English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For April 15/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 21/15-19:”When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 14-15/2020
Lebanon Records 9 New Virus Cases, 1 Death
MoPH confirms nine new Coronavirus cases in Lebanon
Ministry of Health: Two infections among passengers of London flight
Lebanon: Hospitals at Closure Risk Amid Financial Crisis
President of Lebanon's Association of Banks: Resorting to IMF Is Inevitable
Lebanon: Tranquilizers a Necessity For Patients Who Recover From COVID-19
IMF projects Lebanon’s economy will shrink 12% in 2020
Lebanon Economy to Shrink by Massive 12% This Year
Sfeir Says Seeking IMF Aid 'Inevitable'
Berri chairs Parliament’s Secretariat meeting, meets Akar, Wazni
Berri Says 'Haircut' and Capital Control are 'Dead'
Aoun Strongly Opposed to Any Deposits 'Haircut'
Berri Stresses Any Haircut Proposal 'Shall Not Pass'
Diab: Government is targeted by political campaign labeled “rejecting haircut”
Man Indicted in Switzerland for Plotting Attacks in Lebanon
Strong Lebanon says priority to draft laws concerning coronavirus, rejects tampering with depositors' funds
Diab congratulates coronavirus follow-up committee
Msharrafieh at launch of municipalities’ platform for financial aid: Our goal is to assist families most in need
Kubis via Twitter: I briefed Guterres on areas in which Lebanon needs help fighting Coronavirus
Wazni, Hoballah meet with ABL delegation over money transfers to students abroad

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 14-15/2020
More than 26,000 dead due to coronavirus in Iran, says opposition group MEK
IMF Approves Debt Relief for 25 Poor Countries
Top creditors to suspend poorest countries' debt payments: France
China Offers Reward for Catching Russia Border Crossers over Virus Fears
U.S. Eyes Virus 'Plateau' as World Weighs Cautious Reboot
Abbas Contacts Arab Leaders to Confront Israel’s Annexation of West Bank Areas
As Opposition-Held Syria Fears Virus, Just One Machine is there to Test
G20 Watchdog Says Investment Fund Vulnerable Amidst Pandemic
Virus 'disaster in the making' in war-torn Syria
Joint statement by Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy regarding international collaboration in addressing COVID-19

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 14-15/2020
Will the OPEC agreement work and, if so, how long will it last?/Simon Henderson/The Hill/April 14/2020
Britain's Government Wasn’t Built for a Coronavirus Crisis/Therese Raphael/Bloomberg/April 14/ 2020
Why Does No One Care About These Palestinians?/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/April 14/ 2020
US president emerges as key broker in historic OPEC+ deal/Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/April 14, 2020
The Islamic Revolution vs. Donald Trump/Reuel Marc Gerecht/FDD/April 14/2020
Palestinians and Israelis show peace is attainable with coordinated COVID-19 response/Hussain Abdul-Hussain/Al Arabiya/April 14/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on April 14-15/2020
Lebanon Records 9 New Virus Cases, 1 Death
Naharnet/April 14/2020
Lebanon on Tuesday confirmed nine more coronavirus cases as another death was recorded, the Health Ministry said. The new cases raise the total to 641 as the fatality takes the death toll to 21. The Ministry noted that two of the nine new cases were recorded among Lebanese expats who returned Monday from London aboard an evacuation plane. All the passengers of the Paris, Jeddah and Gabon flights meanwhile tested negative, the Ministry added. “The two positive cases will be sent to hospital while those who tested negative will observe 14 days of strict home quarantine,” the Ministry said. “They will be followed up by the Ministry on daily basis and those who show any symptoms will be referred to hospital to repeat the lab tests,” it said.

MoPH confirms nine new Coronavirus cases in Lebanon
NNA/April 14/2020
Nine new cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Lebanon by the Ministry of Public Health in a statement on Tuesday, raising the tally of infected people in the country to 641.

Ministry of Health: Two infections among passengers of London flight
NNA/April 14/2020
The Ministry of Public Health announced that two passengers, aboard the London flight that landed in Beirut yesterday (April 13), have tested positive for COVID-19. Accordingly, the two patients will be admitted to the hospital respectively, the ministry said, emphasizing the importance of a strict 14-day self-quarantine for the returnees who have tested negative, knowing that daily follow up will be made by the Ministry with said returnees, “and whoever shows any symptoms will be sent to the hospital for re-testing.”

Lebanon: Hospitals at Closure Risk Amid Financial Crisis
Beirut - Caroline Akoum/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 14 April, 2020
Amid the Corona pandemic and the severe economic situation, a new problem has emerged threatening Lebanon’s hospital sector.
Several private hospitals could face closure due to scarce funds and their failure to obtain their dues from the state, which are estimated at $1.3 billion. “The week portends a catastrophe in the private hospital sector, as the state’s debt reached its peak, and the operation cost increased with the rise of the value of the dollar, threatening the closure of a number of hospitals in Keserwan, Metn and Beirut,” MP Ibrahim Kenaan, the head of the parliamentary finance and budget committee, said on Twitter. On Monday, Health Minister Hamad Hassan touched on the issue, stressing that hospital contracts were ready to be settled. He noted that dues were paid until the month of June 2019, and that the remaining amounts would be disbursed soon.Hamad added that hospitals facing financial difficulties could be given an advance for 2020. In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Sleiman Haroun, the head of the Syndicate of Private Hospitals, said that a proposal would be presented to the government, for the payment of outstanding dues in monthly installments, in order to enable the hospitals to pay the salaries of its employees and the dues owed to the importers at this stage, until a clear and integrated plan is found. Haroun emphasized that the problem was not new. “We have always warned about this problem and its repercussions, until the crisis began to worsen. In addition to the failure of the state to pay its dues, we are facing the increase of the dollar value against the local currency and lately the outbreak of Corona,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“We buy all medical supplies from A to Z in US dollars, the exchange rate of which has doubled, but we provide invoices to the state at the official exchange rate set by the central bank,” he explained. Haroun noted that with the spread of the corona virus, hospitals were forced to make a decision not to receive patients except in emergency cases, which led to a decrease in the occupancy rate to a quarter, while the expenses remained the same, leading to additional losses. This situation threatens the closure of about 20 hospitals in the coming weeks, out of 126 private hospitals in Lebanon, he warned.

President of Lebanon's Association of Banks: Resorting to IMF Is Inevitable
Beirut - Ali Zeineddine/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 14 April, 2020
The head of the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL), Dr. Salim Sfeir, stressed that rebuilding trust was crucial for saving the country and should be the base for any comprehensive recovery plan. In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Sfeir underlined the necessity to define the government’s options regarding the priority of pumping fresh liquidity of foreign currencies through external sources, and not relying on the central bank reserves only to meet the urgent financing needs. Admitting that resorting to the International Monetary Fund was inevitable, the ABL chairman noted that at a later stage, the revitalization and acceleration of the CEDRE Conference pledges, which amount to approximately $11.6 billion, should be in the form of soft loans for the benefit of the public and private sectors and for infrastructure projects. This path is the best available solution, as it is now impossible to knock on the doors of traditional regional and international support doors, which Lebanon used to resort to in its previous crises, due to local and external obstacles, according to Sfeir. With the financing gap estimated at between $20 to $25 billion, securing half of this amount or more through a special program with the Fund would give Lebanon a great opportunity to re-correct its overall financial and monetary conditions, the senior banker emphasized. He continued that any external financial support would stipulate that the state implement a comprehensive administrative and financial reform plan, and finally resolve the electricity problem, which costs the country about $2 billion annually.Earlier this week, the ABL addressed a letter through its adviser, Houlihan Lokey, to investment bank Lazard, the Lebanese government’s adviser, expressing concerns about the recent reform plan and its impact on the banking system.
Expressing its “disappointment in the government’s approach to this process,” the letter said the government “clearly opted for a strategy... to impose the financial burden for solving the problem on the public (i.e. depositors).”

Lebanon: Tranquilizers a Necessity For Patients Who Recover From COVID-19
Beirut - Caroline Akoum/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 14 April, 2020
A Lebanese man, who was infected with the novel coronavirus and whose name was widely circulated in the media told Asharq Al-Awsat that he feels emotionally drained despite recovering. “I may have recovered from the virus, but I became emotionally tired, so I am taking tranquilizers as a result of the pressure exerted on me and my family by the society.” The man refuses to give further details, although he did not suffer from the symptoms, nor did he stay in the hospital for a long period before recovering and returning home. He was bullied just like many of those who have contracted the virus. While most of those who recovered refused to talk about their experience, few were ready to talk, considering that their words might constitute a kind of awareness and psychological comfort for patients or for those who are scared of the virus. Ghassoub Franjieh, 50, from Zgharta, North Lebanon, did not deny getting bullying when he and his family were infected with the virus. But he told Asharq Al-Awsat that he did not even care about it. He said that the problem lied with those who misjudged him only because he contracted the virus. At the same time, he stressed that the way a patient deals with his condition will affect how the society would look at him. University Professor of Sociology, Abdo Qaii, said that bullying against patients hit with coronavirus was due to fear in the human nature, especially since it is known that the virus is transmitted by infection. On the other hand, he holds the media community not only in Lebanon, but in various parts of the world, responsible for the prevailing approach to this issue.

IMF projects Lebanon’s economy will shrink 12% in 2020
Associated Press/April 14/2020
The announcement came as the local currency hit its highest pound-to-dollar exchange rate ever on the parallel market.
BEIRUT: The International Monetary Fund projected Tuesday that Lebanon’s economy will shrink 12% in 2020 amid the country’s worst economic and financial crisis in decades.
The announcement came as the local currency hit its highest pound-to-dollar exchange rate ever on the parallel market.
Lebanon has suffered in recent years from a lack of economic growth, high unemployment and a drop in hard currency inflows from abroad. But the financial crisis erupted after nationwide protests over widespread corruption and decades of mismanagement by the ruling political class engulfed the country in October.A lockdown aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic has worsened Lebanon’s economic and financial conditions. Many businesses have been closed for the past month to limit the spread of the virus that has infected more than 640 people and killed 20 in the tiny Mediterranean country.
The IMF said in its forecast Tuesday that because of the pandemic the world economy in 2020 will suffer its worst year since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The IMF said it expects the global economy to shrink 3% this year.
The IMF projected Lebanon’s crumbling economy will shrink 12% in 2020 compared to a 6.5% contraction the year before.
Last month, Lebanon defaulted for the first time ever on a payment on its massive debt amid ongoing popular unrest. Lebanon’s debt reached $90 billion or 170% of GDP, making it one of the highest in the world.
On Tuesday, exchange shops were selling $1 U.S. dollar for 3,000 pounds, the highest level the local currency has ever reached on the parallel market. The official price remains 1,507 pounds to the dollar.
The rise comes amid a shortage of hard currency in the market and as banks continue already months-old capital control measures limiting withdrawals in foreign currencies.
The IMF report comes a week after a draft government plan leaked by officials on how to deal with the severe economic and financial crisis included restructuring the country’s massive debt and reforming local banks and the central bank.
The leaked draft plan reportedly includes a reference to imposing fees on banks’ “large depositors” — people who deposit between $100,000 and $1 million or more — to pay part of the state’s debt. That led to an outcry from religious and political leaders who warned that those depositors should not have to pay the price for years of widespread corruption and mismanagement.

