English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For August 20/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke 13/10-17/:”Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, ‘There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.’ But the Lord answered him and said, ‘You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?’ When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.”
”
Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 19-20/2020

US Welcomes Hariri Verdict, Slams Hezbollah’s ‘Degradation’ of Lebanon
MoPH confirms 589 new Coronavirus cases in Lebanon
Hariri Hospital: 24 out of 81 Coronavirus cases critical
Aoun discusses with Berri ongoing contacts to form new government.
Army says aid continues to arrive in Beirut from fraternal, friendly countries
Hezbollah Has ‘Taken Hostage’ Lebanese People's Future, Says Israel on Hariri Verdict
ESCWA warns: more than half of Lebanon’s population trapped in poverty
For Some Lebanese, UN Tribunal's Hariri Ruling Is Not Enough
Lebanon Welcomes STL Verdict amid Calls to Maintain ‘National Unity’
Lebanese Lawyer Files Complaint against Aoun, Diab over Beirut Blast
No bailout for Lebanon until reforms are implemented: US official
Security fears in Lebanon after reports of Turkish weapons shipments
That's it?' Drained Lebanese Shrug off Hariri Verdict
Lebanon has hit ‘rock bottom,’ must reform for long-term aid: US
Daryan Urges International Probe into Beirut Blast, Radical Authority Change
Report: France Leading Efforts to Facilitate Formation of New Govt.
Zasypkin Hails ‘Responsible’ Positions after STL Ruling in Hariri Murder
Gunmen Kidnap Mayor of Neighborhood in Hermel
Lebanon's Grand Mufti Urges International Investigation into Blast
Beirut Explosion Impacts Exports to Syria
Hariri Tribunal and the Fate of the Probe in the Beirut Blast
On Feigned Tears Shed for Beirut and Lebanon/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
Lebanon's government resigned after the Beirut port blast. Here's what needs to happen now./H.R. McMaster, former White House national security adviser/Think/August 19/2020
Lebanese surprised only one Hezbollah suspect convicted in Hariri case/The Arab Weekly/August 19/2020
Rafik Hariri verdict: Nearly $1bn later, where is the justice?/Kareem Shaheen/The National/August 19/2020
Lebanon Needs Transformation, Not Another Corrupt Unity Government/Hanin Ghaddar/The Washington Institute-Foreign Policy/August 19/2020
Gun boat diplomacy in Lebanon will not bring back former PM Saad Hariri/Makram Rabah/Al Arabiya/Wednesday 19 August 2020
No bailout for Lebanon without serious reforms, senior US official warns/Joyce Karam/The National/August 19/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 19-20/2020

Pope warns rich countries against coronavirus vaccine nationalism
Riyadh reiterates commitment to Arab Peace Initiative
German authorities label Berlin car crashes ‘Islamist-motivated attack’
The UAE and F-35s story isn’t over just because Israel doesn’t like it
US to impose UN sanctions ‘snapback’ on Iran: Trump
Turkey provides base for '20,000 Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood' supporters
US announces new aid to Iraq, but warns that ‘armed groups’ must be controlled
Sudanese Foreign Ministry backtracks on call for peace with Israel
Sudan Fires Foreign Ministry Spokesman Following Israel Remarks
IDF launches retaliatory airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza
Iraqi PM to Washington: We Do Not Play the Role of Postman
Israeli Jets Bomb Gaza
West Bank Settlers Say Netanyahu Duped them with Annexation Backtrack
Iraq PM Sacks Basra Security Officials after Assassination of Activists
International Reports Warn of Economic Contraction, Famine in Yemen
Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan Exchange Proposals on GERD’s Filling

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 19-20/2020

Can Israel’s symbolic victory turn Khartoum's famous ‘no’s’ into a ‘yes’?/Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem Post/August 19/2020
Peace Between UAE, Israel Isn’t a Deal About Palestine/Camelia Entekhabifard/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv...The Truth is Painful/Salman Al-Dossary/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
Covid-19 Vaccine Push Lacks a Key Ingredient: Trust/Timothy L. O'Brien and Max Nisen/Bloomberg/August 19/2020
Arabs Are Fed Up With the 'Ungrateful' Palestinians/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/August 19/ 2020
The Dangerous Illusion of Restraining U.S. Power/Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz/Foreign Policy/August 19/2020
‘Snapback’ sanctions on Iran could make up for UN Security Council’s error/Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri/Arab News/August 19/2020
 

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on August 19-20/2020

US Welcomes Hariri Verdict, Slams Hezbollah’s ‘Degradation’ of Lebanon
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
The United States welcomed the guilty verdict handed down by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) against Hezbollah operative Salim Ayyash for his role in the February 14, 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, announced Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday.
“This act of terrorism also claimed the lives of 21 additional victims and resulted in injuries to 226 others. Although Ayyash remains at large, the STL’s ruling underscores the importance of rendering justice and ending impunity, which is imperative to ensuring Lebanon’s security, stability, and sovereignty,” he said in a statement. Hezbollah operatives do not freelance. Ayyash’s conviction helps confirm what the world is increasingly recognizing—that Hezbollah and its members are not defenders of Lebanon as they claim to be but constitute a terrorist organization dedicated to advancing Iran’s malign sectarian agenda,” he charged. “From Beirut in 1983, to Buenos Aires in 1994, to Bulgaria in 2012, Hezbollah’s terrorist attacks across the world have resulted in the wanton killing of hundreds of people and caused the misery of many thousands more,” he continued.
“As the Lebanese people suffer through a crushing economic crisis, Hezbollah’s exploitation of Lebanon’s financial system, its degradation of Lebanese institutions and its provocative and dangerous actions threaten the Lebanese people and jeopardize Lebanon’s financial well-being and potential recovery,” Pompeo warned. “As I have said many times before, Hezbollah’s terrorist and illicit activities in Lebanon and throughout the world demonstrate that it is more concerned with its own interests and those of its patron, Iran, than what is best for Lebanon and the Lebanese people.”

MoPH confirms 589 new Coronavirus cases in Lebanon
NNA/August 19/2020
589 new cases of the novel coronavirus have been confirmed in Lebanon a statement by the Ministry of Public Health said on Wednesday, raising the tally of infected people in the country to 10347.
581 cases were locally detected and 8 among returnees.

Hariri Hospital: 24 out of 81 Coronavirus cases critical
NNA/August 19/2020
In its daily report on the latest COVID-19 developments, the Rafic Hariri University Hospital indicated on Wednesday that zero deaths have been registered today, while 24 critical cases are receiving medical attention at the hospital.
The report stated that 810 tests were carried out at the hospital's laboratories during the past 24 hours. It added that the number of patients infected with coronavirus who are currently receiving treatment and follow-up at the hospital is 81, while 20 suspected cases were transferred from other hospitals within the past 24 hours.
Moreover, the hospital disclosed that 3 recoveries have been registered during the past 24 hours; thus maintaining the total number of recoveries to-date at 338 cases.
“Two cases were transferred from intensive care to the isolation unit after their condition has improved," the report stated.
The Hariri Hospital concluded its report by reminding citizens that the Coronavirus Call Center for emergency response and inquiry about test results operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including public holidays, and can be reached through the landline number 01-820830, or through the WhatsApp contact service 76-897961.

Aoun discusses with Berri ongoing contacts to form new government.
NNA/August 19/2020
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, received today the Speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, at the Presidential Palace, and discussed with him the general situation in the country and the ongoing contacts to form a new government.
After the meeting and while leaving, Speaker Berri told reporters, "Communication with His Excellency the President continues”.
Commissioner for Refugees:
President Aoun received the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Mr. FilippoGrandi, accompanied by a delegation that included the director of the UNHCR regional office in the Middle East and North Africa, Mr. Amine Gharabeh, the representative of the UNHCR office in Lebanon, Mrs. MireilleGirard, and the contact person at the UNHCR office in Beirut, Mr. Dominique Tohme.
During the meeting, Mr. Grandi offered the President of the Republic his condolences to the victims of the Beirut Port explosion and his wishes for a speedy recovery to the wounded, presenting what the Commission has done to provide assistance to those affected by the explosion, especially those who left their damaged homes, and pointed out that UNHCR's assistance is usually directed to Syrian refugees and displaced persons. “However, due to the enormity of what happened, the Commission decided to distribute urgent aid to the Lebanese, while continuing its interest in the displaced, as millions of dollars were allocated for immediate relief and assistance to hospitals that were damaged as a result of the explosion, and the Commission will cooperate with the Lebanese Red Cross to prepare a shelter program for about 100,000 people in addition to programs dedicated to psychological and other immediate humanitarian aid” Grandisaid. Grandi also pointed out that the United Nations organizations are working in coordination with each other to provide the required support to the affected Lebanese, in parallel with the continuation of the programs of concern for the displaced Syrians.
For his part, President Aoun thanked Commissioner Grandi for his affection and for the assistance provided by the Commission and for the assistance it would provide to the affected Lebanese. President Aoun handed Mr. Grandi a copy of the plan approved by the government for the issue of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, presenting the direct repercussions of the Syrian displacement on all Lebanese sectors, which exceeded $ 30 billion, without mentioning the direct losses suffered by the Lebanese economy.. The research also tackled the voluntary return of a number of displaced Syrians to their country, as Commissioner Grandi confirmed that the UNHCR continues its interest in the returnees and is communicating with the Syrian government to coordinate this aid and care for the returnees to their country.
Then, Mr. Grandi pointed out that the Commission is working to obtain financial support from donor countries to enable it to fulfill its responsibilities in Lebanon and abroad. The meeting was also attended by: Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Charbel Wahba, former Minister, Salim Jreissati, and advisors Brigadier General Paul Matar, Rafik Chelala and Osama Khashab.
Deputy Special Coordinator of the United Nations in Lebanon:
The President also received the UN Special Coordinator in Lebanon, Mr. Jan Kubis, accompanied by the newly appointed Deputy Coordinator, Mrs. Najat Rushdie, who will assume the duties of the Resident Coordinator for the United Nations activities and humanitarian affairs, with a delegation that included, Nayla Hajjar and Lina Al-Kaddoura.
During the meeting, Kubis conveyed to President Aoun the greetings of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Guterres, and his daily concern for the situation in Lebanon after the recent Beirut Port explosion. Kubis explained the tasks that will be undertaken by Ms. Rushdie, who will in particular coordinate the humanitarian aid provided by the United Nations organizations. Mrs. Rushdie said that upon her arrival in Beirut, she assumed her duties as a result of the explosionand focused on helping save the lives of the injured, providing them with nutrition and caring for the wounded. She pointed out that the focus will be on educational affairs, to secure schools for the affected students, to restore housing, to ensure food safety (wheat, flour ...), and to help restore the port.
President Aoun welcomed Mrs. Rushdie, wishing her success in her new responsibilities, thanking her for the interest shown upon her arrival in Beirut to relieve those affected by the port explosion. The President also stressed the importance of coordination between the various United Nations organizations in order to deliver the aid to those in need, pointing out that during the Paris Conference he asked the leaders of the participating countries to form an international committee to coordinate the aid and supervise its distribution in order to preserve transparency and to let the aid to reach the people who deserve it.
On the Lebanese side, the meeting was attended by former Minister Salim Jreissati, Director General of the Presidency of the Republic Dr. Antoine Choucair, and advisers Rafik Chelala, and Osama Khashab.--Presidency Press office

Army says aid continues to arrive in Beirut from fraternal, friendly countries
NNA/August 19/2020
The Lebanese Army Command on Wednesday issued a statement saying that aid continued to arrive from brotherly and friendly countries to Beirut. “In this context, three planes loaded with food and medical aid landed at Rafic Hariri International Airport from 8/18/2020 noon until 8/19/2020 noon. A ship loaded with wheat provided by the World Food Program had also arrived at Beirut port,” the Army’s statement said. The list of countries that have sent aid in alphabetical order: The Arab Republic of Egypt: Medical and food aid United Kingdom: Medical aid The Kingdom of Morocco: Medical aid .

Hezbollah Has ‘Taken Hostage’ Lebanese People's Future, Says Israel on Hariri Verdict
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Israel’s foreign ministry reacted to the verdict in the case of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination by saying Hezbollah had “taken hostage” the future of the Lebanese people. “The ruling of the tribunal that investigated the murder of Prime Minister Hariri and which was made public today is unequivocal. The Hezbollah terrorist group and its personnel were involved in the murder and in obstructing the investigation,” an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement. “Hezbollah has taken hostage the future of the Lebanese in the service of foreign interests. The countries of the world must take action against this terrorist group in order to assist Lebanon in liberating itself from this menace. “Hezbollah’s military build-up, its efforts to set up a precision-guided missile arsenal, and its actions endanger the entire region.” A UN-backed court on Tuesday convicted a Hezbollah member in the 2005 assassination. Hezbollah denies any involvement in the bomb attack that also killed 21 other people. Fireworks were briefly heard in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburbs after the verdict was announced.

