperation at that time, James Dobbins, who was then the White House’s special envoy for Afghanistan, said, “All these delegations proved helpful. None was more so than the Iranians.”Iran was hoping that those talks would extend to a broader range of issues, as former National Security Council, State Department and Central Intelligence Agency official Flynt Leverett has said, but “that channel was effectively foreclosed when President [George W.] Bush in his 2002 State of the Union address labeled Iran as part of the ‘axis of evil.'” Indeed, that metaphor was utilized by hard-liners in Tehran to torpedo Reformists who were in favor of engagement with the West.
Daniel Heradstveit and G. Matthew Bonham have studied the impact of the “axis of evil” discourse on the internal politics of Iran, concluding that it “strengthened the rhetorical position of conservatives vis-a-vis reformers.” The main problem with the metaphor was that it targeted “entire countries” — including their peoples — rather than problematic policies, or even political leaders. Hence, “the metaphor mobilized the entire country — including ‘friends’ of the US.” Reflecting on the ultimate effect of the “axis of evil” discourse, Heradstveit and Bonham concluded that it had “become a powerful rhetorical tool for mobilizing the ultra-conservative and anti-democratic forces in Iran.”Similarly, the congressional vote to revise the VWP is a godsend for Iranian conservatives — especially as the country is about to hold important parliamentary elections in February. For hard-liners, and many others in Iran, the recent congressional measures are evidence of that the United States will not cease its enmity with Iranians. In this vein, the argument is that moderates and Reformists are wrong about that the United States’ enmity is at least partly because of the anti-American rhetoric of conservatives, but rather as Ayatollah Khamenei stated in May 2014, “The enmity of our enemies is rooted in the resistance of the Islamic Republic against global arrogance and against the hideous habit of dividing the world into the oppressor and the oppressed. Other issues are excuses. Today, their excuse is the nuclear issue. One day, their excuse is human rights and another day, their excuse is something else.”
History has shown that US Republicans prefer Iranian hard-liners over moderates and Reformists when it comes to foreign policy. This has never been more evident than when 47 Republican senators wrote a letter to Iranian lawmakers in March. US President Barack Obama did not exaggerate when he said, “They [Iranian hard-liners] do have much more in common with the [US] hard-liners.”More than ever before, the de facto alignment of Iranian and American hard-liners came into focus during the nuclear negotiations. Former Intelligence Minister Ali Younesi, who now serves as an adviser to Rouhani, talked about the shared interests of Iranian extremists with those of US and Israeli extremists. “Today, the approach of extremists of Iran is the same as the extremists like Netanyahu, the GOP and the American Congress,” Younesi said. Today, moderates are at a historical crossroads in Iran: Their nuclear initiative — the biggest foreign policy issue after the 1979 Islamic Revolution — has been proven to be a success. Rouhani has curbed inflation from 34.7% in 2013 to almost single digits. Economic growth is also predicted to increase to 5% by next year, as sanctions are set to be lifted under the JCPOA. Almost all grounds for a stunning moderate and Reformist victory in the coming parliamentary elections are in place. Yet, hard-liners have also started a counteroffensive to recapture ground that has been lost to Reformists and moderates. Nothing could have helped hard-liners in Tehran more than the VWP changes. Once again, Republicans in the United States betray Reformists and moderates in Iran.