Lebanon Economy to Shrink by Massive 12% This Year
Associated Press/Naharnet/April 14/2020
The International Monetary Fund projected Tuesday that Lebanon's economy will shrink 12% in 2020 amid the country's worst economic and financial crisis in decades. The announcement came as the local currency hit its highest pound-to-dollar exchange rate ever on the parallel market.
Lebanon has suffered in recent years from a lack of economic growth, high unemployment and a drop in hard currency inflows from abroad. But the financial crisis erupted after nationwide protests over widespread corruption and decades of mismanagement by the ruling political class engulfed the country in October. A lockdown aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic has worsened Lebanon's economic and financial conditions. Many businesses have been closed for the past month to limit the spread of the virus that has infected more than 640 people and killed 21 in the tiny Mediterranean country.
The IMF said in its forecast Tuesday that because of the pandemic the world economy in 2020 will suffer its worst year since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The IMF said it expects the global economy to shrink 3% this year. The IMF projected Lebanon's crumbling economy will shrink 12% in 2020 compared to a 6.5% contraction the year before.
Last month, Lebanon defaulted for the first time ever on a payment on its massive debt amid ongoing popular unrest. Lebanon's debt reached $90 billion or 170% of GDP, making it one of the highest in the world.
On Tuesday, exchange shops were selling $1 U.S. dollar for 3,000 pounds, the highest level the local currency has ever reached on the parallel market. The official price remains 1,507 pounds to the dollar. The rise comes amid a shortage of hard currency in the market and as banks continue already months-old capital control measures limiting withdrawals in foreign currencies. The IMF report comes a week after a draft government plan leaked by officials on how to deal with the severe economic and financial crisis included restructuring the country's massive debt and reforming local banks and the central bank.
The leaked draft plan reportedly includes a reference to imposing fees on banks' "large depositors" -- people who deposit between $100,000 and $1 million or more -- to pay part of the state's debt. That led to an outcry from religious and political leaders who warned that those depositors should not have to pay the price for years of widespread corruption and mismanagement.

Sfeir Says Seeking IMF Aid 'Inevitable'
Naharnet/April 14/2020
It is “inevitable” that Lebanon will have to seek financial aid from the International Monetary Fund, the head of the country's banking body has said. “This is the best and available course in light of the impossibility of seeking the help of traditional regional and international parties as in previous crises due to local and external obstacles compounded by the coronavirus crisis,” Association of Banks chief Salim Sfeir told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Tuesday. He also suggested that any foreign financial support will hinge on “a comprehensive plan for administrative and financial reform” and “putting an end to the electricity problem which costs the country around $2 billion in annual losses.”

Berri chairs Parliament’s Secretariat meeting, meets Akar, Wazni
NNA/April 14/2020
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Tuesday has declared deposits’ haircut plan “dead” before seeing the light, saying it shall meet the same fate as that of the capital control suggestion. “You can read fatiha on the suggested haircut as you have done on the capital control proposal,” Speaker Berri said in the wake of the meeting of the Parliament’s Secretariat, which convened under his chairmanship, at his in Tineh residence. Berri stressed that salvation is still possible though difficult, yet not “impossible” if matters take the normal course. Asked about the reform issue, Berri’s visitors quoted him as confirming that what is needed is to address the causes and consequences of the current crisis endured at the financial and economic levels. Berri also emphasized the need to proceed with reforms and to apply laws on all, especially in the issues related to corruption, public funds’ squandering, and the issuance of required laws on condition not to tamper with depositors’ money, which is a sacred matter. Berri chaired on Tuesday the Parliament’s Secretariat at his Ain el-Tineh residence, in the presence of Vice Speaker Elie Firzli and Secretariat members. Speaker Berri also met with Deputy Prime Minister, National Defense Minister, Zeina Akar Adra, with whom he discussed the general situation and most recent security and political developments. Berri later met with Finance Minister Dr Ghazi Wazni, with the current economic and financial situation featuring high on their talks.

Berri Says 'Haircut' and Capital Control are 'Dead'
Naharnet/April 14/2020
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Tuesday noted that proposals for a deposits haircut and capital control have been born dead. “If things take their normal course, rescue will be possible, although it is not easy,” Berri said, according to his visitors. “The laws need to be implemented on everyone, especially as to the issue of corruption, combating fund waste and issuing the needed laws, on the condition of not touching the money of depositors,” Berri added, reiterating that deposits are “sacred.”Noting that “the financial gap estimated at around $59 billion cannot be covered with the money of depositors,” the Speaker said several steps can be taken, such as “combating corruption, putting an end to the waste of public funds, deducting from bank interests and pumping new liquidity after merging and purifying banks.” “There are measures and ideas that even the International Monetary Fund cannot reject and they would therefore restore confidence and make the world see us in a different way,” Berri went on to say.

Aoun Strongly Opposed to Any Deposits 'Haircut'
Naharnet/April 14/2020
President Michel Aoun is strongly opposed to any bank deposits “haircut,” Baabda sources have said. “He does not intend to accept any haircut and he had recently informed the parties concerned of his rejection, but he will not wade into the ongoing controversy over this issue or into the campaigns that are targeting the government,” the sources said in remarks published Tuesday in several local newspapers. “He does not take populist stances, especially that the haircut issue has not been raised by the government, which has not proposed any suggestion about it,” the sources added.
“It is totally out of the question that President Aoun could accept a haircut,” the sources stressed.

Berri Stresses Any Haircut Proposal 'Shall Not Pass'
Naharnet/April 14/2020
Speaker Nabih Berri has sent the government a clear message saying parliament “will not legislate fraud or the theft of depositors' money and savings,” al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Tuesday.
“This plan is not the finance minister's plan and we do not agree to it at all,” the daily quoted Berri as saying. “In any case, the appropriation of people's deposits shall not pass,” Berri emphasized. “We were among the fiercest supporters of suspending the payment of Eurobond debt, and now we are among the fiercest opponents to any haircut,” he added. The Speaker pointed out that depositors are not to blame for the current state of affairs. Asked about the country's banks, Berri said he is totally opposed to any move that could undermine Lebanon's once thriving sector.
“Any economy cannot rise without the presence of a strong and sound banking sector, but anyone who erred or has been part of the corruption, fund wasting or money smuggling network must bear the responsibility for their deeds,” the Speaker added.

Diab: Government is targeted by political campaign labeled “rejecting haircut”
NNA /April 14/2020
Cabinet meeting decisions read by the Minister of Information, Manal Abdel Samad: Prime Minister Hassan Diab chaired the Cabinet meeting today at the Grand Serail. PM Diab said, at the outset of the meeting, that the government is targeted by a political campaign labeled “rejecting haircut”. He added: It is surprising that this overall campaign is based on the announcement we have made, stating that over 90% of Lebanese bank deposits will not be touched. He further said that “in any case, I will address this issue in detail soon. However, it is worth mentioning that this targeted political campaign seeks to induce us into a debate, but we will not slip into such a debate at the present time. We will respond scientifically without fomenting antagonism, a discourse that some have tried to use in their political campaign against the government, and this is very shameful”.
PM Diab continued: “I think the Lebanese already fed up with accumulated and emerging crises, and they can no longer tolerate being used as human shields to serve personal interests”.
Regarding the corona file, the Prime Minister stated that the first stage of the Lebanese repatriation plan was completed, and that the government has taken excellent measures in this regard. PM Diab praised as well the efforts made by the Minister of Health, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Works and the Minister of the Interior, to make sure best conditions and procedures are in place for the return plan.
PM Diab indicated that the preliminary results of the tests conducted for the returnees were acceptable in terms of the number of affected expatriates. He added: “At present, we have the option to resume or temporarily freeze flights. This decision should be well thought out, free of any influence, in order to pursue our successful containment policy”. As for the spread of the epidemic in Lebanon, PM Diab stated that “the situation is still under control, despite the outbreak in Bcharre, which is being carefully addressed, and with the risk of virus spreading looming in Akkar region. However, this does not absolve us of our responsibility to continue implementing strict measures in all regions, because any laxity will allow the epidemic to infiltrate into many regions”.
PM Diab raised the issue of financial aid distribution, adopted by the cabinet, stating that the government has concomitantly speeded up preparations for the distribution of financial aid to families in need, but unfortunately, after the audit conducted by the Lebanese army, we found out that the lists submitted by some sectors featured several major errors. Therefore, we will have to postpone the distribution of aid pending the army's completion of lists’ revision. As for Lebanese students abroad, PM Diab stated that “it is not acceptable that parents of students are still unable to make wire transfers from their bank deposits to their children abroad, who are suffering, especially in light of the new coronavirus, stressing on the need for banks to facilitate these transfers, and put an end to the suffering of parents and students alike.” Also, with regard to accumulated outstanding hospital dues, with hospitals warning against the possible inability to pay the salaries of its employees, PM Diab declared that the Minister of Finance is currently working on a settlement project to pay part of these dues and reimburse outstanding dues in monthly installments.
In addition, the Council of Ministers has approved the request made by the Minister of State for Administrative Development to extend the solid waste management project for 2 additional years and to add new centers to the list of centers that are funded, operated and maintained through the Minister’s office.
The Minister of Information also mentioned the plan for meetings between concerned ministries and representatives of various society bodies to discuss the government's financial program submitted by the Ministry of Finance to the Council of Ministers on March 31.
The first meeting will take place tomorrow, April 15th, with the Minister of Finance and other concerned Ministers at the Serail, in the presence of representatives of the economic bodies and the Economic and Social Council. The second meeting will be held the day after tomorrow with representatives of councils, unions, and liberal professions. We will announce new meetings next week in the presence of economic and financial experts, students, and other specialists. -- Presidency of the Council of Ministers

Man Indicted in Switzerland for Plotting Attacks in Lebanon
Associated Press/Naharnet/April 14/2020
An Iraqi citizen suspected of being a "high-ranking" member of the Islamic State group has been indicted for allegedly violating a Swiss ban on extremist groups and accused of plotting attacks in Switzerland and Lebanon, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. The Swiss attorney general's office said the suspect allegedly served as a recruiter, trafficker and "cash-provider" for IS. It did not name him, but said he has been in custody since his arrest in May 2017. The man is accused of attempting to incite a fellow IS member the month before to carry out a suicide attack in Lebanon that "was prevented in time," the attorney general's office said. He also allegedly received instructions to carry out an attack in Switzerland, sent financial support to the Islamic State group, and "instructed an IS member living in Syria to set up IS sleeper cells," the attorney general's office said. An attack in Switzerland was never imminent, the office said. The indictment charges him with violating the ban on extremist groups, membership in IS as a criminal enterprise, and producing and stockpiling images of violent acts. Prosecutors further accused the indicted man of providing false information about his financial situation more than a dozen times, enabling him to receive social assistance benefits in Switzerland "to which he was not entitled," the office said. Switzerland largely avoided the wave of deadly terror attacks that targeted cities in Europe and the Middle East in the last decade. Federal police have broadened their authority to monitor communications and potential suspects for possible threats.

Strong Lebanon says priority to draft laws concerning coronavirus, rejects tampering with depositors' funds
NNA/Naharnet/April 14/2020
The "Strong Lebanon" parliamentary bloc convened online to discuss its agenda for the week, with talks touching on the latest COVID-19 developments and the measures that are being adopted in different regions, with emphasis on some private hospitals' risk of closure. The bloc accordingly pushed the government to take immediate measures to address this situation, pledging to draft an urgent law proposal to be submitted before the legislative council in the event of the government’s delay in taking the necessary action. Conferees welcomed "the parliament’s resuming of extraordinary sessions, with a legislative session scheduled next week, on its agenda the legislative package submitted by the bloc to address the economic, social and financial implications of coronavirus." In this regard, the bloc called upon Speaker Nabih Berri “to give priority to law proposals related to coronavirus, given the gravity of the situation.”
The bloc also discussed the government's economic plan, underscoring its refusal to any “tampering with the rights of depositors,” and urging the need to “address the losses in question through an equation in which the State, the banks and the Bank of Lebanon share responsibility through their assets and the recovering of looted funds.”