ESCWA warns: more than half of Lebanon’s population trapped in poverty
NNA/August 19/2020
Hit by a cataclysmic blast and daily spikes in COVID-19 cases, Lebanon is crippled by the impact of multiple shocks which have exhausted its economy and caused an unprecedented increase in its headcount poverty rate. Estimates reveal that more than 55% of the country’s population is now trapped in poverty and struggling for bare necessities, i.e., almost double last year’s rate which was 28%. Extreme poverty has registered a threefold increase from 8% in 2019 to 23% in 2020. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) today sounds the alarm in a new policy brief entitled “Poverty in Lebanon: Impact of Multiple Shocks and Call for Solidarity.” The brief indicates that the total number of poor among the Lebanese population is currently about 2.7 million, taking the upper poverty line as reference (i.e., the number of people living on less than $14 a day). There is thus a significant erosion of the middle class, with middle-income earners now forming less than 40% of the population. The affluent group has also shrunk to a third of its size, from 15% to 5% of the population over the past year.
Commenting on those figures, ESCWA Executive Secretary Rola Dashti affirmed: “Establishing a national solidarity fund is crucial to tackle the country’s humanitarian crisis and close the poverty gap. Donor support is also urgently needed to bolster food and health security, and ensure wider social protection.”
According to the brief, societal solidarity is indeed a necessity, as Lebanon has one of the most unequal wealth distributions in the Arab region and the world. In 2019, the richest 10% owned about 70% of all personal wealth in the country estimated at $232.2 billion. While this percentage is expected to decrease due to the multiple shocks at play, high inequality in the distribution of wealth will persist. Dashti considered that addressing the crises would require transformation towards implementing the necessary economic governance reforms, limiting rent-seeking activities, and enhancing transparency and accountability. “There should also be a fair and progressive system of shared responsibility, supported by political will and strong institutional capacity to ensure societal solidarity,” she concluded.
The policy brief is part of a series of impact assessments of COVID-19 undertaken by ESCWA to support Arab Governments in joining efforts to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. --ESCWA Press Release

For Some Lebanese, UN Tribunal's Hariri Ruling Is Not Enough
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
The son of Lebanon's slain former premier Rafik al-Hariri vowed he would not rest until the killers are punished after a UN-backed court on Tuesday convicted a member of the Iran-backed Hezbollah group of involvement in the 2005 assassination. In central Beirut, Hariri family members and loyalists stood at his grave waiting for his son, Saad, also a former premier, to speak from outside the tribunal in The Hague. "(For) the first time in Lebanon's history of many political assassinations, the Lebanese find out the truth," Hariri said. "The importance of this historic moment is the message for those that committed this terrorist crime and those who planned it: that the age of using crimes for political aims with impunity and without paying any cost is over." Some Lebanese, including victims of the attack who waited 15 years for a verdict, voiced disbelief at the acquittal of three other Hezbollah members. The tribunal also said it found no evidence of involvement by Shiite Hezbollah's leadership or by Damascus. "I am shocked. Instead of the network (of culprits) expanding, it is now one superman who has done all of that?" said Sanaa al Sheikh, who was wounded in the Feb. 14, 2005 bomb blast on Beirut's waterfront that killed Hariri and 21 others. She told Reuters that she had never expected such an outcome. "They should pay us back the money they got," said Mahmoud, speaking from a Sunni Muslim district of Beirut mostly loyal to the Hariris. The trial cost roughly $1 billion. Hezbollah made no immediate comment on the ruling, but it has denied any involvement in the killing. Fireworks were briefly heard in Beirut's Shi'ite southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway. "It was a false accusation and thank God now you see that our viewpoint has been confirmed," said Hassan Chouman, a pro-Hezbollah official in a small Beirut neighborhood. "This has not been on our mind for a long time."
SON DEMANDS PUNISHMENT
The sentencing of Salim Jamil Ayyash, who was convicted while being tried in absentia for playing a central role in the execution of the attack, will be carried out later. He could face life imprisonment. Hezbollah, designated by Washington as a terrorist group, has more influence than ever on the Lebanese state governed by a sectarian power-sharing system. Christian President Michel Aoun and Shi'ite Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, both political allies of Hezbollah, called for unity after the verdict. But Saad al-Hariri said he would not rest until justice had been served. "We tell everybody: nobody (should) expect any more sacrifices from us. We have sacrificed what is dearest to us ... Hezbollah is the one that should make sacrifices today," he said. "It has become clear that the executing network is from within (Hezbollah's) ranks. They think that justice will not reach them and that the punishment will not be served on them. I repeat: we will not rest until punishment is served."The head of the Christian Kataeb party, whose three lawmakers quit over the massive blast in Beirut port this month, said on Twitter: "How long will the world continue to ignore an armed group empowered from abroad and not by Lebanon?"

Lebanon Welcomes STL Verdict amid Calls to Maintain ‘National Unity’
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Lebanese officials and political figures welcomed the verdict issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, while calls mounted for the need to preserve national unity and save the country from its current crisis. President Michel Aoun said that the court ruling should be an occasion to recall the positions of the late former premier and his constant calls for unity and solidarity. “No one is greater than his own country,” Aoun said, quoting Hariri. He emphasized the importance of the former prime minister’s call on the Lebanese to join efforts in order to protect the country from any attempt aimed at stirring strife. Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said: “Just as Lebanon lost on February 14, 2005, with the martyrdom of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, an irreplaceable national figure, today and after the ruling of the Special Tribunal, it is necessary that we win the Lebanon that the late prime minister believed in; a unified nation.”He urged the Lebanese people to “demonstrate reason and kindness, as expressed by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri on behalf of the family of the deceased.”
In comments, caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab said he hoped that the verdict would pave the way to “achieve justice and promote stability… so that the country emerges strongly from this ordeal, embracing national unity, civil peace and coexistence.”In a statement, former PM Najib Mikati noted that with the ruling, “Lebanon enters the era of justice for all the assassinations and political violence for which the Lebanese have paid a heavy price over many years.”

Lebanese Lawyer Files Complaint against Aoun, Diab over Beirut Blast
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
A Lebanese lawyer filed a legal complaint on Wednesday against President Michel Aoun and outgoing Prime Minister Hassan Diab for not taking action to remove dangerous material that had been stored at the port of Beirut. The material — 2,750 of ammonium nitrate —ignited on August 4, killing scores and wounding thousands of people. The move by lawyer Majd Harb is largely symbolic, based on the fact that Aoun and Diab received a security report two weeks before the explosion, warning about the dangers of storing the chemical. Following the blast, Aoun said that once he received the report, he asked his military adviser to immediately act on it and do what was necessary. However, it was not clear why the material was not removed. There has been no comment from Diab, who resigned under pressure few days after the blast. “They did not take any measures to prevent the explosion,” Harb’s complaint said. Documents that surfaced after the blast, showed that many customs, port, intelligence, military and judicial officials, as well as political leaders, knew about the stockpile of ammonium nitrate at Warehouse 12 at Beirut’s port and nothing was done. The explosion, which killed 180 people, injured about 6,000 and left nearly 300,000 people homeless was the most destructive single incident in Lebanon’s history, leaving losses worth between $10 and $15 billion. There are 30 still missing after the explosion. So far authorities have detained 19 persons, many of them customs and port officials, for questioning. The head of the port and the country’s customs chief were both formally detained earlier this week.

No bailout for Lebanon until reforms are implemented: US official
Joseph Haboush/Al Arabiya English/Wednesday 19 August 2020
The United States will not help Lebanon with a bailout until the country’s leadership stops ignoring popular demands, a senior US official said Wednesday, weeks after a deadly explosion at the Port of Beirut killed hundreds and injured thousands. “That era is over. There is no more money for that,” US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale told reporters on Wednesday. Hale, who recently returned from a visit to Beirut, said that Lebanon had hit “rock bottom” and blasted the ruling elite for using “the system in order to enrich themselves.”Hale said the reforms needed for Lebanon to climb out of the current economic and financial crisis were “contrary to the interests” of the ruling elite in the country, including Hezbollah. And if the Lebanese leadership does not change or implement the necessary reforms, Hale said he was convinced that the public would “increase the pressure on them.”The US diplomat said the changes needed could not be made “from the outside [of Lebanon],” but “Lebanese leaders have to exercise the political will” to do so.

Security fears in Lebanon after reports of Turkish weapons shipments
Joseph Haboush/Al Arabiya English/Wednesday 19 August 2020
Fears over a security incident in Lebanon have grown in recent days with Turkey allegedly flooding parts of the country with weapons, officials said, using the northern border with Syria. Three diplomats confirmed to Al Arabiya English hearing about the Turkish-backed movement of arms.
Two Lebanese army intelligence sources also voiced their concern over the matter. One of the intelligence sources spoke to Al Arabiya English following a surveillance operation by a branch of the army in north Lebanon, earlier this week.
“We are pretty worried about what’s going on. The Turks are sending an incredible amount of weapons into the north,” the intelligence source said. Asked about the flow of Turkish weapons, a senior Lebanese diplomat said there were no specific details, but “we know they’re active.”
“We are keeping an eye on it and staying in contact with the United States administration,” the diplomat said. The US State Department referred questions to the governments of Lebanon and Turkey and said that it does not comment on foreign intelligence reports. Turkey had long been influential in Lebanon - most recently with two Turkish power barges docking off Lebanon’s coasts to help with the neglected electricity sector. Politically, it backs members of Lebanon’s small, but active, Muslim Brotherhood branch. Three days after the Aug. 4 explosions in Beirut, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency published an article titled “Turkey rushes to help Lebanon amid deadly explosion.” Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Oktay and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu jetted to Beirut days after and said that Ankara was willing to rebuild the port. From Beirut, Cavusoglu said Turkey stood with its “kin, the Turks and Turkmens in Lebanon and around the world.”He added: “We will grant Turkish citizenship to our brothers who say ‘I am Turkish, I am Turkmen,’ and express their desire to become a citizen. These are our [Turkish] President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan’s instructions.” A diplomat in the region said that more weapons in Lebanon were the last thing needed. Iran-backed Hezbollah has flaunted its arms and has repeatedly boasted about its arsenal of missiles and rockets. Several other non-state groups and militias, including the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, who hold annual parades in Battle Dress Uniforms (BDU), also possess weapons. Turkey is also locked in a dispute with much of Europe and the Arab world over its interference in Libya and Iraq as well as its offshore digging in the Eastern Mediterranean waters of Cyprus and Greece. France, Turkey’s NATO ally, has been an outspoken critic of Ankara’s “unacceptable” behavior in recent months. Cavusoglu hit out at Germany over its disagreement over the Libya crisis. On Aug. 6, the Turkish foreign minister accused Germany of taking part in a “biased” EU initiative, which calls for a UN arms embargo to Libya’s fighting sides. As for Turkey’s deteriorating relationship with France, Erdogan was reportedly frustrated with the outpouring of support for French President Emmanuel Macron during the latter’s Beirut visit. The Turkish Embassy in Beirut did not respond to a request for comment. The French Foreign Ministry was also unable to be reached for comment.
Firas Maksad, an adjunct professor at George Washington University, said Lebanon was a disputed territory. “There might be growing Turkish involvement in Lebanon and perhaps it is an inexpensive arena for the Turks to play in. It’s readily available and doesn’t cost much,” Maksad told Al Arabiya English.
 

That's it?' Drained Lebanese Shrug off Hariri Verdict
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/August 19/2020
Worn down by economic crisis and traumatised by Beirut's monster blast, the Rafic Hariri murder verdict after a 15-year wait for "the truth" came as an anti-climax for despondent Lebanese. The Netherlands-based special court set up to investigate and try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Hariri issued a ruling Tuesday that fell short of many expectations. With all four suspects presumed members of the Shiite movement Hizbullah, fears had been high that pro-Hariri and Hizbullah strongholds across Lebanon could erupt, whichever way the verdict went. The UN-mandated Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) ended up finding one suspect guilty and acquitting three others, recognising that Hariri's death was politically motivated but stopping short of working far up the chain of responsibility. All four suspects were tried in absentia. The judges said they could not establish a direct link with the Hizbullah leadership or Syria, against whose military occupation of Lebanon the ex-premier had been campaigning just before his death. "It was all useless... For 15 years they have taken money for nothing," Saad al-Ferikh, a young resident of Tariq al-Jdideh, the main Hariri bastion in Beirut, said moments after the verdict was broadcast on live television. With Lebanon sinking ever deeper into economic crisis and poverty, many argued that the STL's huge budget, which exceeded that of the Lebanese justice ministry, was not money well spent. Estimates of the tribunal's total cost range from $600 million to one billion.
- 'A joke' -
"While few actually expected anyone to be apprehended, some argue that the trial itself sets a precedent in international law, said Faysal Itani, a deputy director at the Center for Global Policy. "I'm not sure this precedent was worth all the time, money and political instability," he said. Also in Tariq al-Jdideh, another resident, Rayan, argued that people had expected more of a foreign-based court, especially at a time when calls are growing for an international investigation into the August 4 blast at Beirut port that devastated the capital and cost more than 180 lives.
"After 15 years, they chose one person they want us to believe is responsible for this entire issue. It's a joke," said the young woman, surrounded by dozens of Rafic Hariri posters. Karim Emile Bitar, a political science professor in France and Lebanon, also said the verdict was a letdown after widespread public demands over the years for the truth behind Hariri's murder. "There's a feeling that the mountain has brought forth a mouse," he said. Newspaper commentaries Wednesday diverged according to their stance on Hizbullah, but most agreed the protracted and costly experiment in international justice was inconclusive. The pro-Hizbullah Al-Akhbar daily ran a picture of the STL courtroom covering its entire front page with a red stamp across it that read: "Past sell-by date." "The different parties in Lebanon will interpret the STL ruling to their liking," said Nadim Houry, executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative. Some felt vindicated by the guilty verdict against one Hizbullah suspect, Salim Ayyash, who has gone underground, while others chose to highlight the acquittals, he said. "Ultimately, it is a deeply unsatisfactory outcome because the basic questions are left unanswered and will continue to divide the Lebanese," Houry added. None of the feared political tension spilled onto the street, however, and Bitar argued that may have been the only silver lining of an otherwise disappointing verdict. "It was a very paradoxical verdict... but perhaps it was good for social peace in Lebanon, which can really do without more social tension at the moment," he said. Lebanon is still licking its wounds from this month's blast, its worst peacetime tragedy, which came as it was already grappling with an unprecedented economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. "So many catastrophes have happened since" Rafic Hariri's assassination, he said. "It isn't quite a non-event, but this verdict did not have the impact it could have had."

Lebanon has hit ‘rock bottom,’ must reform for long-term aid: US
Reuters/August 19/2020
“Lebanese leaders have been ignoring their responsibility to ... meet the needs of the people,” Hale said.Undersecretary of State David Hale made the comments a week after visiting Lebanon
WASHINGTON: There is no more foreign money for a Lebanese leadership that enriches itself and spurns the popular will, a top US official said on Wednesday, saying Lebanon had hit "rock bottom" with its Aug. 4 port explosion and must now enact profound reforms.
Undersecretary of State David Hale made the comments a week after visiting Lebanon following the blast that killed more than 172 people, injured 6,000, left 300,000 homeless and destroyed swathes of Beirut, compounding a deep financial crisis. "They (the Lebanese people) see rulers who use the system in order to enrich themselves and to ignore popular demands," Hale said. "That era is over. There is no more money for that. They are at rock bottom and sooner or later, I believe, that the leadership will appreciate the fact that it is time to change."
"And if not, I am convinced that the public will increase the pressure on them," Hale added in a conference call in which he laid out a long list of needed policy changes, including carrying out fiscal and economic reforms, ending endemic corruption, improving transparency, addressing an inadequate electrical system and carrying out an audit of the central bank. "What happened at the port (is) bad enough, but in many ways it's symptomatic of larger problems in Lebanon. Lebanese leaders have been ignoring their responsibility to ... meet the needs of the people and have resisted the kind of deep fundamental reforms that are needed," he said. "We can't fix that from the outside. Lebanese leaders have to demonstrate t

Daryan Urges International Probe into Beirut Blast, Radical Authority Change
Naharnet/August 19/2020
Grand Sunni Mufti of the Republic Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan called on Wednesday for an international investigation into the colossal Beirut port blast, and a radical change to the country’s authority including early elections and formation of an emergency government of specialists. “Existential threat against Lebanon, the homeland and the state requires urgent measures including an international investigation to determine responsibilities and restore confidence,” said Daryan in remarks marking a new Hijri year. The Mufti said the explosion day on August 4 is a “black day in the history of Beirut, Lebanon and the Levant.” But Daryan sounded astonishment at the “ruling authority’s absence from what has befallen upon the people. What kind of dreadful attachment to power is that?” he asked. The Mufti stressed the need for “a radical change in power,” in Lebanon that must include “early parliamentary elections based on an appropriate electoral law to guarantee freedom and integrity.”Daryan said President Michel Aoun must hold “swift parliamentary consultations to name a PM and hence form an emergency and neutral government composed of specialists in order to address the disaster after Beirut’s deadly explosion, and stop the economic collapse,” to prepare the country for a better future, he said. Turning to the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon which on Tuesday convicted one member of Hizbullah in the 2005 assassination of former PM Rafic Hariri, Daryan said the new government must enforce the tribunal’s verdict.
“One of the tasks of the forthcoming government is to enforce the judgment issued by the International Tribunal in the case of the assassination of martyr Prime Minister Rafic Hariri,” he said. “It is an international court to achieve justice and save Lebanon from losing its sovereignty. The assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri and the other martyrs necessitates the pursuit of salvation from uncontrolled weapons, otherwise no country or state can stand upright,” said the Mufti. On calls to neutralize Lebanon from regional conflicts, the Mufti said: “We may not need neutrality if we establish a strong and just State, reinforced by unity, social cohesion, justice, and crowned with safe coexistence. “What is the value of neutrality if officials do not give weight to the concept of independence and sovereignty?” he asked.

Report: France Leading Efforts to Facilitate Formation of New Govt.
Naharnet/August 19/2020
The efforts to form a new government in Lebanon are not only exerted at the local level, amid reports that France is “leading” such endeavors through its ambassador in Lebanon Bruno Foucher, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Wednesday. Diplomatic sources told the daily that Foucher is leading these efforts under direct supervision from French President Emmanuel Macron. Macron is eager that diplomacy in Lebanon succeeds at forming a new government for the crisis-stricken country before his next visit on September 1, according to the sources. International and global mobility towards Beirut continues after the deadly port explosion with the aim of contributing to aid programs to help the country confront the catastrophe. In that context, President Michel Aoun is expected to meet United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. Grandi arrived in Beirut early this morning, said the daily. He will also meet with Najat Rushdi, Deputy Special Coordinator for the United Nations in Lebanon, Jan Kubis , to discuss the UN arrangements for coordinating aid to Lebanon, placed under the custody of the international organization. Macron plans to return to Beirut on Sept. 1 to follow up on the reconstruction efforts after the colossal explosion in Beirut port that flattened parts of the capital leaving at least 181 people dead and hundreds homeless. The political will and the commitment to do that and that was my main message."

Zasypkin Hails ‘Responsible’ Positions after STL Ruling in Hariri Murder
Naharnet/August 19/2020
Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Zasypkin hailed ex-PM Saad Hariri and Hizbullah for showing “responsible” positions after the STL verdict in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Wednesday. Zasypkin said in remarks to the daily that Hariri and Hizbullah showed eagerness to “preserve internal stability and prevent sedition” in Lebanon, he said. Their positions are “responsible,” he added, indicating that court ruling must not bring on more problems and escalation in Lebanon.
He said that Moscow had supported the formation of the international tribunal years ago, when it was established. “Since then, we have not interfered in anything related to it,” said the ambassador, noting that Russia’s initial position was based on the need not to politicize the investigation and trial. The U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon on Tuesday convicted one member of Hizbullah and acquitted three others of involvement in the 2005 assassination of Hariri. The trial centered on the alleged roles of four Hizbullah members in the suicide truck bombing that killed Hariri and 21 others and wounded 226 people. Prosecutors based their case largely on data from mobile phones allegedly used by the plotters to plan and execute the bombing.

Gunmen Kidnap Mayor of Neighborhood in Hermel
Naharnet/August 19/2020
Armed gunmen kidnapped in broad daylight the mayor of a neighborhood in Hermel, Khodr el-Rashini, media reports said on Wednesday. Rashini was kidnapped in al-Kayyal street in Baalbek. According to information, relatives of Rashini owed the assailants sums of money. The kidnappers reportedly abducted the mayor to pressure them into paying their dues. A video recording on social media showed the kidnappers’ vehicle stopping in front of another car. Screams were heard in the background. One of the suspects opened gunfire into the air. Security forces opened an investigation into the incident to identify the suspects.

Lebanon's Grand Mufti Urges International Investigation into Blast
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Lebanon's Grand Mufti on Wednesday joined calls for early parliamentary elections and an international investigation into the explosion at the Beirut port, which he said deepened the country's existential crisis. At least 179 people were killed and 300,000 left effectively homeless when massive amounts of highly explosive material stored unsafely for years detonated early this month, destroying swathes of the city and prompting the government's resignation amid mass protests. "The existential threat to Lebanon requires urgent attention: an international investigation to delineate responsibilities and restore confidence," said Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Derian. The president must adhere to the will of the people and conduct parliamentary consultations to name a new prime minister, he added. On Sunday, Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rai called for early parliamentary elections, saying Lebanon was today facing "its biggest danger".Leading politicians who were not part of the now caretaker government, which had support from Iran-backed Hezbollah and its allies, have called for an international investigation.

Beirut Explosion Impacts Exports to Syria
Damascus - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
The massive explosion that rocked Beirut on August 4 resulted in the loss of products imported to the Lebanese capital ahead of their transport to areas controlled by the Syrian regime, well-informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat. The sources said that Lebanese and Syrian merchants were circumventing western sanctions imposed on Damascus and selling food and construction materials to areas run by President Bashar al-Assad. The sources estimated that 25 percent of the goods damaged by the explosion at Beirut Port were waiting to be shipped to Syria, including materials used in the manufacture of detergents and leather industries. They pointed out that, a few days after the explosion, the prices of goods imported through the port, such as sponges and fabrics used in the manufacture of clothes and furnishings, increased by about 25 percent. Food products have also been impacted since the port explosion. The price of a kilo of fresh chicken rose from SYP 2,500 to more than SYP 4,300. A number of poultry farmers confirmed that the prices of food imported by some traders through the port of Beirut had increased. The sources emphasized that most of the materials used in construction works have also seen a surge in prices ranging between 25 and 40 percent. Syrians in government-controlled areas noticed an increase in power rationing hours after the explosion. Officials in the electricity companies denied any link between the two events, but hinted that Damascus increased its export of energy to Lebanon to help it overcome the repercussions of the catastrophe.

Hariri Tribunal and the Fate of the Probe in the Beirut Blast
Hussam Itani/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s (STL) verdict in the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has dashed hopes for calls for a serious international or independent investigation into the August 4 blast that destroyed vast swathes of the capital Beirut and killed some 200 people and wounded thousands.
This, in short, is the conclusion from the reading of the verdict in The Hague, 15 years after Hariri’s assassination, in a crime that still reverberates in Lebanon to this day. The STL ruled that Hezbollah and Syria had an interest in assassinating Hariri, but there wasn’t evidence to prove the party and Syrian leaderships were responsible for it. Indeed, it said that Hassan Nasrallah and Rafik Hariri enjoyed good relations in the months that preceded the attack.
It is natural for tribunals to operate according to tangible evidence and proofs, on which they base their verdicts. They are not concerned with answering questions surrounded the crime, such as who ordered, plotted and carried out the assassination. They are also not concerned with the local and regional circumstances that led to the crime. Their role is limited to pursuing the direct perpetrators, not countries or political parties or leaders. Residents of the region do not need an explanation about the way decisions are made by authorities and governments in Lebanon, Syria or other countries that are involved in the assassination. The tribunal did not see the need to explain how people decide to carry out the assassination of a figure as important as Rafik Hariri, who enjoyed relations across the globe and who believed until the final moment of his life that his murder was a “red line” that no one could possibly cross. Everyone in Lebanon and Syria knows that the decision to carry out an assassination of such a scale is not taken by a security agency, no matter how powerful. Such an agency cannot find the means to execute the plan and deploy surveillance and their complicated telephones without a direct order from a higher power.
Moreover, the STL’s announcement that it did not have proof that directly tied Bashar Assad, Nasrallah and Ali Khamenei to the assassination appeared to ignore the world. Since it ignored the obvious, it should have offered an alternative mechanism over how such spectacular assassinations are carried out, significantly since it was followed by dozens of assassinations of figures, all of whom were part of the opposition against Syrian and Iranian policies.
It is not true that everyone was awaiting the verdict to come up with their stances. The “truth” was known to all the moment Captain Wissam Eid, using a normal computer, uncovered the telecommunication network that perpetrators had used. He discovered the names and party and security affiliations of these figures. Eid paid for this discovery with his life in yet another bombing whose criminals have not been found. What was expected from this tribunal was giving some value to the concept of international justice and its fulfillment of a pledge by the international community to the Lebanese in 2005 that the criminals will not escape punishment. The exact opposite has happened: The verdict repeated facts that have already been known about the people, mobile phones and the unknown suicide bomber.
We can compare this court to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that put on trial all war criminals from all sides, reaching all the way to the top to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The STL, meanwhile, languished in mobile phone details and the number of calls that were made by each one. The former Yugoslavia tribunal was necessary for Europe, while the tribunal for Lebanon isn’t necessary for anyone.
This takes us to the present, to a crime that is greater than Hariri’s assassination with its horror, destruction and death. The August 4 Beirut blast. This explosion had a devastating impact on Beirut neighborhoods, its communities and culture. The blast is killing off everything the capital has in values and even vices. If attempts to mislead the public, hide facts and task partisan figures and state loyalists in the judiciary and security forces to come to the bottom of the catastrophe, then there will be no truth or justice. The blast will be blamed on some anonymous person or, at best, some minor expendable employees as cheap sacrifices on the altar of the murderous system. Once again, the STL reminds the citizens of this country of the worthlessness of their lives, deaths and pain. More importantly, it reminds them that this region will remain immune to the very basic alleged universal principles of truth, justice and impunity, and above all else, the meaning of a human life. The Lebanese criminals’ escape from justice will most likely entice others to intensify their crimes and justice will remain an unfulfilled dream in our country.