Diab congratulates coronavirus follow-up committee
NNA/April 14/2020
Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, congratulated the Coronavirus follow-up Committee, and stressed that the government is ready to implement all recommendations submitted by its members. He also reiterated the importance of reinforcing all security and preventive measures, notably during the upcoming weeks, even with the decrease in number of infected persons. He finally highlighted the importance of closely following up the recent developments related to the virus, noting that Lebanon has so far succeeded in limiting the spread, compared to other countries.
PM Diab’s word came during his participation to the Committee’s meeting this afternoon at the Grand Serail, in the presence of the Secretary General of the Higher Defense Council, Major-General Mahmoud Al-Asmar, PM Advisor for health issues, Petra Khoury, President of the Republic Michel Aoun’s Advisor, Walid Khoury, and representatives of local and international organizations and institutions. He then visited the Disaster Risk Management room to inspect its work. -- Presidency of the Council of Ministers

Msharrafieh at launch of municipalities’ platform for financial aid: Our goal is to assist families most in need
NNA/April 14/2020
Minister of Social Affairs, Ramzi Msharrafieh, announced this Tuesday "the launch of the joint municipalities platform for coordination to obtain financial aid," stressing that "the goal is to reach the largest possible number of citizens, to assess those most in need."
"Every citizen has the right to access the form and fill it online. An evaluation will be carried out based on criteria set via a globally-approved program. Accordingly, we will reach a database on the basis of which an assessment will be made of those who submitted their forms, seeking aid," he explained. The minister noted that "providing assistance is a national duty and not a favor from anyone. To rid this process from favoritism, we decided to create this [municipalities] platform with the Interior Ministry."
"In order to prevent any error, the Ministry of Social Affairs asked the Lebanese Army to go over the available information and data. The Army thus conducted a comprehensive survey and detected errors in the lists. Accordingly, we requested the postponement of aid distribution, until the mistakes are corrected. In a few days, we will re-launch the aid distribution process," Msharrafieh added.

Kubis via Twitter: I briefed Guterres on areas in which Lebanon needs help fighting Coronavirus
NNA/April 14/2020
The United Nations Secretary-General's special representative in Lebanon, Jan Kubis, said via Twitter: “Yesterday I briefed UN SG @antonioguterres about the priority areas where Lebanon urgently needs international assistance when fighting #COVID19 and its impacts, including support for the most vulnerable Lebanese or UN-facilitated action to help Syrian & Palestinian refugees.”Kubis said "it is high time we translate the statements of sympathy and international solidarity into concrete action."

Wazni, Hoballah meet with ABL delegation over money transfers to students abroad
NNA/April 14/2020
Ministers Ghazi Wazni of Finance and Imad Hoballah of Industry held a meeting Tuesday with a delegation of the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL, chaired by Salim Sfeir. Talks reportedly touched on the money transfers to Lebanese students abroad, in addition to an array of industrial affairs. During the meeting, Wazni and Hoballah highlighted the necessity to offer facilities to industrialists, such as reducing loans' interest rates.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on April 14-15/2020
More than 26,000 dead due to coronavirus in Iran, says opposition group MEK
Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday 14 April 2020
Iran’s real coronavirus death toll has exceeded 26,000, around six times the official death toll, according to opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Iran’s death toll reached 4,585 on Monday with 73,303 confirmed cases, according to a health ministry official. Experts and some public officials have cast doubt on the official coronavirus figures in Iran. Opposition group MEK said on Sunday the death toll has exceeded 26,200, with the capital Tehran having the most deaths with 4,050. Iran has prepared 10,000 graves for coronavirus victims in Tehran, the deputy director of Tehran's municipal urban services Mojtaba Yazdani said on Sunday. Yazdani did not say how many people have died of coronavirus in the capital.

IMF Approves Debt Relief for 25 Poor Countries
Agence France PresseNaharnet/April 14/2020
The International Monetary Fund on Monday announced immediate debt relief for 25 poor countries to help them free up funds to fight the coronavirus pandemic. "This provides grants to our poorest and most vulnerable members to cover their IMF debt obligations for an initial phase over the next six months and will help them channel more of their scarce financial resources towards vital emergency medical and other relief efforts," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement. The IMF board approved the debt relief for the countries, nearly all in Africa, but also Afghanistan, Yemen, Nepal and Haiti. The fund together with the World Bank have called for rich nations to stop collecting debt payments from poor countries from May 1 through June 2021. The debt relief will be funded by the IMF's Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust (CCRT), which was first set up to combat the West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2015 and has been repurposed to help countries fend off COVID-19. The fund currently has $500 million, with Japan, Britain, China and the Netherlands among its main contributors. "I urge other donors to help us replenish the trust's resources and boost further our ability to provide additional debt service relief for a full two years to our poorest member countries," Georgieva said. Last week, the World bank said it would roll out $160 billion in emergency aid over 15 months to help countries stricken by the virus, including $14 billion in debt repayments from 76 poor countries to other governments.

Top creditors to suspend poorest countries' debt payments: France
Reuters/NNA/April 14/2020
Major international creditors have agreed to suspend debt payments owed by the poorest countries this year, throwing a financial lifeline to help cope with the coronavirus crisis, France’s finance minister said on Tuesday. Some 76 countries, of which 40 are in sub-Sahara Africa, were eligible to have debt payments worth a combined $20 billion suspended, out of a total of $32 billion the countries were to spend on debt servicing this year. “We have obtained a debt moratorium at the level of bilateral creditors and private creditors for a total of $20 billion euros,” Bruno Le Maire told journalists. The government creditors, including not only the Paris Club but also China and other members of the Group of 20 economic powers, are to suspend $12 billion under the agreement, which remains to be finalised on Wednesday. Separately, a senior German official spoke of a debt moratorium by official creditors worth up to $14 billion. “We’re glad in particular that China agreed to participate in this moratorium. All that will free up money for the countries that need it the most,” Le Maire said. China has become a major creditor to developing countries, especially in Africa, but there is little transparency about how much they owe. Private creditors have agreed on a voluntary basis to roll over or refinance $8 billion in debt, a French finance ministry source said. Of the total $32 billion due this year, the remaining 12 billion euros is owed by multilateral lenders, mainly the World Bank, Le Maire said, urging such lenders to join the debt relief initiative. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund called last month on government creditors to give debt relief and the IMF said on Monday it would do so for 25 countries under its Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust, which has about $500 million in resources on hand. French President Emmanuel Macron said in a television address to the French nation on Monday that African countries should be helped by “massively cancelling their debt”. Le Maire said that at the end of the year outright debt cancellation should take place on a case-by-case basis and in coordination with multilateral lenders depending on the economic situation of the countries as well as developments in commodity markets and capital flows.

China Offers Reward for Catching Russia Border Crossers over Virus Fears
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 14/2020
A northeast China province is offering cash rewards of up to 5,000 yuan ($700) for help in catching people who illegally cross the Russian border after a flood of imported coronavirus cases. Weeks after it drastically cut international flights and banned entry to foreigners to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus crisis, China is still struggling to contain a spike in imported cases. Most of the new infections have been in Chinese citizens returning home. A new front has emerged in Heilongjiang province, which on Tuesday reported 79 new cases in arrivals from neighboring Russia, taking its total of imported infections to 326. Provincial authorities said Monday that people who report illegal border crossings will receive a 3,000-yuan reward. "If the citizen captures and hands over (offenders) to relevant departments, there will be a one-off reward of 5,000 yuan," the virus prevention and control working group said in a statement. This is "to step up prevention and control work against imported cases in the province", it added. Most of the province's imported cases were discovered in the remote border city of Suifenhe, whose land crossing -- the busiest between China and Russia, with over one million travelers annually -- has been closed since April 7. The city with a population of some 70,000 has been under strict lockdown since last week, with all public gatherings banned from Sunday. Local officials said a makeshift hospital was completed and ready for use on Tuesday, and medical experts have been dispatched from nationwide to the area. Suifenhe and the provincial capital of Harbin now require all overseas arrivals to quarantine for 28 days and undergo tests for the virus. Russia on Monday reported more than 2,500 new infections -- its highest daily rise yet -- and President Vladimir Putin warned officials to brace for "extraordinary" scenarios. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian urged local governments in China and Russia on Tuesday to "take the necessary measures" to prevent and stop illegal border crossings. Zhao estimated that there are currently more than 100,000 Chinese citizens in Russia.

U.S. Eyes Virus 'Plateau' as World Weighs Cautious Reboot
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/April 14/2020
Coronavirus deaths in the hard-hit United States were flat for a second consecutive day, with New York's governor saying the "worst is over" as many countries weigh a gradual reopening of their shattered economies. Since emerging late last year, the coronavirus pandemic has killed around 120,000 and infected nearly two million, tipping the world towards a fierce economic recession as more than half of the globe hunkers down at home. As countries reach different stages of the coronavirus curve, debate is raging over whether to return to normal life and possibly risk a second wave of infections. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told his 1.3 billion citizens their lockdown would remain in effect until May 3 at least and France's President Emmanuel Macron extended his tight measures by another month. But Italy and Austria are reopening some shops and Spain is restarting construction and factory work while powerhouse Germany weighs restarting Europe's top economy. In Washington, Trump stunned reporters by playing a campaign-style self-congratulatory video and bashing the media during a briefing in which he claimed to have saved "tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives."The U.S. death toll has hit 23,200 -- by far the worst-affected country -- but the president said: "It looks like we're plateauing, and maybe even in many cases coming down."He has repeatedly stressed he wants to open the world's largest economy as swiftly as possible and is expected to announce a plan this week on how to jump-start stalled business. The U.S. president appeared to be supported by the latest figures from Johns Hopkins University showing 1,509 deaths in the country over the past 24 hours -- almost identical to the previous day. In New York, where the virus has killed more than 10,000 people and seen unclaimed victims buried in unmarked mass graves, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the nightmare might be coming to an end. "The worst is over if we continue to be smart going forward. I believe we can now start on the path to normalcy," Cuomo told reporters, as Trump said only the president had "the ultimate authority" to reopen businesses. The economic impact in the US and elsewhere could be seen as officials in the southern city of Houston wrapped food in plastic bags and threw them into cars. "We went to the stores and they are closed. Yes, we had problems to buy food," said sales assistant Catalina Mendoza Cabrera.
'Opening a valve' -
In France, one of Europe's worst-hit countries, Macron said in a televised address the epidemic there was "beginning to steady... (and) hope is returning."However, he said a strict lockdown in force since March 17 would continue until May 11 -- after which schools and businesses could gradually reopen at a "progressive" rate. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari told his citizens they must "endure a little longer" as he also extended a lockdown in key cities saying: "We must not lose the gains achieved thus far." And in Britain, whose Prime Minister Boris Johnson is recovering after three days in intensive care with the virus, officials warned the peak was still to come and the lockdown there was likely to endure. In countries seen as further along in the epidemic, life was very gradually beginning the long process of returning to normal, with officials handing out masks to commuters returning to work in Spain.
"It's wonderful because it's so necessary and it helps those of us who have to use public transport," said office worker Jose Antonio Cruces.
Italy will reopen some bookshops and laundries on a trial basis Tuesday, as the number of critically ill patients dropped for the 10th straight day despite the death toll topping 20,000. Cuomo stressed that rebooting New York's economy was a "delicate balance", likening it to "opening a valve". "It's not going to be, we flip the switch, and everybody comes out of their house, gets in their car, waves and hugs each other, and the economy will start."And World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned control measures "must be lifted slowly," noting that coronavirus was 10 times deadlier than the 2009-10 swine flu outbreak. Australia and New Zealand appeared to be heeding the warning, steeling their citizens for longer restrictions, despite some success in flattening the virus curve. "We've been relatively successful -- I don't want to squander that success or the sacrifices New Zealanders have made," said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern when asked when the lockdown would be eased. But there were cautionary tales that the virus is not easily defeated. In China, where the outbreak first reared its head and the government says it has largely curbed the spread of the virus, officials announced scores of new imported infections.