On Feigned Tears Shed for Beirut and Lebanon
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
Many of those we know well are feigning tears for Beirut and Lebanon. Those who plundered it and who governed it in a manner that resembles robbery more than politics. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah was the most prominent exception among those in power, in the broader sense of the term. He did not even find what warranted pretending to cry. He was busy celebrating what he called "the victory of the July war." He was concerned with other things. His grin covered his face. Besides those in power, in Lebanon and the Arab world as well, many honest people cried genuinely, and many liars feigned their tears. The liars referred to are those who have never had any affection for Lebanon, nor have they ever seen it as anything more than a stepping stone on their path to another objective or cause. They reject what Lebanon stood for, namely, its assumption that progress comes from pluralism and being connected to the outside world, especially the democratic Western world, and its attempt to emulate parliamentary democracy, while being careful to avoid being dragged into direct armed conflicts. We can add to this category of what this Lebanon represented the various developments and institutions that emerged in the region during the modern era, such as the parliaments and public administrations that arose and survived until they were overthrown by coup d'etats, and before them the construction of the Suez Canal or the founding of the American University in Beirut. Of course, also in this category are the Arab colored revolutions that have demanded, and are still demanding, freedom and human dignity.
Those opposed to these ideas adopted another concept of progress in which opposing the West and doing away with "dependency" is the gateway to the future and a sense of meaning. "Westernized" Lebanon seemed to them a hideous thing. In the pain of the Palestinian people, they found their path to the resumption of this eternal struggle in which compromises are rejected and politics is despised. Their model is that of a regime of tyranny that militarizes society and casts it in a single and controlled body with a final and absolute identity, which seemed to them to oscillate from glorification to endurance: some of them glorified this military security regime as a tool for salvation, and others saw it as a tax that ought to be paid on the path to salvation. In all their forms, these regimes were the sources of bullets fired at Lebanon.
Since the country was established, these sentiments have been declared unambiguously. In 1925, during the insurgency in southern Syria led by Sultan Pasha al-Atrash, such sentiment was summed up very nicely by the "village poet" Rashid Salim El-Khoury, an ardent Arabist, who was disgruntled that the Lebanese had abstained from fighting alongside Atrash: "Lebanon, O Lebanon, but it did not harm me If I said, O country without a population. "
And he, for this reason, wished on his "people", the people of Lebanon,
"An emminent death
By the edge of the enemy’s sword. "
Because it is inflammatory by nature, this inclination found its major refuge in poetry. In 1950, for example, and in his elegy of the Lebanese politician Abed al-Hamid Karami, the Iraqi poet Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri could not find anything to say better than to lampoon the country to which Karami belonged. He satirized a “gang”
Colonialism terminates and rules over her, and “the dollar” gives her salvation and relaxation. Jawahiri, who was considered close to the Iraqi Communist Party for many years, spent the last years of life in Damascus, praising Hafez al-Assad. On the other hand, all the peoples of the region are today desperate for “the dollar”.These poets competed in their shoddy mockery of the fact that the Lebanese speak foreign languages, the relative freedom that the Lebanese woman had, about which they had moral reservations, the mellowness that the military-natured scorn, and of course some of the country's symbols and patriotism, which resemble the symbols of other countries and are neither better nor worse. Talking about a pluralistic model in the Middle East that contradicts the Israeli model only induced giggles.
Beyond the mockery and poems were the ideas. The most important of which is that elections, freedoms, education and the presence of a middle class are matters that do not warrant consideration. What counts is what takes us from the "Lebanese arena" to another place: before, it had been the "liberation of Palestine", and later it became ensuring the Assad regime’s victory in Syria. The stationing of two armies in the "Arabs’ Hanoi " was desired, the Palestinian resistance in the sixties and seventies, and then Hezbollah starting in the eighties. Whether or not the Lebanese agree or disagree to this is not important, for Lebanon is nothing but a means justified by the end, the struggle. However, the small country afflicted these kinds of haters with two tiers of confusion: those in Lebanon who refuse militarisation are not a handful of agents and spies, as the easy narrative claims. They are in fact the majority, whose positions are based on solid political and historical choices and a certain vision of the future.
In addition, hating Lebanon does not prevent its haters from preferring it as a place to live, and the opportunity provided to express that hatred is part of this life. The fact is that the most deprived ideas are those that consider, for ideological reasons, that living somewhere is not considered a preference for the counties of residence over the countries from which those in opposition flees (East Germany, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and today China and Russia). Ideologues do not think that the pursuit of freedom, knowledge or work is worth being taken into consideration.
Indeed, this hatred is as ideological as it is miserable. The crocodile tears shed today are miserable, though they are in luck: after the revolution for freedom was defeated in Syria, it defeated the bastion of freedom in Lebanon.
Today, we are all equals in our honorable ruin, like a comb’s teeth. But we will certainly liberate Palestine!

Lebanon's government resigned after the Beirut port blast. Here's what needs to happen now.
H.R. McMaster, former White House national security adviser/Think/August 19/2020
International aid must be contingent on the county's adopting a new system of government in which seats and positions aren't apportioned to religious factions.
By H.R. McMaster, former White House national security adviser
Lebanon was already in crisis. But the world took notice when a devastating explosion at Beirut's port killed over 200 people, wounded more than 6,000 and left 300,000 homeless this month. An international relief effort is underway to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe; the detonation of ammonium nitrate in the blast not only rendered most of the port unusable but also destroyed or contaminated stored wheat meant to feed the Lebanese people.
In just the past few years, the country has also been buffeted by an influx of 1.5 million refugees from the Syrian civil war, an electricity crisis caused by dilapidated power infrastructure and garbage and pollution crises due to the collapse of essential services. The country's currency has lost 80 percent of its value since October. The country's middle class is sinking, while the poverty rate is rising from 45 percent in 2019 to a projected 75 percent by the end of this year. And COVID-19 has only highlighted the inadequacy of the health care system.
What connects all these crises is the cause: a corrupt political elite who have looted the country for decades while their people paid the price. Indeed, the Lebanese people have suffered far more from that slow-moving and devious affliction than from this month's sudden and dramatic explosion. It is clear that treating the symptoms of Lebanon's corrupt oligarchy will prove insufficient to arrest the devolution of the country into chaos.
President Emmanuel Macron of France, the country that administered Lebanon after the partition of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, has rightly vowed not to provide "blank checks" and to make aid to Lebanon conditional on reforms. It is past time for all responsible nations to support that reform effort, with any assistance to Lebanon contingent on three essential actions: new elections that allow citizens to eject the elites who have been looting the country, the dismantlement of Hezbollah's military capabilities and an end to a system of government in which seats and positions are apportioned to religious factions.
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi once told me as his own country was enmeshed in violence and struggling to implement reform: "Sectarianism and corruption go together." This is particularly true in Lebanon, where laws and districting largely predetermine election results by allocating set numbers of its 128 seats in Parliament to specific sectarian parties.
By essentially guaranteeing that parties will keep their proportion of seats, the system discourages accountability or responsiveness to citizens' needs. And with lines drawn according to religious divides — Lebanon has 18 different sects — there are no incentives for these fractious groups to find middle ground and join forces. Thus, the sectarian regime in Lebanon perpetuates failed governance and impunity for even the most egregious corruption.
This desperate situation has impelled a movement to oust the corrupt ruling class since well before the port disaster. In October, protests resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, but he was replaced by a weak prime minister and Cabinet who perpetuated the corrupt political class under the cover story of transitioning to a government of technocrats. That leadership came to an abrupt end last week, when Prime Minister Hassan Diab resigned in response to a movement that has come to blame the entire system rather than a specific party.
Lebanon now has the opportunity to hold parliamentary elections under new electoral rules. But forming a civil system that prioritizes the rights of individuals over those of religious sects — and allows citizens a direct say in how they are governed rather than suffocates their voices through layers of corrupt sectarian bosses — faces daunting challenges. Foremost among those challenges is Hezbollah, which benefits from the current system.
Reform will be impossible unless the Lebanese people, with international support, reduce the political and military power of Hezbollah. Designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Kingdom and several other countries, as well as the Arab League, it uses the corrupt sectarian system to block reforms that threaten its influence over Lebanon's government, financial system and illicit economy.
More and more Lebanese see Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, as the main stumbling block facing international relief; they scoffed at Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's denial that the organization holds any responsibility for the explosion. The suffering that Hezbollah has inflicted on the Syrian population during the civil war and the costs the Lebanese people have borne fighting on behalf of the Iranian regime there compounds anti-Hezbollah sentiment.
Now is the time for potential international donors to Lebanon to magnify the voices of the Lebanese people and make it clear that there can be no bailout of a government and financial system controlled by a terrorist proxy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Although Hezbollah is weakened politically and financially, because of the country's poor economic state and banking woes that limit its ability to receive money from Iran, its militia controls parts of Lebanon crucial to threatening its southern neighbor, Israel.
As it did in 2006, it is possible that Iran will incite a war with Israel via Hezbollah to distract from growing dissension at home and arrest Hezbollah's plummeting reputation in Lebanon. The United States, France and like-minded countries can place conditions on aid designed to prevent war and reduce Hezbollah's ability to hold the Lebanese and Israeli people hostage.
Conditions could include a declaration of a state of emergency in Lebanon and the use of the U.S.-trained Lebanese Armed Forces to restrain Hezbollah and begin reducing its arsenal, with priority on its Iranian-supplied precision guided munitions. The United Nations should also direct its force of 10,000 peacekeepers to support the Lebanese Armed Forces as they deploy throughout the south of Lebanon and position U.N. forces along the Syrian border to help disrupt arms and munitions trafficking. Tight international monitoring of Lebanon's airport and the port, as well as a reformed banking system, would further keep Hezbollah from receiving Iranian support.
As France and the United States help organize an international relief effort for Lebanon, it is worth remembering the explosions of Oct. 23, 1983, in the midst of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, targeting American and French service members. The casualties included 241 U.S. service members, 58 French paratroopers and six civilians all there to keep the peace. Macron's ambition that the explosion of Aug. 4 might mark the "start of a new era" is worthy of support. But calls for reforms to the banking, electricity and customs sectors will not work unless sustained popular and international pressure forces the corrupt political class out of power, dismantles the sectarian patronage system and loosens Hezbollah's political and military grip on power. Otherwise, today's reform effort, like the peacekeeping effort in the early 1980s, will end in profound disappointment and more human suffering.
**H.R. McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and chairman of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is a former White House national security adviser and the author of "Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World."