Abbas Contacts Arab Leaders to Confront Israel’s Annexation of West Bank Areas
Ramallah/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 14 April, 2020
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas held a round of phone conversations with Arab leaders to urge them to oppose Israel’s possible annexation of parts of the West Bank, senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said. In a tweet, Erekat said that Abbas spoke with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, the monarch of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa; the emir of Kuwait, Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah; and the emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to discuss “the Israeli plan of annexation and the need to prevent it.”The leaders also talked about the spread of the novel coronavirus and “other regional and international developments,” Erekat wrote. Palestinians fear that Israel will exploit the world’s distraction with the coronavirus pandemic to annex West Bank areas. The Palestine Liberation Organization recently warned against an agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv on the map of West Bank areas to be annexed to Israel. The organization said that Washington and Tel Aviv are close to finalizing the maps. “Washington and Tel Aviv are about to agree on the maps of annexation – at a time the world is preoccupied with the war on coronavirus – falls within the framework of the US plan to implement the deal of the century,” Palestinian Authority Social Affairs Minister Ahmad Majdalani said. The Israeli government is preparing through dialogue with the US administration and the international community to annex and impose its “sovereignty” over the Jordan Valley and the Northern Dead Sea on July 10. Last Thursday, Erekat, also senior Palestinian negotiator in the conflict with Israel, tweeted that he had personally discussed the “consequences” of annexation with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, as well as Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, a senior adviser to the Bahrain king. The Palestinians have rejected the US peace plan as it allows Israel to annex settlements, grants the Jewish state sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and overriding security control west of the Jordan River, and bars Palestinian refugees from settling in Israel.

As Opposition-Held Syria Fears Virus, Just One Machine is there to Test
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 14 April, 2020
A single machine at Mohamad Shahim Makki’s medical center in Idlib province, part of Syria’s last opposition stronghold, is the only alarm that will sound when the coronavirus strikes a population of millions of the world’s most vulnerable people. Makki’s Epidemiological Surveillance Laboratory has the only device in areas outside of Syrian regime control equipped to run a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test to detect the virus, reported Reuters. As of a few days ago, just 120 tests had been carried out on just 300 samples. While all have been negative so far, doctors and relief agencies fear that crowded camps for displaced people, and medical facilities ravaged by years of war, would make any contagion rapid and lethal. Samples have begun to come into the lab faster, with 5,000 received in the last two days, though it is not yet clear how many of them can be processed or how quickly. The machine “is not sufficient to serve all these people, so there is pressure on the device. And since it is the only one, strict criteria are being used to select samples,” said Makki.
Northwest Syria is the last part of the country still held by fighters trying to overthrow Bashar Assad’s regime. It is home to more than 3 million people, most of whom fled other parts of Syria in a war that began nine years ago. “If coronavirus spreads in the northwest it will be a catastrophe. The number of deaths will be very big and infections will be huge, in the hundreds of thousands,” Ahmad al-Dbis of the US-based medical charity UOSSM, which operates in opposition territory, told Reuters last month.
Plans to equip other centers with PCR test devices have been slowed by their high cost and the training needed to run them.
“In the liberated areas we have major weaknesses in the health sector because of the war and because of the systematic targeting of hospitals and health centers,” said Makki. The regime, backed by Russia and Iran, launched a push earlier this year to capture Idlib, sending hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing, many of them people who were already displaced.
In recent days thousands of Syrians have begun to leave camps near the Turkish border, some wary of the virus reaching tightly packed quarters, choosing instead to return to Idlib after a ceasefire struck last month that has restored calm. In the rest of Syria, Damascus has reported 25 coronavirus cases and two deaths in regime-held areas. It has shut businesses, halted flights, and imposed a curfew to curb the spread of the virus.

G20 Watchdog Says Investment Fund Vulnerable Amidst Pandemic
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 14 April, 2020
Non-bank financial firms such as investment funds have exhibited vulnerabilities during the coronavirus crisis that may need fixing to help economies recover, a global regulatory watchdog said on Tuesday.
The Financial Stability Board (FSB), which coordinates financial rules for the Group of 20 (G20) economies, said that although an initial wave of volatility has ebbed, markets remain under great strain and in some cases illiquid. FSB Chair Randal Quarles said the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on credit markets and investment funds has highlighted potential vulnerabilities and the need to understand the risks and resulting policy implications. "It is more important than ever to ensure that we can reap the benefits of this dynamic part of the financial system without risking financial stability," Quarles said in a letter to G20 finance ministers and central banks, who are holding a virtual meeting this week.
The FSB said it has set up a group to fine-tune work on investment funds and credit markets, which have been a source of conflict between market regulators and central banks in the past over how stringently they should be regulated. "Shadow banking", which also includes money market funds, hedge funds, and private equity, has grown significantly since the financial crisis a decade ago, moving into bank-like activities such as credit as traditional lenders became more risk averse. Quarles, who is also Federal Reserve vice chair for banking supervision, said FSB members have been involved in intensive, daily information exchanges to coordinate national responses.
Regulators have come under heavy pressure from banks to loosen capital buffers and ease provisioning requirements for bad loans as businesses struggle to stay afloat during lockdowns.
Quarles said the FSB was guiding G20 members on using existing flexibility in global rules, while also preserving collective support for the standards.
"It will become increasingly important to assess the impact of measures taken and to ensure that these policies are effective in the near term, and, eventually, to give a strong basis for deciding on when, and how, to return to more normal operations in the financial sector," Quarles said.
Fallout from the coronavirus crisis has led to speculation that regulators will have to push back an end of 2021 deadline for ending the use of the Libor interest rate benchmark that banks were fined billions of dollars for trying to rig. The rate is used in contracts like home loans and credit cards worth around $400 trillion globally, and ending its use is one of the biggest challenges faced by markets in decades. "The financial stability risks that would be associated with an unsuccessful transition away from Libor are as relevant in the current environment as they were before," Quarles said. The FSB will set out for G20 finance ministers in July the remaining challenges to shifting away from Libor and explore ways to address them, Quarles said.

Virus 'disaster in the making' in war-torn Syria
Agence France-Presse/April 14/ 2020
PARIS - As Europe and the United States struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic, experts warn that disaster looms in war-torn Syria, where hospitals are unable to meet existing needs and hygiene conditions are dire. The outbreak has infected more than 1.8 million people and killed more than 115,000 around the world since emerging in China in December last year. In Syria, the Damascus government has closed borders, forbidden movement between provinces and shut schools and restaurants in an effort to stem the spread of the virus. Official numbers are low with two deaths and 25 confirmed cases, but only 100 patients are being tested daily, with half of the testing carried out in the capital Damascus. And while the government has regained control of most of the country after almost a decade of civil war, some areas are still held by pro-Ankara rebels and Kurds. Experts accuse Damascus of minimising its death toll for political motives. "Medical staff believe that there are many people who are dying in Syria with the symptoms of the virus," said Zaki Mehchy, senior consulting fellow at London-based think-tank Chatham House.
"But the security agencies ask them or order them not to mention it, especially to the media," he added. "Impossible physical distancing"  Aid groups are sounding the alarm on the potentially devastating consequences of a severe outbreak in Syria, where nine years of war have hit hospitals and left them ill-equipped to deal with the pandemic. "There is a disaster in the making," said Emile Hokayem, Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London (IISS). According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), less than two-thirds of hospitals were up and running at the end of 2019 and 70% of health-care workers have fled since the war began in 2011. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that physical distancing is impossible in displacement camps in Idlib, the last rebel-held province, which was already enduring a humanitarian crisis before the pandemic started. "A lack of food, clean water and exposure to cold weather have already left hundreds of thousands of people in poor health, making them even more vulnerable," said Misty Buswell from aid group International Rescue Committee (IRC), adding that the devastation in Idlib could be "unimaginable."The IRC said that almost all of the 105 intensive care beds and 30 adult ventilators in Idlib were already in use. WHO said testing would start in Idlib at the end of March, but little help is to be expected from Damascus, according to Mazen Gharibah, associate researcher at the London School of Economics. "One cannot simply assume that the regime — which was systematically targeting the hospitals three weeks ago — is going to provide the same hospitals with medical equipment next week," he said.Activists have repeatedly accused the government of targeting hospitals in rebel-held areas, a charge denied by Damascus.
"Catastrophic politicisation"
A ceasefire negotiated at the beginning of March for the north-west region between the two main foreign power brokers in Syria's war, Russia and Turkey, has so far held. But, according to the IRC, "the security and political vacuum the pandemic will create is likely to be exploited by actors involved in the Syrian conflict — including ISIS (jihadists) — to serve their interests." For Syria expert Fabrice Balanche, associate professor and research director at the University of Lyon 2, "this epidemic is a way for Damascus to show that the Syrian state is efficient and all territories should be returned under its governance."
But Gharibah said politicisation of the pandemic by the Syrian government was catastrophic, accusing the regime of "using the current pandemic for its own political gains by gambling with the lives of millions of people."
Experts say there is a risk that the pandemic will lead to a decrease in humanitarian assistance as donor countries focus on kick-starting their economies. "With attention and resources at home focused on recovery, it is going to be a lot harder to make a political case for sustaining humanitarian operations abroad," Hokayem said. Aid groups warned against cuts in aid at a time when needs are critical. "Should we fail, not only will the most vulnerable pay the price today for the inaction of the international community, the consequences will be felt across the globe for years, if not decades, to come," said IRC president David Miliband.