Lebanese surprised only one Hezbollah suspect convicted in Hariri case
The Arab Weekly/August 19/2020
The court found that “the assassination was undoubtedly a political act directed by those for whom Hariri posed a threat.”
LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands –The Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon, in charge of trying the case of the assassination of Lebanon’s former PM Rafik Hariri and his aides, surprised the Lebanese by convicting just one Hezbollah suspect, Salim Ayyash.
Lebanese politicians, however, have said that the most important aspect of the ruling is the political message it contained when it placed the February 14, 2005 assassination of Rafik Hariri within the context of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah's resentment of the victim’s behaviour.
The main defendants in the case, who all have links to Hezbollah, are Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hassan Habib Merhi, Hussein Hassan Oneisi and Assad Hassan Sabra, in addition to a fifth individual named Mustafa Badreddine who was “killed in Syria.”
Saad Hariri, who came to The Hague to hear the court’s ruling in person, picked up on the political dimensions of this ruling, saying: “We all know the truth today, and justice must still be done, no matter how long it takes.”
He also expressed his satisfaction with the court's decision, asking Hezbollah to cooperate and hand over his father’s convicted assassin, while urging the Lebanese not to accept for their homeland to become a haven for assassins or a refuge to escape punishment.
Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah had said in his Friday speech that the party would deal with the court’s decision “as if it had not been issued.”
On Tuesday, Lebanese President Michel Aoun considered that achieving justice in the assassination of Hariri and his companions “responded to everyone's desire to uncover the circumstances of this heinous crime.”
Aoun added that Hariri’s assassination “threatened stability and civil peace in Lebanon, and made a victim of a patriotic figure, loved by his admirers and followers, and carrying a national project.”
On Tuesday, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon ended the six-year long trial by indicting one of the four defendants in the case, all Hezbollah members.
The reading of the court’s findings took hours. Judge David Re, president of the court, concluded by saying “The First Instance Chamber finds Salim Ayyash unquestionably guilty as an accomplice in committing a terrorist act using explosive material, deliberately killing Rafik Hariri, killing 21 other people, and attempting to kill 226 people,” in reference to the wounded in the car bombing that killed Hariri and his companions.
The court found the other three defendants—Hassan Habib Marei, Hussein Hassan Oneisi, and Asad Sabra— “not guilty of the charges brought against them.”
In its decision, the court stated that “the assassination was undoubtedly a political act directed by those for whom Hariri posed a threat.”
The court added that the defendants “were involved in the conspiracy at least on February 14, 2005 and the period preceding it, and the evidence does not prove with certainty who directed them to kill Hariri and then liquidate him as a political opponent.”
"Syria and Hezbollah may have had motives to eliminate Mr. Hariri, and some of his political allies. However, there was no evidence that Hezbollah leadership had any involvement in Mr Hariri's murder and there is no direct evidence of Syrian involvement in it," Judge Re said.
Rafik Hariri’s son and former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri considered that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon had revealed the “truth” of his father’s assassination and announced on his behalf, on behalf of his family and on behalf of the families of the victims his “acceptance” of the verdict.
"The court has ruled, and we, in the name of the family of martyr Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and on behalf of the families of the martyrs and victims, accept the court's ruling, and we want justice to be done," Hariri said at a press conference held in Leidschendam near The Hague, where the court is located. “We all know the truth today, and justice must still be done, no matter how long it takes,” he added.
“It is time now for Hezbollah to make sacrifices,” he added, “and it has become clear that the network of killers came from its ranks, and they believe that for this reason they will escape justice and punishment; so I repeat: I will not rest until they are brought to justice and their punishment is carried out.”
Lebanese political sources considered that finding only Salim Ayyash guilty of the crime does not eliminate the participation of others in the crime, as such an operation must have been carried out by a very reliable and tight group of professionals from Hezbollah that would be difficult to breach, which is why it is difficult to know all those involved and gather sufficient evidence to convict them. A Lebanese politician considered that the decision to assassinate a figure such as Rafik Hariri could not have been made by only Nasrallah and Qassem Soleimani. They must have been partners in the decision, the politician said, but a crime of this magnitude cannot be carried out without Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s personal approval. “What we got today was the technical part of the truth, but the assassination of Rafik Hariri is an integrated political project, and the technical truth that we knew is nothing but a tool for this project,” the politician added. He told The Arab Weekly that stopping at technical truth and justice is a deficient option, because they do not constitute a sufficient deterrent to stop the killing machine.
He said punishment was an inevitable duty because “that criminal system is immoral and evil. It cannot be morally deterred by the disclosure of the truth.”

Rafik Hariri verdict: Nearly $1bn later, where is the justice?
Kareem Shaheen/The National/August 19/2020
Even after the Special Tribunal for Lebanon convicted one Hezbollah operative, too many questions remain.
On Tuesday, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon issued its judgment in the case of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination. It took a little over 15 years of investigations, delays and hearings since the bombing that devastated downtown Beirut on Valentine’s Day 2005 for the court to reach a decision. It found one member of Hezbollah guilty.
Full disclosure: I worked for the court for two years between 2011 and 2013.
The prosecution had indicted five members of the militant group in the case, which was built on a vast trove of telecommunications evidence and “co-location” to identify the suspects by tracking their mobile phones for days as they carried out surveillance of the Lebanese prime minister, bought the lorry that was laden with explosives and carried out the bombing.
The telecommunications evidence was built on the earlier work of Wissam Eid, a heroic Lebanese security officer who was murdered for his role in uncovering it.
The trial took place in absentia because Hezbollah refused to hand over the suspects, after carrying a broad propaganda campaign to discredit it as a tool of American and Israeli imperialism.
One of the suspects was Mustafa Badreddine, who was the overall military commander of Hezbollah at the time of his death under mysterious circumstances in Syria in 2016. I covered Badreddine’s funeral in Beirut, which was carried out with great pomp and ceremony.
In addition to leading the party’s campaign in support of Bashar Al Assad, he was also the brother-in-law of Imad Mughniyeh, his predecessor and the notorious Hezbollah commander who led the militia in its war with Israel in 2006, and was later assassinated in the heart of Damascus in a joint CIA and Mossad operation. It doesn’t get much higher than this in the party’s top echelons where its leader Hassan Nasrallah resides.
The other key suspect was Salim Ayyash, a Hezbollah member who led the assassination cell and was the main conduit to Badreddine, in addition to buying the truck that was used to attack Hariri’s convoy. The three other suspects were allegedly involved in preparing a false claim of responsibility for the assassination.
The court found Ayyash guilty on all counts and refrained from making a detailed statement on Badreddine’s role, because he was dead and therefore no longer an accused. The other three suspects were declared not guilty due to lack of evidence. These decisions are of course all subject to appeal.
The court said it did not find evidence implicating Hezbollah as an organisation in the killing. It is, however, hard to conceive of an operation of such magnitude, sophistication, and with these political ramifications – and with the involvement of one of the party’s most senior and well-connected cadres – taking place without the knowledge of Hezbollah’s leaders and the party’s foreign sponsors.
Many questions remain unanswered though. Who worked with Ayyash to carry out the assassination (most of the cell that carried out the murder on the day itself have not been identified)? Who did he and Badreddine answer to? Who ordered the assassination? Who made the false claim of responsibility? Were the same people involved in all the other political assassinations that took place in Lebanon around that time? Preparations for a trial in those connected cases are under way. What evidence existed to implicate Syria in the killing of Hariri and others within his political bloc? Who assassinated Eid and what were they worried about him revealing?
But the prosecution’s biggest sin is perhaps that it never did figure out a motive for the killing. Hariri’s assassination was not an isolated event. It came amid extremely high tensions with Bashar Al Assad, with pressure from foreign powers and Hariri’s political bloc and growing popular demand for the departure of Syrian forces from Lebanon, which was under the tutelage of Damascus since the end of its civil war. Even after the Syrian army withdrew, a series of assassinations targeted politicians and thinkers from Hariri’s political bloc in the aftermath of his death.
Syria initially co-operated with the UN’s Hariri probe, and senior security officials were implicated in the initial phase of the investigation. It is unclear whether that evidence was up to the standards of an international tribunal. Prosecutors and investigators since then dithered and delayed, slowing down the pace of the investigation, perhaps in the hopes that more direct evidence would materialise, perhaps to retain their cushy UN jobs.
But justice delayed is justice denied. Hariri’s killers and the murderers of two dozen Lebanese who died in the blast deserve justice and accountability.
But Lebanon and the region have seen great atrocities since that political earthquake: all the subsequent political assassinations and bombings in Lebanon, the war in Syria, the brutality with which the region’s strongmen suppressed dissent and protests during the uprisings. And of course, the explosion in Beirut on August 4, a result of sheer criminal negligence, which killed at least 177 people, wounded thousands and levelled an entire city.
The Tribunal’s goal was to put an end to impunity in Lebanon, to put an end to the use of political assassinations as a tool for regional powers and local militias to impose their will. That desire for justice permeates and underlines much of the region’s suffering. At least somebody tried to find out who was responsible and somebody was found responsible, even if he may never face justice. But perhaps the surest sign of the Tribunal’s failure is that 15 years after Hariri’s death, the perpetrators of the explosion in Beirut are not in the slightest danger of being held accountable. After hundreds of millions of dollars and 15 years of pain, impunity still reigns supreme in Lebanon.
*Kareem Shaheen is a former Middle East correspondent based in Canada

Lebanon Needs Transformation, Not Another Corrupt Unity Government
Hanin Ghaddar/The Washington Institute-Foreign Policy/August 19/2020
If the United States lets France take the lead, the Lebanese people will get more political paralysis, cosmetic reforms, and Hezbollah control of state institutions.
The massive explosion in Beirut last Tuesday, killing at least 160 people and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless, triggered a political moment as another explosion did 15 years ago: the targeted blast that killed then-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Then, as now, grief quickly turned to anger. In 2005, the outraged Lebanese rose up to demand fundamental political change, not cosmetic reforms, and they are taking to the streets once again today. But there is a key difference. In 2005, the White House was willing and able to play a nimble and ultimately effective role helping local activists translate raw emotion into new elections and a new government. Yet today Washington is content with taking a back seat to an energetic but ambivalent French president—an arrangement that will almost certainly not produce the change most Lebanese yearn for.
The French are pushing for a reconciliation among all parties, with some kind of national unity government that would only maintain the status quo and offer a scapegoat—such as Hassan Diab’s government, which resigned en masse yesterday—to calm the streets. Yet the Lebanese need a more drastic solution. The government’s resignation will not change the system as long as the same political elites maintain their power and control over other institutions.
Lebanon was already in the middle of an unprecedented economic and political crisis when the twin blasts hit. It’s a crisis so severe that it has already begun to trigger hyperinflation and hunger in a country that weathered 15 years of civil war without experiencing such economic devastation. And it is being kept alive by the greed of a political class that refuses even the most modest reforms demanded by an International Monetary Fund that actually wants to give the country money.
France seems to be taking the lead for now, as illustrated by French President Emmanuel Macron’s symbolic visit to Beirut last week followed by his quick move to kick off Sunday’s international donor meeting. Countries have already pledged over 250 million euros (approximately $300 million).
As other countries follow in France’s footsteps, it is worth keeping two things in mind: First, the Beirut port explosion was not a natural disaster, and it should not be treated as such. Therefore, as much as humanitarian aid is vital to help the Lebanese stand back on their feet, accountability is much more significant in the long term, and this is exactly what Lebanese protesters in the streets are calling for.
Second, the Lebanese people no longer trust their government, whose incompetence was one of the possible causes of the explosion. Therefore, assistance should not by any means go through government institutions or political organizations and charities.
The deeply corrupt political system will prevent aid from reaching the people who need it. A number of local and international nongovernment organizations—such as the Lebanese Red Cross—have already been offering relief and assistance on the ground from day one. They were the first responders and have a good infrastructure and knowledge of the situation on the ground. If aid goes through these organizations, the likelihood that it will reach the right beneficiaries is much higher.
If Lebanon’s government is asking for international assistance, then it should accept an international investigation. The United States could take the lead on these two policy questions while coordinating with the French on a humanitarian initiative.
France has been trying to strike a difficult balance: mobilize the international community to support Lebanon while exerting pressure on Lebanese political leaders to implement reforms to allow more aid to be sent. But Macron made clear in his press statement at the end of his Beirut visit that he would not craft a political solution for Lebanon and that it was up to the Lebanese to construct it, giving an opportunity for both the political elite to compromise and for the protest movement to reorganize and prepare for the next elections.
But the Lebanese elite won’t budge without pressure, and the authorities won’t hesitate to use violence to suppress the protests. For many Lebanese, this is a Catch-22 situation that can only be overcome if the authorities are pressured as they were in 2005—by a robust U.S. presence in the region and a very clear message from the United States to the Lebanese authorities—when the government was forced to resign and early elections were organized. Unfortunately, there’s no sign of an international initiative in this direction.
Only an international investigation would achieve real accountability and justice. Lebanese President Michel Aoun has already refused this suggestion, as expected. Not only could an international investigative team hold many in the political establishment accountable, but it could also reveal Hezbollah’s control, presence, and storage facilities at the city’s port—even if the group had nothing to do with the 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate stockpiled at the port.
Although it is too early to tell if the ammonium nitrate belonged to Hezbollah, there are many factors suggesting the group is responsible. It has control over a major part of the port, including the area where the explosion took place and where Hezbollah had temporarily stored its missiles since approximately 2008.
Not much has changed in the last four decades. According to a 1987 CIA report, “Most operations in Lebanon’s ports are illegal and beyond the reach of the government.” Although the report was focused on Palestinian factions during the Lebanese Civil War and the role of the Syrian regime, the dynamics of control have benefitted Hezbollah, which seems to have inherited both the Syrian regime’s and the Palestinian factions’ control of Lebanon’s ports.
It’s not a secret that Hezbollah has access and control over all of Lebanon’s points of entry: the Syrian-Lebanese borders, the airport, and the port. Nor is it a secret that Hezbollah has been smuggling weapons through the port to store in Lebanon and transfer to Syria.
And it’s no secret that Hezbollah and its allies have put their people in many of the port’s sensitive positions. Indeed, in July 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Hezbollah security official Wafiq Safa for acting on behalf of the group. The Treasury said Safa, as the head of Hezbollah’s security apparatus, “has exploited Lebanon’s ports and border crossings to smuggle contraband and facilitate travel” on behalf of the group. According to the report, Hezbollah “leveraged Safa to facilitate the passage of items, including illegal drugs and weapons, into the port of Beirut, Lebanon” and “specifically routed certain shipments through Safa to avoid scrutiny.”
There are many questions an impartial investigation could answer: Why were Dutch and French rescue teams kept away from the port for hours the second day after the explosion? Why was the ammonium nitrate stored at the port? Who left it there for six years, despite warnings of the risk? What exactly caused the explosion? The Lebanese authorities will not be able to answer these questions on their own.
In 2005, many Lebanese opposition parties rushed to accuse the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah for Hariri’s assassination. Back then, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel and didn’t hesitate to thank the Syrian regime after its army withdrew from Lebanon, in a gesture that was understood as an act of defiance against the international community and local opposition.
Fifteen years later, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon is ready to announce its verdict on Aug. 18 against four Hezbollah members. Hariri’s accused killers will almost certainly be convicted in a few days, and that was only possible because the international community pushed for an international investigation and helped establish the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. As the events in Beirut develop, a similar opportunity presents itself today.
Hezbollah is clearly worried. The party has accused state institutions and state employees rather than Israel this time. Accordingly, Hezbollah and the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese government appear to have decided that to survive this, some employees will have to be sacrificed, including the country’s customs chief, Badri Daher, who was appointed by Gebran Bassil, Hezbollah’s main ally in Parliament.
The Trump administration should take advantage of this situation. Washington has lately been focused on applying maximum pressure on Iran; therefore, it would make sense to recognize that the horror and tragedy of the Beirut blast presents an opportunity to trim the sails of Iran’s most effective regional proxy, Hezbollah. There are many hard-power reasons for Washington to get more deeply involved in Lebanon right now: to burnish its regional leadership credentials, to beat the Chinese and Russians to it, and to ensure supply lines into Syria. But taking advantage of the moment to give the Lebanese a chance to create a new political system in which Hezbollah is cut down to size is certainly high on the list.
There are several things the U.S. government can do to achieve that objective. First, it must grasp that this is a 2005 moment. The old anti-Hezbollah March 14 coalition is not an alternative because corruption exists across both coalitions and the Lebanese protesters’ demands—with their main slogan, “All of you means all of you”—target every sectarian and corrupt politician no matter their political position on Hezbollah.
Lebanon’s people are demanding a total replacement of the system—a new kind of Taif Agreement, the accord negotiated in Saudi Arabia in September 1989 to provide “the basis for the ending of the civil war and the return to political normalcy in Lebanon.” Today, the tragedy in Lebanon requires a new agreement that would lead to real change and an end of the sectarian system.
Second, Washington should make sure that humanitarian aid does not go through any state institutions, including the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). The United States has been assisting the LAF since 2006 for clear security objectives, but the LAF in turn has used brutal force against protesters during the recent demonstrations. Security assistance could continue, as long as the LAF does not use it to suppress protesters, but humanitarian assistance should go through local and international NGOs that are doing a much better job at relief efforts.
Third, the United States and its allies must push for an independent and transparent investigation of Lebanon’s port explosion. If the U.S. policy is to contain Iran and its proxies, then this is a golden opportunity. Holding Hezbollah accountable for perhaps killing hundreds of Lebanese and injuring thousands could push the Lebanese people—and Western public opinion in general—to reject Hezbollah’s grip on the country.
Fourth, there must be an investigation into the LAF’s use of violence against protesters. The 2005 Cedar Revolution happened because the army’s leadership took a decision to protect the protesters, who were peaceful. The army today seems to have decided to protect the authorities and punish the victims. The U.S. government needs to send a clear message to the LAF that if it does not protect the protesters as they did in 2005, assistance will stop.
Finally, the U.S. government should take the lead in pushing for genuine change rather than following Macron’s lead. The French president might be satisfied with a national unity government. However, this idea reminds the Lebanese people of the first national unity government that was forced on the Lebanese after the events of May 2008.
At the time, Hezbollah took over Beirut and the Druze mountains, used its weapons against the Lebanese people, and pushed the March 14 coalition to effectively give up power to Hezbollah through the national unity government—launching a process that allowed the group to take over most political, military, and security institutions. Another national unity government today would maintain Hezbollah’s power over state institutions.
What Lebanon needs instead is a new beginning—a new political and social contract that eliminates sectarianism and establishes accountability through judicial reforms. This can only happen through a new electoral law that entails proper representation and an end to the confessional system, as well as early elections, which would produce a new parliament, a new government, and a new president. Lebanon also needs the truth—and the accountability that follows—to overcome this tragedy.
*Hanin Ghaddar is the Friedmann Fellow in The Washington Institute’s Geduld Program on Arab Politics. This article was originally published on the Foreign Policy website.

Gun boat diplomacy in Lebanon will not bring back former PM Saad Hariri
Makram Rabah/Al Arabiya/Wednesday 19 August 2020
To call Lebanon a failed state at this stage is nothing short of an understatement, as this nation is grappling with how to stay alive. This has been rendered almost impossible after the Aug. 4 Beirut port explosion which destroyed vast swaths of the city and left some 300,000 people homeless and billions of dollars of damages that the Lebanese simply do not have.
If the carnage and destruction of their city was not tragic enough, now there is talk of bringing back a national unity government headed by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to replace the caretaker government of former Prime Minister Hassan Diab, who resigned six days after the seismic port explosion. The idea of Hariri returning has infuriated the Lebanese public who object to the return of a political class responsible for their demise and the destruction of their country.
The talk of a national unity government was not triggered by the blast itself, but rather was floated previously by Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri and his traditional ally Druze chieftain Walid Joumblatt. They peddled this plan as a way to help Lebanon secure the much-needed loan it is seeking from the International Monetary Fund. On his solidarity trip to Beirut last week, French President Emmanuel Macron was clear to warn the Lebanese political class of the need to reform, yet his shortsightedness, or perhaps duplicity, led him to call for the formation of a national unity government which is neither an option, nor a solution, for Lebanon’s quagmire.
In fact, the terrible state of affairs is largely the product of successive national unity governments, first during the Syrian hegemony over Lebanon that continued after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which have acted as a political fig leave for Hezbollah and its Iranian weapons.
The French approach to the Lebanese problem wrongly underscores reform as the only way forward and clearly neglects that economic and political reform are a byproduct of good governance, and not the other way around.
Bringing in Hariri to lead a government of “supposed technocrats” representing the different political parties therefore is a recipe for disaster, simply because such a foolish experiment has been tried many times over and has produced the same failed results. Perhaps more wickedly, Macron and many of the European countries that support him are still convinced that the Iranian regime can be contained and that Macron’s outreach to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is enough to bring Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in line and force them to relinquish their hold over Lebanon.
Hezbollah’s primary objective is to maintain its military infrastructure and thus any gesture to cooperate over facilitating the formation of Hariri’s government would be temporary and, more importantly, costly. It will make Hezbollah even stronger and the Lebanese state – or what remains of it – feebler. Macron would simply be doing Iran a favor by forming a national unity cabinet without official Hezbollah representation, but rather “independent” Shia ministers, as this would give the latter a chance to wash its hands from the abysmal economic downfall to which it is a partner.
Empowering Hariri, against the wish of the people, to lead a salvation cabinet would be a path riddled with challenges. Hariri himself has failed to win over the trust and respect of the Lebanese beyond his Sunni powerbase.
But more importantly, the entire political class regards national unity governments as an avenue to divide the spoils of the state and the billions of dollars in aid money which is set to come their way following the explosion at the port.
The Lebanese political elite and their clients have promoted the notion that an upcoming Hariri cabinet would have the support of the international community, and that reconstruction under French auspices is not far off.
In reality, the French drive to help Lebanon, or perhaps its ruling establishment, is far from receiving the blessing of the United States or the Arab Gulf states which have shown little fervor, only pitching in to relief funds, with no real talk about reconstruction. Both the Trump Administration and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have rightfully showed reservation in funding a government that doubles as cover for Iran’s militia on the Mediterranean.
Both the French and the British have dispatched gunboats to the coast of Lebanon to help in the relief effort and to send a clear message that their wishes to force through a political resolution of Lebanon’s predicament will not go unanswered.
Yet gunboat diplomacy and European wishful thinking belongs in the 19th century. These tactics in the 21st century will fail to convince or coerce Iran into playing nice.
Consequently, the French drive to bring back stability will simply peter out, only to be replaced by forthcoming US sanctions on Lebanon’s political class whose unfathomable corruption and unholy alliance with Hezbollah equally matches the damages from the Beirut blast.
The Lebanese political elite, including Hezbollah and Iran, are impatiently waiting for the outcome of the US presidential elections in November and hope that a potential Biden Administration would ease off sanctions, granting more leniency to Iran and subsequently giving the regime more room to operate.
The Lebanese who are looking across their coast line and hoping that ships will deliver salvation need to think again and remember that superpowers have their own agendas, which might at times meet theirs. But for Lebanon to be worthy of any sort of deal, Lebanese need to go to the streets and remind the international community that the political class that is trying to pass themselves off as statesmen are mere criminals that should be brought to justice.

No bailout for Lebanon without serious reforms, senior US official warns
Joyce Karam/The National/August 19/2020
Lebanese leadership has hit ‘rock bottom,’ says undersecretary of state David Hale. Washington will not provide an economic bailout for Lebanon without far-reaching reforms that also address Hezbollah’s role at Beirut port, US undersecretary of state David Hale said on Wednesday. “We will not be providing a bailout or long-term assistance for the Lebanese government before undertaking serious reforms,” Mr Hale said. “That era is over. There is really no choice any longer.”
He said that the leadership in Lebanon had hit “rock bottom”. Mr Hale told The National that the issue of maritime demarcation between Lebanon and Israel came up in his visit to Beirut last week. Lebanese President Michel Aoun invited the US to mediate with Israel in a call with Donald Trump on August 7. Mr Hale welcomed the Lebanese government's decision to allow the FBI to take part in the investigation of the blast. He served as US ambassador to Lebanon between 2013 and 2015, but shied away from commenting on the next Lebanese government after the resignation of prime minister Hassan Diab. Asked if the US would mind the Hezbollah taking part in the next Cabinet, Mr Hale did not object. Washington has dealt with successive governments in Beirut that had Hezbollah members since 2008. Instead, the US appears focused on reforms that the next government should undertake before it receives any outside assistance. “Hezbollah is part of the corrupt, self-serving system in Lebanon,” Mr Hale said. He said the Lebanese public was now aware of this, and that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s effigy was being burnt by protesters in downtown Beirut.
After his three-night visit to Beirut following the explosion, Mr Hale described the public anger as “extremely potent”. “It will take a long time to repair,” he said. Mr Hale gave a long list of reforms that the US hoped to see in Lebanon, including economic diversification, revenue distribution and Hezbollah’s access to the ports. Assistant secretary of state David Schenker is due to visit Lebanon next week to follow up on Mr Hale’s trip. The US is also closely co-ordinating with the French government.
 