Joint statement by Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy regarding international collaboration in addressing COVID-19
Canada/April 14/2020
Building on our strategic partnership, shared values and commitment to multilateralism, Canada and the European Union (EU) are working intensively together to address the significant consular, public health and economic challenges of the COVID-19 crisis.
Getting our citizens home safely. Our people-to-people links are the foundation of our relationship. Canada, the EU and EU member states have assisted each other’s stranded nationals to return home from our respective territories and from around the world. We are facilitating transit through Canadian and EU airports, providing access to spare capacity on our respective repatriation flights and advocating for the maintenance of commercial air links between Europe and North America.
Developing effective vaccines, therapies and diagnostics. Collaboration in international research and innovation is essential in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. The EU and Canada are committed to increasing research and innovation funding for vaccines, therapies and diagnostics, to leverage digital technologies, and to strengthen scientific international cooperation. We support the leadership of the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness network and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) in international efforts to develop vaccines. We also support initiatives on data sharing for all COVID-19-related funded research at the global level, such as the UNESCO plea on data sharing and open science, as well as the open letter to publishers on open access to COVID-19 research, signed in March by the European Commission and Canada and 14 other countries.
On direct funding, Canada recently announced a further contribution to CEPI of Can$40 million, while the EU has undertaken several emergency initiatives, including two emergency calls for research and innovation projects: €48 million in funding for the launch of 18 new Horizon 2020 research and innovation projects, and a €45-million call of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI).
Protecting the flow of vital supplies across borders. The Canadian and EU economies are highly intertwined. We are working together to make sure that critical materials aimed at protecting our health workers and citizens can continue to cross borders. We are reviewing our own emergency measures and are pressing the international community to maintain open and connected supply chains to facilitate the flow of essential goods, especially medical equipment to combat the pandemic. We remain committed to a transparent, rules-based trading system more generally, as a means to support the resilience of supply chains to continue to function in this crisis and to expedite the economic recovery that will follow.
Strengthening the global response. The EU and Canada are reinforcing relevant international organizations, with the World Health Organization leading the global response, and are assisting developing countries and non-governmental organizations in the fight against COVID-19. To date, Canada has announced over Can$160 million in direct support of global efforts to address the COVID-19 outbreak, while the EU will secure €15.6 billion to help partner countries to face COVID impacts. In order to step up global efforts to address the COVID-19 outbreak, we are engaged in actively supporting an international pledging conference in cooperation with WHO and its Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, and in assisting developing countries and non-governmental organizations in the fight against COVID-19. The EU and Canada recall that both the UN and our own autonomous sanctions regimes provide for humanitarian exceptions; the application of these exceptions should enable humanitarian assistance to reach the most vulnerable populations.
Countering disinformation. Canada and the EU are longstanding partners in promoting security and prosperity around the world. Together, we are working through the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism, which is linked to the EU’s Rapid Alert System, to identify and respond to foreign threats to our democracies, including the spread of disinformation and myths about the virus and efforts to undermine our unity. We underline the need to defend media freedom and the free exchange of information more than ever during such times of crisis.
Canada and the EU underline the value in bilateral and multilateral cooperation as our citizens, and the global community, face unprecedented challenges to public health and economic stability. We will continue to act, in mutually supportive ways, to address the crisis and then to move beyond it.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on April 14-15/2020
Will the OPEC agreement work and, if so, how long will it last?
Simon Henderson/The Hill/April 14/2020
“Well done, OPEC!” is a phrase that probably offends many, especially those with memories of the 1970s and 1980s when the oil cartel seemed often to be squeezing the West so that Arab sheikhs could party in style. Thirty years on, having further shocked the West’s virus-weakened economies by dumping low-priced oil, OPEC perhaps has acted responsibly by agreeing to move toward market stability. Low-priced oil is good for most of us, although less so when we are stuck at home rather than driving to work or going out to have fun at weekends. But it is not so good when it is so low that it undermines the U.S. oil industry and, in particular, American shale oil production, which has made us effectively energy independent in recent years.
The deal, agreed by a teleconference on Sunday after four days of negotiations, is essentially between Russia and Saudi Arabia, which will end the oil price war they started a month ago. One of their targets had been our shale oil production, which they saw as freeloading off their efforts in OPEC+ (the Saudi-led OPEC cartel plus Russia and several other non-OPEC exporters) to maintain prices in a falling market.
American shale oil output has slipped in the past few weeks anyway because the coronavirus has impacted demand, but the key element in the agreement appears to have been President Trump. Rather than the cameo role I predicted a week ago, he was the male lead. He appears to have knocked together the heads of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, aka MbS, although officials are not briefing such an apparently undiplomatic version of events. He certainly achieved a fudged compromise on Mexico’s otherwise intransigent position.
The big question is, how long will the agreement last? It supposedly doesn’t start until May 1, when OPEC+ will reduce production by almost 10 million barrels per day, about 10 percent of world demand. On paper, the U.S., Canada and Brazil contribute to this total. But these cutbacks last only until the end of June, when they will be reduced until the end of December. The agreement then calls for a further easing in the cuts, which supposedly will last until April 2022.
Skeptical? You should be. Initial trading in oil at the start of the business week showed only minor increases in price. That powerful force — “the market” — appears to doubt whether the agreement will work. It could well be right. The world is awash with oil. Storage tanks have been filling. Unsold tanker loads are either at anchor or steaming in circles waiting for a customer. Meanwhile, the economic downturn caused by the virus shows no sign of lifting anytime soon. The hope that plentiful supplies of oil, at still relatively cheap prices, will speed recovery when we turn a corner on the virus is, for the moment, still a dream. In the meantime, we may be facing another round of the oil crisis. Once again, it could be personality-driven. An interesting role this last time was that of Saudi King Salman, who reportedly discussed the issue with President Putin and also joined in a key telephone discussion with President Trump and the Russian leader. The 84-year-old monarch is not normally so active. It could be that his favorite son, MbS, whose irritation with Russia prompted the oil price war, did not want a public role because it may have implied Putin had got the better of him. The official Saudi Press Agency said MbS had his own telephone conversation with Trump. The King Salman/MbS dynamic fascinates policymakers, perhaps more so now because they are physically separate. The king reportedly is on an island in the Red Sea off the city of Jeddah, without at least one of his closest royal advisers who has succumbed to the virus. MbS is several hundred miles north in the futuristic city of Neom, closeted with his own advisers who are trying to cut budgets to cope with the decline in oil revenues.
The drama likely is not over. We have to prepare ourselves for the next act.
*Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Follow him on Twitter @shendersongulf.

Britain's Government Wasn’t Built for a Coronavirus Crisis
Therese Raphael/Bloomberg/April 14/ 2020
After 10 days of persistent symptoms, Boris Johnson is the first leader of a major country to be hospitalized with COVID-19. There’s never a good time to be sick, but there could hardly be a worse moment for a prime minister who has become such a towering figure in his party and the UK, and who has enjoyed strong ratings during the crisis. Even if Johnson’s absence is brief, it will only complicate a national response to the coronavirus that has prompted a long list of questions over its effectiveness.
Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick told BBC radio Monday morning that Johnson’s admission was “routine,” taken as a precautionary measure. Whether his true condition hadn’t been disclosed, or his health deteriorated in the ensuing hours, is not clear, but by Monday evening the prime minister had been placed in an intensive care unit. As doctors have been saying for weeks now, there’s no certainty with this virus.
Covid-19 impacts individuals differently; symptoms that persist beyond a week can also worsen rapidly, interfering with lung capacity and requiring medical intervention such as oxygen, or in severe cases the support of a respirator. He will hopefully make a full recovery soon. But for all the force of his personality and apparent vigor, Johnson will surely have to step back for some time. That raises two questions: Who will run the government, and how will the crisis be handled? Neither answer is straightforward.
While the US constitution provides for the vice president to take over if the president becomes incapacitated (nine American “veeps” have succeeded mid-term presidents), Britain’s government has no such constitutional set-up. Not since Nick Clegg was given the unusual role of deputy prime minister in the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has the UK even had an official number two.
The very idea of “cabinet government” establishes the prime minister as first among equals, and Johnson — often via his most senior adviser Dominic Cummings — has extended this principle much further than others as he’s centralized control of his administration. But as the Queen’s most senior government adviser, he serves only so long as his cabinet supports him, one reason for the constant rumors of plotting during his predecessor Theresa May’s unsteady time. Different cabinet officials stand in for the prime minister during weekly parliamentary questions if he’s unavailable; during this crisis, several including Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove and Health Secretary Matt Hancock have done the daily press briefings.
For all the constitutional uncertainty, Johnson acted with some foresight in designating Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab as First Secretary of State to chair the crisis response in the prime minister’s absence. It’s just not clear whether Raab, who has not been on the front lines of the Covid-19 action in the way some other cabinet members have, would continue in that role if Johnson’s absence dragged on, or how long he would have the support of his colleagues. Raab hasn’t always been the surest footed of political performers, especially during a previous cabinet stint as Brexit Secretary.
All of this comes as the government faces mounting criticism over its delayed response to the crisis, its failure to ramp up testing and persistent shortages of personal protection equipment (PPE) for health care workers, as well as questions over how long a costly national lockdown can continue. There are already signs of cabinet infighting, blame-shifting and questions over strategy.
In the debate over when the lockdowns can be lifted, solving the problem of testing is seen as key since more diagnostic data would mean a better picture of the general spread of the disease and levels of immunity. Last week, Hancock promised 100,000 Brits would be tested daily, but only about one-tenth of that level is taking place currently. The government claims the problem is a shortage of swabs and reagents. Meanwhile, Germany is conducting about 50,000 tests a day.
That isn’t the only serious problem. The UK still is experiencing worrying PPE supply shortages at many hospitals and medical centers, and strengthened guidance was only issued late last week after complaints from doctors and surgeons about unsafe working conditions. Lack of PPE has been linked clearly to infection and death among medical workers in Italy and elsewhere.
As the crisis drags on, there’s also the key question of an exit strategy. The economic cost of lockdown is estimated at 2.4 billion pounds ($2.73 billion) a day. While Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has won plaudits for responding with massive programs of public spending and relief, the Treasury is said to be growing uncomfortable at the prospect of a prolonged freeze on the economy.
Meanwhile, it was the 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth II who steadied the nation on Sunday night, with a rare public address, recalling World War II memories of separation and struggle, and echoing the words of Vera Lynn’s wartime song, “We’ll meet again.” We’ve got this, was the message that the Queen’s steady presence and tone communicated.
“We’ll see,” is the less solid impression given by her government, as it struggles to find its crisis footing and hopes for the return to health of its leader.

Why Does No One Care About These Palestinians?
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/April 14/ 2020
Those in the international community expressing concern about the possible spread of the virus in the Gaza Strip are ignoring the existing tragedy of the Palestinians in Syria, particularly those held in various Syrian government-controlled prisons.
While Palestinian Authority leaders have been urging Israel to release Palestinian prisoners in Israel out of fear they may be infected with coronavirus, these same leaders have left, without saying a word, hundreds of Palestinians held in Syrian jails.
"Such practices represent flagrant violations of international law which criminalizes all forms of torture and mistreatment against civilians," the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS) stated.
An Arab persecuting or torturing an Arab never seems to be condemned by the international community.... The reason the world does not care about the atrocities committed against Palestinians in Syria: they cannot blame Israel for them.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians of Syria live in an Arab country. Were those Palestinians living in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, the international media, the United Nations and human rights organizations would have interrupted the daily media fare of coronavirus by shouting day and night about Israel's purported persecution of the Palestinians.
Palestinian refugees have lost all hope of returning to the Yarmouk refugee camp after the Syrian authorities revealed a plan that would radically change the conditions of the camp by building tall buildings and opening new roads, according to a report by the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. Pictured: Yarmouk refugee camp, near Damascus, on May 22, 2018, days after Syrian government forces regained control over the camp. (Photo by Louai Beshara/AFP via Getty Images)
As the world is busy combating the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, Palestinians are continuing to "disappear" in Syrian prisons -- or otherwise die. Those in the international community expressing concern about the possible spread of the virus in the Gaza Strip are ignoring the existing tragedy of the Palestinians in Syria, particularly those held in various Syrian government-controlled prisons.
The international community also does not seem to care if a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria is about to be wiped off the face of the earth.
The reason the world does not care about the atrocities committed against Palestinians in Syria: they cannot blame Israel for them.
An Arab persecuting or torturing an Arab never seems to be condemned by the international community.
The following are some distressing figures released this week by the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS), a London-based human rights watchdog organization that monitors the situation of Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria.
Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, the number of Palestinians who have been killed there is now estimated at 4,042, according to the latest statistics released by AGPS. The names of the victims and details about the circumstances of their death are documented on the group's website.
The number of Palestinians languishing in Syrian prisons is 1,793, and another 332 have gone missing since 2011, AGPS disclosed.
While Palestinian Authority leaders have been urging Israel to release Palestinian prisoners out of fear they may be infected with coronavirus, these same leaders have left, without saying a word, hundreds of Palestinians held in Syrian jails.
AGPS, meanwhile, as a result of the outbreak of the virus, has renewed its call for the immediate release of Palestinians held in Syrian prisons out of concern for their safety and health.
The AGPS also drew the world's attention to the presence of more than 1,790 Palestinians of all ages held in harsh conditions in Syrian prisons and detention centers. In the view of the organization, the Syrian authorities are fully responsible for the lives of the Palestinian inmates and have urged them to provide medical care to those infected with the disease.
Another disturbing figure revealed by AGPS: In Syrian prisons during the past nine years, 37 Palestinian women were tortured to death. The women, according to AGPS, are among 620 Palestinians who have died in Syrian prisons after the eruption of the civil war there.
The group said it believes the real numbers are higher: the Syrian authorities are "reticent" to reveal the names and fates of Palestinian detainees and the families are reluctant to disclose their relatives' names for fear of retaliation.
The list of victims, according to the AGPS, includes political activists, volunteers, medics, engineers, academics, journalists, university students, and artists.
The Palestinian prisoners include 110 women and 50 children, who have been enduring unknown fates in Syrian prisons and detention centers. Toddlers clinging to their mothers' arms have also been spotted there, the group said.
Affidavits made by ex-detainees show that Palestinians have been subjected to harsh psychological and physical torture in Syrian prisons, including electric shocks, heavy beating using iron bars, and sexual abuse.
Taghreed Issat and her daughter Hadeel, for instance, have been missing since March 2013, when they were arrested at a Syrian military checkpoint near Yarmouk refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus. Hadeel was four years old at the time of their arrest.
"Such practices represent flagrant violations of international law which criminalizes all forms of torture and mistreatment against civilians," the group stated. "AGPS continues to urge the Syrian authorities to disclose the conditions and whereabouts of Palestinians held in its penitentiaries."
In yet another alarming figure, AGPS found that since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, 252 Palestinians under the age of 18 have died. Nearly half of the children were killed when their homes were shelled either by the Syrian army or its rival armed opposition groups; while several others were killed by snipers or in car-bomb explosions. Another 34 Palestinian minors died as a result of lack of food and medical treatment.
Meanwhile, Yarmouk refugee camp, five miles south of Damascus, is on its way to vanishing as a result of a plan by the Syrian authorities to build new towers and change the demographic conditions of the camp.
As of June 2002, there were 112,550 Palestinians living there; by mid-2018, only a few hundred remained. According to the UN, the place was "transformed into a death camp," with thousands of homes and a local hospital destroyed during the fighting.
Palestinian refugees have lost all hope of returning to Yarmouk after the Syrian authorities revealed a plan that would radically change the conditions of the camp by building tall buildings and opening new roads, according to a report by the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.
"The Palestinians have lived for decades in the camp and turned it into an important commercial center in Damascus," the newspaper noted. However, the war caused a catastrophe in the camp: hundreds of its inhabitants were killed or injured, most of its residents were displaced, and more than 60 percent of its buildings were damaged.
The new plan includes expanding the camp's main street to a width of 40 meters -- its current width reaching between 20-25 meters -- and replacing the destroyed houses with towers. The Palestinians fear that the plan would replace the camp with a new neighborhood and that the residents who were forced to leave their homes during the war would not be able to return to Yarmouk.
Once again, then, the world is ignoring human rights violations perpetrated by an Arab country against Palestinians.
Unfortunately, the Palestinians of Syria live in an Arab country. Were those Palestinians living in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, the international media, the United Nations and human rights organizations would have interrupted the daily media fare of coronavirus by shouting day and night about Israel's purported persecution of the Palestinians.
*Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