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 19-20/2020

Pope warns rich countries against coronavirus vaccine nationalism
NNA/August 19/2020
Rich countries should not hoard a coronavirus vaccine and should only give pandemic-related bailouts to companies committed to protecting the environment, helping the most needy and the 'common good', Pope Francis said on Wednesday.
"It would be sad if the rich are given priority for the Covid-19 vaccine. It would be sad if the vaccine becomes property of this or that nation, if it is not universal and for everyone," Francis said at his weekly general audience.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that any nation which hoards possible COVID-19 vaccines while excluding others would deepen the pandemic. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has warned against "vaccine nationalism", urged countries to join a global pact by an Aug. 31 deadline to share vaccine hopefuls with developing countries. More than 150 vaccines are in development, about two dozen are in human studies and a handful are in late-stage trials. Francis also said it would be a "scandal" if governments doled out pandemic-related bail-out money to only select industries. He said the criteria for companies to receive public aid should be if they "contribute to the inclusion of people who are normally excluded (from society), to helping the most needy, to the common good and to caring for the environment". More than 21.9 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 772,647 have died, according to a Reuters tally.—REUTERS

Riyadh reiterates commitment to Arab Peace Initiative
The Arab Weekly/August 19/2020
Prince Faisal bin Farhan said the UAE-Israel deal “could be viewed as positive” but tied any Saudi-Israeli peace deal to prior Palestinian-Israeli agreement.
RIYADH - Saudi Arabia remains committed to peace with Israel on the basis of the longstanding Arab Peace Initiative, its foreign minister, Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said on Wednesday in the kingdom’s first official comment related to the United Arab Emirates’ agreement to normalise relations with Israel. Israel and the UAE said on Thursday they would normalise diplomatic relations as part of a US-sponsored deal, under which Israel will temporarily freeze its move to annex parts of the West Bank including the Jordan Valley. In the Arab Peace Initiative, drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002, Arab nations offered Israel normalised ties in return for a statehood for the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967. “The kingdom considers any Israeli unilateral measures to annex Palestinian land as undermining the two state solution,” the Saudi foreign minister said in an event in Berlin on Wednesday, in comments reported on the Saudi foreign ministry’s Twitter page. Saudi Arabia does not recognise Israel and its airspace is closed to Israeli airliners. The kingdom, a close US ally, has been ruled by 84-year-old King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud since 2015. King Salman has repeatedly reassured Arab allies over the years that Saudi Arabia will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return. Saudi officials have repeatedly denied any difference between King Salman and his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, the kingdom’s de facto ruler and next in line to the throne, who has shaken up long-held policies on many issues and told a US magazine in April that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel view Iran as the major threat to the Middle East. Increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fuelled speculation that shared interests may push the Saudis and Israel to work together, and there have been signs in recent years of some thawing relations between the two countries. Prince Faisal bin Farhan said the UAE-Israel deal, which halted unilateral annexation by Israel of West Bank territory sought by the Palestinians, “could be viewed as positive.”But he refrained from outright backing the move and stressed Saudi Arabia is open to establishing similar relations on condition that a peace agreement is reached between Israel and the Palestinians. His remarks during a news conference with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas were the first public comment by Saudi Arabia on Thursday’s surprise announcement by US President Donald Trump that his administration helped broker the UAE-Israel agreement. Bahrain, Oman and Egypt issued official statements welcoming the agreement. The kingdom did not issue a similar statement and did not respond to requests for comment until Wednesday’s news conference in Berlin. The UAE stressed that its agreement is a successful measure that halted Israeli plans to annex West Bank territory. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, however, has said the suspension is only temporary. Saudi Arabia, like other Arab Gulf states, has built quiet ties with Israel over the years, in part because of shared concerns over Iran and its policies in the region.

German authorities label Berlin car crashes ‘Islamist-motivated attack’
The Arab Weekly/August 19/2020
Six people were injured, three of them severely, Tuesday evening.
BERLIN - German authorities are investigating a series of apparently deliberate car crashes on a Berlin motorway on Tuesday evening as a terrorist attack, media reported on Wednesday. Prosecutors told the German news agency DPA on Wednesday the Berlin highway crashes are being treated as an Islamic extremist attack. “According to the current state of our investigation this was an Islamist-motivated attack,” the office said. They did not reveal the man’s identity, as is customary in Germany, The suspect is being investigated for attempted murder.
He added that there were also indications that the 30-year-old suspect with Iraqi citizenship suffered from “psychological problems.” Six people were injured, three of them severely, when the man allegedly drove into several vehicles, including a motorcycle, along a stretch of the German capital’s highway on Tuesday evening. The crashes at three different locations led to a complete closure of one of the main traffic arteries of Berlin. Local media reported that the man, who was driving an Opel Astra, later stopped on the highway and put a box on the roof of his car, claiming it had explosives inside. Specialists opened the box and found only tools. The man was detained by police. Several media also reported that the man shouted “allahu akbar” or “God is great” as he got out of his car. The incident led to long traffic jams Tuesday evening. Some 300 people were stuck on the highway for hours and were getting support from the German Red Cross, the Berlin fire department tweeted Tuesday night.

The UAE and F-35s story isn’t over just because Israel doesn’t like it

Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem Post/August 19/2020
Netanyahu is trying to show the public that he did his due diligence, making the Israeli view on the matter well known in Washington.
The controversy over the possibility that the United Arab Emirates could purchase F-35 jets has continued despite a very firm denial by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And that’s because, well, Netanyahu doesn’t really have the final say here.
Following reports that such arms purchases will be part of the peace deal between the UAE and Israel, the Prime Minister’s Office released an unusually detailed statement, including a timeline of the multiple times that Netanyahu and Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer raised their objections to the F-35 being sold to any other country in the Middle East, even if it has a peace treaty with Israel. Netanyahu is trying to show the public that he did his due diligence, making the Israeli view on the matter well known in Washington.
“The historic peace agreement between Israel and the UAE does not include any agreement by Israel to any arms deal between the US and the UAE,” the statement reads. “And the US made it clear to Israel that it will always make sure to maintain Israel’s qualitative [military] edge.”
What the statement does not say – and really, could not say – is whether the US is going to sell F-35s and other weapons to the UAE anyway. White House sources have also said that everything in the deal is public; there are no secret annexes about weapons sales. But again, that doesn’t preclude the signing of a different agreement to which Israel is not a party.
At several points in the past, the US has sold weapons to Arab countries despite Israel’s strong objections. One difference between then and now is that Israel’s qualitative military edge (QME) has been enshrined in US law since 2008. But what the law says is that Congress has to assess the extent to which Israel has the QME over military threats to it, and the president should use it to “inform the review” of such exports. Congress then has to certify that weapons sales “will not adversely affect Israel’s QME.”
In the end, Congress decides whether this is a QME issue – not Netanyahu.
The other big difference between then and now is that the US was selling to enemy countries, while this would be a deal with a country that has formal ties with Israel, has never been at war with Israel, and shares a common enemy – Iran.
Votes in the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are unlikely to happen immediately, when a controversy could weaken the formal ties all three countries are so proud of orchestrating. But the US could decide at some point in the near future – say, next year – that peace is working out well and there is no danger to Israel in selling F-35s or other advanced weapons systems to the UAE. IT SHOULD not come as a shock to anyone – certainly not to Netanyahu – that the UAE would expect to get some weapons out of this deal. The US modernized Egypt’s army after it made peace with Israel, and it continues to get American security assistance every year, a stipulation of that agreement. And Jordan got F-16 jets after making peace with Israel.
Unlike those countries, the UAE can afford to buy the weapons, which is all the more incentive for the US – especially under a president like Donald Trump who is loath to pay for other countries’ security – to give an arms deal the green light in conjunction with peace. An unnamed UAE diplomat told KAN’s Amichai Stein on Wednesday that it expects Israel not to “oppose or prevent” any deals between Abu Dhabi and Washington “if and when” they take place. Plus, the diplomat said, their view is that Israel and the UAE face the same threats – meaning, Iran – and such sales will be good for both of them. All this raises the question of whether Netanyahu knows about possible deals between the UAE and US that could weaken the QME, at least in the Israeli security establishment’s view. The prime minister’s statements give him plausible deniability in terms of any specific weapons sales. But it’s clear that the story of the UAE and F-35 jets is not over – and the way it will end does not depend on whether Israel likes it.

US to impose UN sanctions ‘snapback’ on Iran: Trump
AFP/Thursday 20 August 2020
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he is directing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to notify the United Nations Security Council that the United States intends to restore virtually all previously suspended UN sanctions on Iran. Reuters reported on Tuesday that Pompeo will likely travel to New York on Thursday to seek a return of all UN sanctions on Iran and meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, diplomats and a UN official said. The United States is expecting to trigger snapback – a return of all US sanctions on Iran – soon, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday, after the UN Security Council rejected Washington’s bid to extend an arms embargo on the country. To trigger a return of the sanctions, the United States will submit a complaint to the 15-member UN Security Council about Iran’s non-compliance with the nuclear deal, even though Washington quit the accord in 2018.

Turkey provides base for '20,000 Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood' supporters
The National/August 19/2020
Muslim Brotherhood loyalists from Egypt adopted Turkish President Erdogan's thinking as policy
A report on the Turkish government's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood has estimated that most of the Egyptian community living in the country are loyal to the movement. The New Century Foundation report said that as many 30,000 Egyptians were living in Turkey and most were being given shelter by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. While the exact number of Egyptians in Turkey is not in official statistics, the report quoted an opposition leader in Istanbul as saying 20,000 Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members lived on Turkish soil.
Among the high-profile members sheltering in the country was Medhat Al Haddad, who "the Egyptian government is accusing of heading the financial committee of the movement in Turkey", the report said.
Egyptians in mass departure from home after Morsi removal ز The 2013 collapse of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo, led by the short-lived presidency of Mohammed Morsi, spurred many Egyptians living in Turkey to leave their homeland. The development was seized on by Mr Erdogan and his closest aides to bring his party into closer alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood, the report said. It was written by Abdelrahman Ayyash, an Egyptian researcher in Washington.
Brotherhood supporters, members and officials have made it clear, through their published articles, op-eds and studies, that they are adopting policies in the Turkish model. The report detailed how Egyptian Brotherhood members received stipends to support them in Turkey, although these payments were not enough for the local cost of living. Turkey also hosted regular conferences of the Brotherhood, including one in April 2018 in which the group's 90th anniversary was celebrated with a gathering of "Islamist leaders of different nationalities". "Brotherhood supporters, members and officials have made it clear, through their published articles, op-eds and studies, that they are adopting policies in the Turkish model," the report said.
In Mr Ayyash's view, Brotherhood members had embraced Mr Erdogan as a "political mentor and close ally". At the same time, the trend of "provincialisation" of the Brotherhood towards home country concerns reversed, and along with it an emphasis on internal critical thinking towards "emotional discourse".
Proliferation of Turkey's Islamist networks
While there was substantial competition between Mr Erdogan's AKP and the Muslim Brotherhood in the early part of the century, the German domestic intelligence service was highlighting the Turkish government's Islamist networks as early as 2005.
That year the 2005 annual report on the protection of the constitution shone a spotlight on the role of Turkish-backed organisations in the country. "Their wide range of Islamist-oriented educational and support activities, especially for children and adolescents from immigrant families, are used to promote the creation and proliferation of an Islamist milieu in Germany," it said. Since then the melding of the AKP with the Muslim Brotherhood had transformed Turkey's position in the world, as it lost enthusiasm for joining the EU and became detached from its alliance with the US and Nato.
One of Mr Erdogan's closest allies, Yasin Aktay, a former AKP deputy chairman, has said the Muslim Brotherhood is a tool of state power. “The Muslim Brotherhood represents Turkey’s soft power,” Mr Aktay said.
The Brotherhood is listed as terror organisation in the UAE and other countries. After the failed coup attempt against Mr Erdogan in 2016, the report said he had used Egypt as a "scarecrow" to suppress his opponents, including dissidents in his own movement.

US announces new aid to Iraq, but warns that ‘armed groups’ must be controlled
Joseph Haboush/Al Arabiya English/Wednesday 19 August 2020
The United States Wednesday announced more than $200 million in additional humanitarian aid to Iraq but called for “armed groups” to be replaced by local police. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the additional aid announcement as he met his Iraqi counterpart in Washington, DC.
Nearly $204 million in additional humanitarian assistance for “the people of Iraq, Iraqi refugees in the region, and to generous communities hosting them” will be given. Pompeo welcomed Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s call for early parliamentary elections next year. Kadhimi, last month, proposed early elections following monthslong protests by the Iraqi people. The Iraqi premier is set to meet US President Donald Trump this week and will be the first Iraqi PM to visit the White House in three years. Washington did not extend any invites to Kadhimi’s predecessor, who was seen as close to Iran.
On Wednesday, Pompeo warned Iraqi that it needed to get armed groups under control. “Armed groups not under the full control of the prime minister have impeded our progress. Those groups need to be replaced by local police as soon as possible,” Pompeo said at a news conference with his Iraqi counterpart.
he top US diplomat said the pair discussed ways Washington could “help preserve Iraq’s rich cultural heritage and religious diversity, and support education in Iraq as well.” For his part, Iraqi FM Fuad Hussein said Baghdad saw the US an ally, “and a strong ally for Iraq. And we will continue to protect this alliance and to deepen it and expand it.”