US president emerges as key broker in historic OPEC+ deal
Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/April 14, 2020
It took a week of feverish phone calls and video conferences among world leaders, but in the end, there was a deal. OPEC+ will cut 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) for two months starting from May 1. From July 1 to Dec. 31 this year, the cuts will be reduced to 7.7 million bpd and further ratcheted down to 5.8 million bpd for 16 months ending March 30, 2022. Adjustments are calculated on a baseline from October 2018, except for Saudi Arabia and Russia where it is 11 million bpd. This constitutes a compromise, as Russia wanted to use the production of the first quarter of 2020, when the Kingdom produced 9.7 million bpd, and Saudi Arabia favored April, when it produced 12.3 million bpd. This is the largest production cut in history and puts an end to the Saudi-Russian war for market share which started after Russia had refused to accept proposed reductions during a meeting at the beginning of March.
While it was an important step trying to give some reprieve on the supply side, the demand shock persists.
Depending on source and model, analysts expect demand to have contracted by between 20 and 35 million bpd. In reality it could be more and growing, given how many major economies are in lockdown and travel has all but seized as borders were closed.
The question is whether the demand cuts of the 23 OPEC+ counties will suffice to balance the market. While Brent rose more than 5 percent early Monday on the news, reality may give more weight to economic contraction as long as countries remain in lockdown. Brent was down 0.4 percent on the day by early afternoon trading at $31.36 per barrel. Countries have one by one replenished their strategic reserves, a process nearing its end. Refineries have drastically reduced runs, because demand for gasoline, diesel and kerosene has fallen of a cliff. The world is running out of storage capacity within less than two months, which will be a natural lever reducing production.
In the end, it was Trump who helped broker an OPEC+ deal despite being famous for his dislike of OPEC. So much for the numbers which are unprecedented. What about the politics?
It all started about 10 days ago when US President Donald Trump tweeted that he had spoken to both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and they had agreed to cut output by between 10 and 15 million bpd.
This saw the oil price spiking by nearly 50 percent in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s announcement. It came down some, but still was around 22 percent on the day. As a result, feverish consultations took place within OPEC+, an alliance between OPEC and 10 allied nations led by Russia. It was hard to hammer out a compromise on quotas and baselines from which to calculate them. A meeting scheduled for Monday last week had to be postponed to April 9. The 23 countries had reached a compromise in theory last Thursday when Mexico threw a wobbly, refusing to cut its production by the required 400,000 bpd, insisting instead on 100,000 bpd. This did not work from the perspective of Russia and Saudi Arabia whose red line was that other countries should share in the pain.
Complex negotiations at the G20 level ensued on Friday, where energy ministers voiced their support of the OPEC+ draft deal during a Friday video conference. The Mexican standoff persisted until Trump got involved. In the end the OPEC+ deal was 9.7 million bpd, reflecting Mexico’s shortfall.
We have a deal. However, only the OPEC+ deal is firm. The additional 5 million bpd offered from the US, Canada, Brazil and other G20 countries are on paper only, as they reflect the impact of falling demand on production rather than representing an actual cut.
Trump’s role was pivotal as he managed to convince the leading oil producing countries to claw back from their insistence on outright cuts by non-OPEC+ producers. He also mediated in the Mexican deadlock.
The American president complemented the deal in a tweet highlighting that it would save hundreds of thousands of jobs in the US. While Trump has played a key role, there was no alternative to reaching a deal in light of the world running out of storage space.
The last few days made obvious how unprecedented the situation had become in the oil space because of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In history the world has never seen oil demand decline on this scale and pace. Unprecedented situations call for unusual solutions. In the end, it was Trump who helped broker an OPEC+ deal despite being famous for his dislike of OPEC.
• Cornelia Meyer is a business consultant, macro-economist and energy expert.

The Islamic Revolution vs. Donald Trump
Reuel Marc Gerecht/FDD/April 14/2020
روال مارك كاريشت/مؤسسة الدفاع عن الديموقراطية/الثورة الإسلامية في إيران بمواجهة دونلد ترامب
Iran and Ayatollah Khamenei are more influential today than at any time since 1979.
Part I: The Coming Collision
The Islamic revolution recently celebrated its 41st birthday. The upheaval, especially the hostage-taking and the failed attempt to rescue American diplomats, may have cost Jimmy Carter the election in 1980. In 2020 the Islamic Republic may already be trying to enter the presidential campaign by challenging Donald Trump in Iraq and through its nuclear ambitions. After slowly pushing forward the atomic program beyond the confines of Barack Obama’s now defunct nuclear deal, the clerical regime is advancing more vigorously; another murderous assault upon Americans, via Iran’s Iraqi proxies, just happened. Given the president’s determination to keep maximum economic pressure on Iran, more attacks are surely coming.
If Ayatollah Khamenei wants to try to bring the Democrats to power, and he believes that challenging Donald Trump is the best way to weaken his chances of victory, then it’s a near certainty that the supreme leader is going to attack something more significant than what he has before November. President Hassan Rouhani’s and foreign minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif’s extraordinary effort to engage and bend U.S. and European officials to their goals ultimately failed because of the unexpected election of Trump, but the Iranian political elite became much more attuned to U.S. politics because of the nuclear negotiations. Where once Khamenei was an inattentive, bipartisan hater of America, he became more nuanced in his contempt for Democrats and Republicans. The Iranian regime’s understanding of how American politics function has improved a lot.
Also, the coronavirus has hit Iran hard. If the regime senses that its deceit and ineptitude in handling the malady could cause civil unrest once people can again safely gather, it’s not unlikely that the regime will strike Americans in the hope of recapturing the ardent emotions vented during the massive funeral processions for Qassem Suleimani, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard commander killed in Baghdad in January by a U.S. drone. Khamenei’s druthers are to go bold. Numerous factors are coming together to superheat the 41-year-old struggle between the Islamic Republic and the United States over the next eight months. But the most important factor by far is the supreme leader—his unrelenting conspiratorial hatred of the United States, his particular distaste for Trump, and his determination to preserve his impressive accomplishments.
Khamenei is prideful. He has maintained the legacy of the theocracy’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, and, despite enormous resistance from his compatriots, kept the revolution from sliding into Thermidor. Khamenei has thwarted every attempt to reform the Islamic fundamentals of the state. He has confronted massive pro-democracy street demonstrations, as large as those that brought down the shah, and overcome them. He has also bent the Iranian senior clergy, which had little respect for him when he became supreme leader in 1989, to his will. He has outmaneuvered his rivals and advanced his men among the ruling ulama, the intelligence service, and the Revolutionary Guards, the theocracy’s praetorians. VIP mullahs and guardsmen hold vast wealth and power and yet haven’t become seditious. A student of European literature, a poet manqué who has tormented and likely killed dissident poets, Khamenei is capable of promoting men of widely differing scruples and religiosity.
The Islamic Republic is more influential today than at any time since 1979. Most of his countrymen may have zero respect for him as a divine, but Khamenei, with the indispensable assistance of Suleimani, successfully oversaw the creation of foreign Shiite militias throughout the Middle East, subjugated the Shiite Iraqi elite and gained de facto control of Shiism’s holiest shrine cities. Khamenei held firm in Syria when it appeared the Allawi government of Bashar al-Assad was going down. A Sunni victory in Syria could have been catastrophic for the clerical regime in Lebanon and Iraq. Adverse repercussions at home could have been substantial. The regime’s resolve enabled Russia’s decisive entry into the conflict in 2015.
And, perhaps above all else, Khamenei humbled the United States. No factor was more important in tormenting Americans in Iraq than the Iranian. Tehran provisioned and sometimes captained a wide array of militant Shiite groups attacking American soldiers. These forces were defeated or beaten into quiescence by George W. Bush’s “surge” from 2006–2008, but deep, lasting damage was done to America’s psyche. Barack Obama’s election in 2008; his calamitous withdrawal from Iraq in 2011; the rampant anti-war and isolationist sentiments on both the American left and right; Donald Trump’s political rise; the bipartisan indifference to Iranian and Russian imperialism that in Syria watched hundreds of thousands of civilians perish, millions put to flight, the foundation of the European Union crack, and right-wing populism rise—all happened in part because of Khamenei’s determination to make America bleed in Iraq. For this achievement alone, the cleric is one of the most consequential rulers in the Middle East since World War II. Only his predecessor may have had a greater global impact.
And yet Khamenei has been discombobulated by Trump. The cleric initially saw something in the New Yorker to inspire hope: His “endless wars” rhetoric suggested that America might really be departing the Middle East, that the retrenchment Obama started might become a full-on retreat. Trump’s revocation of the nuclear agreement, re-imposition of punishing sanctions, and killing of Suleimani—the commander of the Quds Force, the special-forces/terrorist-liaison branch of the Guard Corps, who’d become a son to the supreme leader—dashed Khamenei’s hope that the Great Satan was a spent force.
And the supreme leader has surely noted that since Trump took office he has had to deal with nearly continuous internal protests, some of them regime-threatening. There is an intensity to Khamenei’s distaste for Trump that may spring from surprise: The supreme leader, who has been a good judge of men and taken down his betters, probably didn’t envision Trump as a catalyst for nation-wide protests against theocracy. Khamenei may well have expected renewed U.S. sanctions to give Iranians, to quote the prediction of Philip Gordon, the former Middle East coordinator on Obama’s National Security Council, “a reason to rally to — rather than work against — the government they might otherwise despise.” Trump will likely prove pivotal for the Islamic Republic: If the clerical regime makes it through his presidency, then the American threat to Iran’s theocracy may well be over.
Democrats have made the Iran issue, and Obama’s nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a partisan litmus test. There’s little chance that the Democrats, if they win in November, can revive a nuclear agreement since the clerical regime has moved on. Tehran is far wiser about the limitations and inherent turbulence of American politics and the utility of an executive agreement, like the JCPOA, and the United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 supposedly ratifying it. It would take an isolationist–Rand Paul–Tucker Carlson takeover of the Republican Party for Republican senators to agree to another Democrat-delivered nuclear accord with the clerical regime. Tribal pride, let alone the likely conditions of any such agreement, would make a binding treaty with Iran’s theocracy impossible. And only a Senate-ratified treaty would give large corporations, especially energy firms, the needed sense of normalcy and predictability for making major investments in the Islamic Republic.
And the clerical regime may well expect that the next Democratic president might just give up. Joe Biden didn’t reveal a lot of spine on the Iraq War. Biden initially backed the invasion; he wanted to throw in the towel early. His proposal for a confessional/ethnic division of the country, beyond making no historical and geographical sense, was really a cover for a U.S. withdrawal. And Biden preferred a more cautious, patient approach in the hunt for Osama bin Laden than the SEAL-team raid that killed the Al-Qaeda leader. Given the disquiet and palpable fear that almost all Washington Democrats evinced after Trump took out Suleimani, it’s increasingly hard to imagine a Democratic president telling Tehran in the prelude to any new negotiations that “all options are on the table.” A Democratic president would, more likely, just try to “engage” the Iranian regime through substantial sanctions relief before any nuclear talks started, which is essentially what Bill Burns and Jake Sullivan, the tandem who conducted the secret diplomacy in Oman in 2012, which kicked off Obama’s nuclear diplomacy, recommended last October.
And as Ray Takeyh at the Council on Foreign Relations has pointed out, a new nuclear deal wouldn’t align now with Tehran’s nuclear progress. In 2012 the clerical regime was years away from developing advanced centrifuges, which require small cascades and are easily concealed. That’s not true today. Ali Salehi, an MIT Ph.D. in nuclear engineering who heads Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, led the technical discussions at the nuclear talks. Unfailingly loyal to the supreme leader, not averse to highlighting his cleverness, and determined to push the development of more advanced centrifuges, Salehi backed the JCPOA precisely because it overlapped well with the development of higher velocity machines, which the agreement allows. In 2015 Iranian nuclear engineers needed about eight years; the accord granted an eight-year provision for the construction of advanced centrifuges. Salehi is pretty sanguine now about Iran’s capacity to make considerable progress quickly. He may be lying about getting closer to a take-off point, but when it comes to verifiable technical achievements, and reflections on the Islamic Republic’s accomplishments, he’s not been particularly mendacious. A new agreement, which would be pointless unless it freezes the development of high-velocity centrifuges, wouldn’t be deemed by Iran’s physicists and engineers as helpful.
No new deal, billions of dollars in sanctions relief, no meaningful restrictions on Iran’s oil sales, occasional meetings among U.S., European, and Iranian diplomats, and adamant opposition to the elongation of any limitations on Tehran’s ability to purchase advanced weaponry (the clerical regime can legally purchase heavy weaponry and advanced fighters in October 2020 per UNSCR 2231) mightbe acceptable to the supreme leader. Probably not much more.
No Diplomatic Exit
If Khamenei were more clever than principled, he would, of course, engage Trump and see whether the American’s love of deal-making could lead him to substantial compromises, most importantly, splitting the nuclear question from Iranian imperialism and again allowing short sunset clauses, which would grant the Islamic Republic a massive nuclear-weapons infrastructure down the road. If Khamenei were to commit to talks, the vast inertia of Washington’s arms-control community would come into play. The isolationist right and its amplifiers on Fox would cheer. And a telephone call from Rouhani might just tweak the president’s vainglory. It would, however, entail for Khamenei and many other VIP Iranians a massive loss of face.
The supreme leader, who has never been cracked up about his country’s dependence upon oil and how that commodity ties Iran to Western companies, markets, and the dollar and opens the country to coercion (first Great Britain and then the United States have used sanctions to punishing effect), can seem almost relieved that Trump’s actions have obliged greater self-reliance and industry. Khamenei didn’t try to prevent President Akbar Hashemi–Rafsanjani’s efforts in the 1990s to bring in Western commerce and cash to fuel the Islamic Republic’s recovery from the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988); he accepted, if with some reservation, Rouhani’s argument that the clerical regime with the JCPOA could simultaneously achieve its nuclear aspirations, propel greater economic growth, and become a more modern and powerful Islamist state. Although always concerned about insidious Western penetration and perfidy, Khamenei didn’t let his cultural paranoia and autarkist instincts get the better of him. The odds are poor he would do so again.
And Khamenei’s resilience has an economic basis, too. Washington’s sanctions have, so far, barely dented the non-oil component of Iran’s economy. Non-oil exports are still bringing in around $40 billion per year (the big three are petrochemicals, distillates, and metals), and Tehran’s accessible foreign-currency reserves may be well above the $10 billion figure that the State Department cites as a hopeful datum signaling an imminent hard-currency meltdown. The Islamic Republic’s vast welfare state, which is essential for maintaining whatever loyalty the clerical regime has among the lower classes, burns cash. Yet the supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guards certainly have sufficient will, lethal intent, and likely sufficient funds to stave off financial Armageddon, at least for a few years.
The economic contraction brought on by the coronavirus may change these calculations. Less advanced economies really don’t have the option of following Rouhani’s mandan dar manzel (“stay at home”) advice. This may mean Iran is even more ravaged. It may also mean the economy adjusts, Iranians bury their dead and move on. Khamenei sermonized that this is really the only sensible course of action for his country. It’s wiser if Washington assumes that COVID-19 won’t crack the country. Sanctions against Iranian exports and imports need to become more potent, both in scope and enforcement, for the administration’s theorizing about a hard-currency meltdown paralyzing the clerical regime to be plausible. And getting the Europeans, who still have significant small- and medium-scale trade with Iran, to apply their own sanctions because of Tehran’s nuclear advance will be very challenging, especially while the coronavirus is spreading through the Old World. The clerical regime can import whatever medical supplies it wants through non-sanctioned Swiss channels. Western banks and European pharmaceutical companies, which know the Iranian market intimately, are well aware that the Trump administration has approved such transactions without reservation. But the optics of increasing sanctions on a country stricken with disease is surely too much for soft-power Europeans. Getting them to “snapback” all the pre-JCPOA U.N. sanctions against Iran, which the United States is, per the State Department lawyers who negotiated under Obama, legally entitled to do given Tehran’s violations of the JCPOA and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, would also be arduous, which likely explains why Foggy Bottom has been avoiding even trying.
President Trump is only in the early stages of dealing with increasingly truculent mullahs. It’s not clear that he has the mettle—but after the killing of Suleimani, one has to presume that he might—to handle Khamenei’s murderous machinations likely coming our way. It’s unlikely that the Democrats have the will to handle the supreme leader’s bloody-minded obstinance. The Iraq War burned Biden. If he wanted to be more cautious about killing bin Laden, it’s difficult imagining him checkmating the supreme leader.
As erratic as he can be, Trump probably can’t compromise much with Tehran on the nuclear question; it’s conceivable, depending on what Khamenei does, that he will even be bolder in trying to contain the clerical regime’s ambitions. The reasonable fear that many Iran hawks and conservatives had about Trump, that he would be inclined to cut a really bad deal with Tehran and label it “perfect,” seems much less likely after the death of Suleimani and the imposition of an ever-expanding array of sanctions. Even Trump is subject to momentum and gravity. For him to switch course now, to become more Obama than Obama, would reduce him to a laughing stock on an issue—the clerical regime’s 41-year knack for making the United States look weak—that deeply annoys the president. The supreme leader could change this situation, by surrendering to talks without massive sanctions-relief, but the odds of that are near zero. Trump may not seek out new ways to punish the regime before November, fearing an escalation that may be politically adverse, but his Iran policy—just keep squeezing—seems set in stone, if for no other reason than Khamenei probably won’t give him any other choice.
Supporters of the president, and just supporters of a tougher approach to the Islamic Republic, often air the view that if Khomeini could relent against Saddam Hussein and drink from the “poisoned chalice,” Khamenei, under severe economic pressure, could accept negotiations with Trump. This “realist” rendering of the clash between the United States and the Islamic Republic isn’t, however, compelling. The clerical regime was on the verge of collapse in 1988: Hundreds of thousands had died, a million men had been maimed; Revolutionary Guard forces were coming undone; the regular army had cracked; children were fighting in the trenches; Iranian cities were wide open to Iraqi chemical-weapons attacks, which Saddam had demonstrated that he was prepared to undertake; Washington had sunk a good part of the Iranian navy and (accidentally) blown out of the air an Iranian civilian jet liner; and the mullahs had no allies offering weapons, cash, or even moral support in the United Nations.
There is no indication today that the Revolutionary Guards have lost their mojo. Just the opposite. In November and December 2019, the Guards and the morals police, the Basij, the regime’s Brown Shirts, mowed down hundreds of demonstrators, who’d originally taken to the streets to protest a drop in gasoline subsidies. Security forces reportedly shot 400 protesters in just three days. Particular ferocity was used against the demonstrators in Iranian Kurdistan and the heavily Arab province of Ahvaz. It’s still impossible to confirm the reported figure of 1,500 dead. If that number is accurate, it’s a significant increase in the fallen from 2009, when Khamenei crushed the pro-democracy Green Movement, which put millions onto the streets of Tehran. Surely a big reason for the regime’s quick savagery last year is that the petrol demonstrations almost immediately turned into riots aimed at state institutions and the clergy, and in Ahvaz and Kurdistan, into armed encounters between oppressed, deeply embittered ethnic minorities and the security forces.
During and after the 2009 suppression, Khamenei removed several senior Guard commanders, it appears for either refusing or failing to show the requisite severity. That hasn’t happened with the 2019 protests. The Guards’ leadership appears today more ideologically harmonious and ruthless. Khamenei appears harsher. In 2009 he allowed for a certain official remorse about the crackdown (the videoed shooting of the beautiful Neda Agha-Soltan and the verified stories of torture, including rape, of jailed protesters, some of whom were the children of the ruling class, shocked many); in 2019, Khamenei mocked the protesters for their revolutionary faithlessness.
If the supreme leader were to make the concessions that the Trump administration has demanded, on the nuclear program, ballistic missiles, and regional aggression, including the support to radical Shiite militias and Sunnis throughout the Middle East, which would permanently shut down the clerical regime’s nuclear-weapons quest and ensure that the United States and Europe aren’t subsidizing Tehran’s imperialism, then he could well be toppled in a coup since Khamenei would have betrayed everythinghe has declared holy. In 1988 senior Revolutionary Guard commanders were begging for the war to end; when Rafsanjani, then the second most powerful cleric in Iran, and Khamenei, then the president, went to Khomeini to argue for a ceasefire and a de facto surrender, they represented a broad consensus within the ruling elite that war had to end quickly or the theocracy would collapse. In contrast, the supreme leader and the Guard generals today appear unified in taking a hard line towards their own citizens and the United States.
Trump is obviously not a regime changer and doesn’t appear to care really whether Iranians, or foreigners anywhere, live in a democracy. Discussions about the causes of Islamic militancy or how to corral it (for example, through the ballot box), don’t appear to interest him in the slightest. But Trump’s willingness to take risks rivals Khamenei’s. And there is something about the Islamic Republic, perhaps rooted in memories of America being laid low in the embassy hostage crisis, that makes Trump at least qualify his view of the Muslim Middle East as a sandbox not worth the fight. It’s not inconceivable that as Khamenei approves more operations that kill Americans — and given what’s already happened, that’s likely—in response Trump abandons his aversion to adopting a containment strategy. Depending on how bloody and ambitious Khamenei’s actions are, it’s conceivable that Congress could again even authorize covert action and allow for a larger, more assertive US military commitment in Syria. Such a policy might bring serious pressure on Iran in the Persian Gulf and bleed the Revolutionary Guards and Shiite militias in Syria through CIA-delivered military aid to Sunnis. A patient policy of regime change isn’t unthinkable.
Insufficient Dissuasion
Trump is currently caught in a contradictory situation: He has shocked the Iranian ruling elite with his strike against the Quds Force commander, the operational overlord of the Islamic Republic’s foreign adventures. Yet the president has diligently avoided any containment effort, which would constrain Iranian actions—except near Dayr az-Zor at the Syrian–Iraqi border, where U.S. troops still remain, blocking an Iranian “land bridge” between Iraq’s primary highway system and Syria’s. In the southern Middle East, the White House has refrained from making any direct, defensive commitment to the Sunni Gulf states or non-American shipping in the Persian Gulf, despite Iranian mining and missile attacks. More U.S. troops have been sent to the region, but it’s uncertain that President Trump would use them to defend foreigners.
Such restraint surely made it more likely that Tehran would aggressively test the United States, which is exactly what happened before Suleimani’s death, when Iran-backed Shiite Iraqi militias repeatedly rocketed U.S. forces, eventually killing an American contractor. The president’s preference for such “strategic caution,” coupled with an aggressive use of sanctions, which has become Washington’s preferred coercive tool because it has allowed the United States to bring pressure without using armed force, makes it much more likely, however, that Khamenei will again target Westerners in the Middle East, including U.S. soldiers and civilians. As the diplomatic historian Robert Kagan has noted about U.S. actions toward Japan before Pearl Harbor: The United States did enough to anger the Japanese empire but not enough to intimidate it. Trump really annoys Khamenei, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the strike against Suleimani, as unexpected and shocking as it was, wasn’t enough to implant paralyzing fear.
And American attacks against Iraqi Shiite militias tied to Iran aren’t likely to have any lingering dissuasive effect on the mullahs’ intentions and actions. A tit-for-tat game with these forces, where the administration refrains from striking Iran for the lethal actions of Shiite militias that Iran controls or subventions, will undermine the perception that Trump is willing to kill Iranians. For Trump to deter Tehran, he must strike the Revolutionary Guards directly. Jerusalem has fundamentally changed Iranian calculations and plans in the Levant by its continuous bombing of Iranian bases, vehicles, and personnel. According to Israeli defense and intelligence officials, Tehran had plans to open major Revolutionary Guard Corps bases in Syria; they have shelved them. What is striking and instructional is the significant damage and fatalities Israel has inflicted upon the clerical regime, and Khamenei’s understated response. How Trump does what is required to deter, assuming he is willing to, given opposition in Congress, is an open question. A classic containment strategy against the Islamic Republic may require new legislation. It may be politically impossible.
Continuing doubts about America’s commitment to the region will also likely encourage the clerical regime’s penchant for terrorism, particularly assassinations of dissident Iranian expatriates. The supreme leader greenlighted a terrorist attack against an Iranian opposition group outside Paris in June, 2018—a bombing operation that could have killed dozens, possibly hundreds, if Western European security services hadn’t thwarted it. The Iranian regime has never forsaken terrorism. There was a pause when the clerical reformer Mohammad Khatami unexpectedly won the presidential election in 1997 and flustered the ruling hierarchy, including the Ministry of Intelligence, which was then the primary agency for killing surreptitiously. The attempted attack in Villepinte was bold and signaled, at a minimum, that Khamenei had grown bored with Europeans as counterweights to America.
And President Trump is unlikely to escape his bind: The more effective sanctions are against the Islamic Republic, and the administration’s unilateral measures have proven more costly to the clerical regime than combined U.S.-European-U.N. sanctions were in the lead up to the nuclear negotiations under Obama, the more likely it is that Khamenei decides to unleash more attacks against Americans, Europeans, and Sunni Gulf Arabs, which could oblige the White House to escalate, which Trump doesn’t want to do. Any American policy that actually tries to thwart the Iranian regime’s ambitions, which includes its three-decade effort to develop atomic arms, will risk war. Americans who judge the rightness of any policy by its risk of conflict are really saying that no policy that effectively challenges Iranian supremacy in the region is acceptable. This is essentially the position taken by the Obama administration; it was emphatically the stance taken by Senator Bernie Sanders and others on the left.
And Khamenei has little to lose by being aggressive, especially if he doesn’t directly target Americans, since doing nothing leaves him in a losing status quo, where his economy slowly crashes, his people become angrier and possibly more rebellious, and the more religiously militant forces in his own society demand vengeance against Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign. Wounding the United States, driving back its physical and cultural presence in the Muslim Middle East, remains a raison d’être of the Islamic Republic; this is über true when the ruling mullahs and senior officers in the Guards feel the need to reassert their dominion at home. The supreme leader may not want a big head-on collision with Washington since the odds disfavor Iran so enormously and so much of the Islamic Republic’s leadership, especially in its domestic-security apparatus, would be prey to America’s high-tech weapons. But he is clearly willing to risk a lot, which was shown in his reprisal for Suleimani’s death. The Iranian missiles used against the Ayn al-Assad base may have had primitive gyroscopes, but they easily could have done more than concussed American soldiers. And there were Americans all over the opposition gathering at Villepinte, including Rudy Giuliani; they, too, could have died if not for Western security measures.
Fortunately, the Islamic Republic no longer has the capacity to launch suicide bombers/live-to-die assassins against its enemies: Iran’s and Lebanon’s more traditional “12ver” Shiite clergy recoiled from this practice in the 1990s, as it also vetoed women becoming agents of jihad a decade earlier. State-sponsored terrorism, either direct or through third parties—and ballistic missiles, drones, and cruise missiles, openly claimed or camouflaged through proxies—is how the clerics prefer to respond when angry. The Islamic Republic’s capacity to inflict pain, vastly greater than Al-Qaeda’s or the Islamic State’s, has always been corralled by its understanding of American red lines. The Revolutionary Guards open fondness for jang-e namotaqaren, or asymmetrical warfare, grew out of their own conventional weakness and the need to dodge American might through clandestine or third-party actions. The common wisdom, for example, that Tehran would never invade Bahrain, a strategic gateway to the Arabian peninsula with its badly oppressed Shiite population, which Iran controlled in the 17th and 18th centuries, is questionable the moment the American naval base there closes. If Riyadh isn’t up to the task of checking Tehran, and Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman did nothing after the Iranians droned and cruise-missiled the Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in September, then Iran, armed openly by Russia, could rapidly and permanently change the region. The entire way we think the oil-rich Middle East functions, even after the retrenchment of Obama and Trump, is premised on sufficient countervailing U.S. force. Take it away and the inconceivable becomes thinkable. The Israeli Air Force just doesn’t have the dissuasive power. And the Europeans no longer matter.
*Reuel Marc Gerecht a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and one of the country’s leading experts on Iran and its Islamic revolution.

Palestinians and Israelis show peace is attainable with coordinated COVID-19 response
Hussain Abdul-Hussain/Al Arabiya/April 14/2020
Palestinian and Israeli authorities are being praised by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), for maintaining “a close, unprecedented cooperation on efforts aimed at containing” the novel coronavirus. The collaboration has included regular meetings, Israeli training of Palestinian medical teams, and donation of testing kits and Personal Protection Equipment (PPEs) to the West Bank and Gaza.
Like all other world governments facing the COVID-19 pandemic, Israel must have realized this threat cannot be held back by walls or checkpoints, but by making sure that Palestinians stay virus-free.
The Palestinians, for their part, seem to have understood that their health depends on cooperating with the Israeli government. But old habits die hard.
Perhaps Palestinian militant group Hamas felt ashamed of coordinating with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and of accepting Israeli testing kits and other aid. To save face, Hamas arrested Palestinian peace activists in Gaza for organizing an online conference call with Israeli proponents of peace. Hamas accused the Gazan activists of “normalization with Israel” and “treason.”
Not to be outdone by Hamas, PA media started airing reports that 73 percent of infected cases in the West Bank had come either from Israeli troops in the Palestinian Territories or from Palestinians working in Israel. One in five West Bankers work in Israel or Israeli settlements.
Israeli authorities reportedly “fumed” over the Palestinian media reports and sent the PA a stern message to cut out “the incitement.”
Politicking aside, with Israel’s support, the Palestinian response to the global coronavirus pandemic seems to be ahead of the curve, especially when compared to other Levantine countries.
According to the website Worldometer, Palestine has so far tested 3,400 Palestinians for every one million of its population, which outperforms Lebanon, at 2,257, and neighboring Jordan, at 2,009.
Palestinian testing lags behind Israel, at 13,600 per one million, but judging by reports of death cases, the Palestinians seem to outperform Israel. Palestine so far registered only two cases deaths compared to Israel’s 110. Worldometer's "death per 1 million” is currently 14 in Israel and 0.4 in Palestine.
Israel does not seem to have had its response to the coronavirus completely figured out, as the outbreak has seemingly gotten out-of-hand. But despite its troubles, Israel appears to have realized that combating the epidemic is impossible without eradicating it among both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Deadly viruses affect people indiscriminately - both Israelis and Palestinians.
Since the signing of the first Oslo Accord in 1993, cooperation between the Palestinians and the Israelis has — almost always — resulted in good results for both sides, especially when coordination took place behind closed doors.
It is only when both parties find themselves in front of cameras that goodwill turns into hateful words and incitement. Perhaps leaders on both sides reason that their respective populations expect hatred and conflict instead of love and peace.
Perhaps, like most other leaders around the globe, some Palestinian leaders found it expedient to scapegoat Israel, as a way of hiding their subpar performance. But good leadership is not about popularity. Good leaders take whatever measures they deem to be in the best interest of their people, even if such measures prove to be unpopular.
Coordination between the Palestinians and the Israelis may be on its way to help avert a disaster among Palestinians. Should the PA and Hamas decide to expand their cooperation with Israel over other matters of immediate interest to the Palestinians — such as infrastructure, freedom of movement and economics — while differing about contentious political matters — like sovereignty — Palestinians might be able to alleviate their miserable living conditions.
Former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad - arguably one of the best to have governed Palestinians and under whose watch the West Bank economy jumped by leaps and bounds - was the godfather of the policy of alleviating Palestinian suffering now and sorting out sovereign issues with Israel later.
Hamas, for its part, sees things in the totally opposite way: Sovereignty and imagined “national dignity” trumps all other matters, including the livelihood of Palestinians. According to Hamas, Palestinians should die for sovereignty, not sacrifice sovereignty in order to improve their abysmal quality of life.
The current coordination between Israel and the Palestinian territories shows that allowing the Palestinians to live a good life is not impossible. The sooner the two sides realize it is in their best interests to defuse the ticking time bomb of an increasingly impoverished and desperate Palestinian populace, the better.
*Hussain Abdul-Hussain is an Iraqi-Lebanese columnist and writer. He is the Washington bureau chief of Kuwaiti daily al-Rai and a former visiting fellow at Chatham House in London. He tweets @hahussain.