Sudanese Foreign Ministry backtracks on call for peace with Israel
Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem Post/August 19/2020
Netanyahu: Israel, Sudan and the entire region will benefit from the peace agreement; Khartoum backtracks from statement
Sudan’s Foreign Ministry rescinded its message in support of peace and reconciliation with Israel, which led to speculation Monday that the countries could be on the verge of normalizing ties and establishing formal diplomatic relations.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Haidar Badawi al-Sadiq told Sky News Arabia that Sudan looks forward to a peace agreement with Israel. His words followed the announcement last week of a pending peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.Both Israel and Sudan would benefit from such an agreement, he added. Sadiq told Reuters that the “Emirates’ move is a brave and bold step and contributes to putting the Arab world on the right track to build peace in the region and to build sustainable peace.”
He added, “I cannot deny that there are contacts between Sudan and Israel.”However, the Sudanese Foreign Minister Omer Gamur Eddin sent out a subsequent message that it was "astonished" by Sadiq's statements, which he had not been authorized to make, and that the ministry had not discussed relations with Israel. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Sudan confirms that the issue of relations with Israel was not discussed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in any way, and Ambassador Haydar Badawi (Sadig) was not assigned to make any statements in this regard,”, the statement added.
Sadig was not immediately available for comment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had immediately responded to Sadiq's statement, saying: “Israel, Sudan and the entire region will benefit from the peace agreement and together they can build a better future for all the peoples of the region. We will do everything necessary to make this vision a reality.”Netanyahu lauded the courageous decision to promote peace between Israel and Sudan made by Lt.-Gen. Abdel Fatah Abdeirahman al-Burhan, who chairs the Sudanese Sovereignty Council.
The two men had met in Uganda in February of this year, announcing a move toward normalization that has since been stalled, but Israeli flights have been allowed to fly over Sudan, shortening flight times to South America.
Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi also responded, adding that Sudan’s willingness to make peace with Israel has tremendous symbolic significance. He referenced the famous Arab League Meeting in the Sudan’s capital of Khartoum in the aftermath of the Six Day War.
The League issued the “three no’s of Khartoum” in which they rejected any negotiations, recognition or possibility of peace with Israel. “I welcome any step that promotes a normalization, peace, agreements and recognition between [Israel and Arab] countries,” Ashkenazi said.
Israeli diplomatic activity led by the Foreign Ministry has created important opportunities, such as the connection between Israel and Sudan, Ashkenazi tweeted. “In the near future, we will continue to discuss improvements in the relations until a peace agreement is signed that respects the interests of both parties,” Ashkenazi added. An agreement with Sudan would be the fourth peace treaty for Israel with an Arab state. The US and Israel have said that they expect more deals with Arab countries to follow the deal announced last week with the UAE. Bahrain is widely expected to be next.
Sudan has moved in a more pro-Western direction, and seeks to be removed from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, and ties with Israel could be a way to improve its relations with the US.
Peace with Sudan would more fully break the country away from Iran’s orbit. In past years, Tehran gained access to Port Sudan on the Red Sea for its naval forces and Iranian ships have previously transferred arms to Gaza through Sudan and into Egypt. This was one of the key supply routes for Hamas as it built up its capacity to wage war against Israel. Because of the civil war in Yemen, Sudan decided that it would no longer maintain a pro-Iranian orientation. It has since aligned its foreign policy with Saudi Arabia. As a result, Hamas lost its Sudanese line of supply.

Sudan Fires Foreign Ministry Spokesman Following Israel Remarks
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Sudan has fired its foreign ministry spokesman following remarks he made concerning "contacts" between Khartoum and Israel, the state news agency SUNA reported on Wednesday. Spokesman Haydar Sadig made the comments to regional media and confirmed them to Reuters on Tuesday, describing the United Arab Emirates' decision to normalize relations with Israel as "a brave and bold step". Sudan's foreign ministry said it was "astonished" by his remarks and stressed that the government had not discussed the possibility of diplomatic relations. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Sudan confirms that the issue of relations with Israel was not discussed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in any way, and Ambassador Haydar Badawi (Sadig) was not assigned to make any statements in this regard,” it added in a statement. Under the US-brokered deal announced last week, the UAE becomes the just third Arab country to forge full relations with Israel in more than 70 years. In February, Israeli officials said Israel and Sudan had agreed to move towards forging normal relations for the first time during a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the head of Sudan’s military-led, transitional sovereign council, in Uganda. Back in February, Burhan confirmed the meeting with Netanyahu but cast doubt on any rapid normalization of ties, saying Sudan’s stance on the Palestinian issue remains unchanged, and that relations between the two countries was the responsibility of the civilian cabinet in Khartoum.

IDF launches retaliatory airstrikes against Hamas targets in Gaza

Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem Post/August 19/2020
39 fires ignited in southern Israel on Tuesday by incendiary balloons
IDF aircraft carried out airstrikes late Tuesday night against numerous Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said in a statement. According to the military, one of the targets was a military compound for one of Hamas's special units. The attack was carried out in response to a rocket launched from the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave into Israel earlier Tuesday evening, as well as the launching of explosive and incendiary balloons during the day. The rocket, which was aimed at the city of Ashkelon, was fired after Egypt-mediated talks to halt violence in the South fell through. Sirens were activated in Ashkelon and the community of Zikim around 9 p.m., sending thousands of Israelis to bomb shelters. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit confirmed at least one rocket had been fired. There were no injuries or damage caused by the rocket, which reportedly fell in an open field.
"The IDF takes all terrorist activity against Israeli territory very seriously and is prepared and willing to act as much as necessary against attempts to harm Israeli citizens," the IDF said. "The terrorist organization Hamas bears responsibility for what is happening in and out of the Gaza Strip, and will bear the consequences of terrorist acts against Israeli citizens." Following the rocket fire, the Palestinians involved in the night disturbances along the border fence reportedly canceled the planned demonstrations for the night, expecting retaliatory strikes by the IDF.
Israel has struck Hamas targets in Gaza for each of the past seven days in response to the continued launching of incendiary and explosive balloons from the blockaded coastal enclave into southern Israel, causing hundreds of fires to ignite in fields and forests.
Thirty-nine fires broke out on Tuesday alone. Earlier on Tuesday, Defense Minister Benny Gantz warned that Hamas was “playing with fire” and that he would “make sure that the fire would be turned on them.”On Monday, an Egyptian envoy met with Hamas officials in Gaza to attempt to prevent an escalation. Hamas gave the envoy a list of demands, which included extending the fishing zone to 20 nautical miles, permitting the import of dual-use materials, increasing work permits and a number of industrial and infrastructure projects, as well as an increase of work permits for Gazan workers allowed into Israel to 100,000 and the opening of the Keren Shalom border crossing according to the Lebanese pro-Hezbollah Al-Akhbar news. The terrorist group warned the Egyptian envoy on Monday “Palestinian patience has run out” and that the groups in Gaza are “ready to escalate and not afraid.”
Israel reportedly rejected the demands.
Aaron Reich contributed to this report.

Iraqi PM to Washington: We Do Not Play the Role of Postman
Baghdad - Fadhel al-Nashmi/Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Ahead of a much-anticipated visit to Washington, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said that his country will not play the role of a postman for conflict in the region. Kadhimi’s official media office released a statement saying that the planned meeting between the Iraqi PM and US President Donald Trump will be devoted to strengthening bilateral ties between Baghdad and Washington. The two leaders are also set to discuss regional developments and issues of common interest. In an interview with the Associated Press on Monday, Kadhimi said he does not play the role of postman. Kadhimi, who will be visiting the United States on August 20 to meet with Trump, made the remark in response to an AP question on whether he was carrying any messages from Tehran following his recent visit to Iran. “We do not play the role of postman in Iraq,” the US-backed prime minister said. In the interview with AP, the Iraqi Prime Minister has stressed that Iraq "will still need cooperation and assistance at levels that today might not require direct and military support, and support on the ground" to combat terrorism. “Iraq is not necessarily required to play the role of the postman, but it can invest its balanced relations with some regional and international parties in playing the role of converging views,” Iraqi lawmaker Aras Habib Karim told Asharq Al-Awsat. Karim underscored that Iraq, despite the hardships it faces on economic and health levels, can invest its regional role for internal interests and to bridge the gap between warring parties in the region. In other news, a Katyusha rocket landed on the edge of Baghdad International Airport on Tuesday evening, the Iraqi military said. No serious damage was caused by the rocket which was fired from the al-Faiyadh Village in the southeast of the airport, the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said in a statement. It declined to provide further details. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, but Baghdad airport and the Iraqi military bases housing US troops across Iraq, as well as the US embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad, have been frequently targeted by mortar and rocket attacks.

Israeli Jets Bomb Gaza
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Israeli warplanes bombed the Gaza Strip overnight after militants fired a rocket into southern Israel, the army said. The latest exchange came as Israel warned Hamas it was risking "war" by failing to stop fire balloons being launched across the border. Egyptian security officials shuttled between the two sides in a bid to end the flare-up which has seen more than a week of rocket and fire balloon attacks from Gaza and nightly Israeli reprisals. "Earlier tonight, a rocket was fired and during the day, explosive and arson balloons were launched from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory," said a military statement released shortly before midnight (2100 GMT). In response, "fighter jets and (other) aircraft struck additional Hamas military targets in the Gaza Strip. "During the strike, a military compound belonging to one of the special arrays of the Hamas terror organization was struck," the English language statement added. There were no reports from Gaza of casualties. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin issued a warning to Hamas during a visit to firefighters in the border area who said they were called out to 40 blazes caused by Palestinian arson balloons on Tuesday. "Hamas should know that this is not a game. The time will come when they have to decide... If they want war, they will get war," said Rivlin. A Hamas source told AFP the movement’s officials had held talks with the Egyptian delegation in Gaza on Monday before it left the territory for meetings with the Israelis and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. The Egyptian delegation was expected to return to Gaza after those talks were concluded, the source added. In response to the persistent balloon attacks, Israel has banned fishing off Gaza's coast and closed the Kerem Shalom goods crossing, cutting off deliveries of fuel to the territory's sole power plant.

West Bank Settlers Say Netanyahu Duped them with Annexation Backtrack
Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Israel’s settler leaders say Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defrauded them of their long-held dream of annexing the occupied West Bank as part of the country’s normalization deal with the United Arab Emirates. Their anger could be a problem for right-wing Netanyahu, whom they accuse of repeatedly floating the idea of annexation only to cave in to international pressure when the terms of the UAE deal required him to walk back his promises. “He deceived us, defrauded us, duped us,” said David Elhayani, head of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ main umbrella organization.
“It’s a major disappointment. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a golden opportunity that the prime minister missed because he lacked the courage,” said Elhayani. “He’s lost it. He needs to go.” Israel’s West Bank settlements - which range in size from a few hilltop caravans to sprawling commuter towns - were built by successive governments on land captured in a 1967 war. Around 450,000 Jewish settlers now live among 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, with a further 200,000 settlers in East Jerusalem. Most countries view the settlements as illegal, a view that Israel and the United States dispute.
When Netanyahu promised during recent elections to apply Israeli sovereignty to areas of the West Bank, including Jewish settlements, he said he first needed a green light from Washington. That green light appeared to have been given by President Donald Trump’s Middle East plan released in January, which envisaged Israel applying sovereignty - de facto annexation - to its 120 settlements in almost a third of the West Bank. But when Trump announced the UAE deal this month, he said annexation was now “off the table”.
Sovereignty
Polls have shown wide support in Israel for the UAE deal. But the ideological settler leadership has significant political clout, and has long been a bastion of Netanyahu’s support. Aware that he might lose their backing to parties even more hawkish than his own, Netanyahu sought to keep settler hopes alive.
“Sovereignty is not off the agenda, I was the one who brought it to the Trump plan with American consent. We will apply sovereignty,” he told Israel Army Radio, saying the White House had merely asked for a suspension. But many settler leaders are unconvinced. Bezalel Smotrich, a settler with the ultranationalist opposition Yemina party, said Netanyahu “has been deceiving right-wing voters for many years with great success”. Palestinians, who seek a state of their own in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, have vigorously opposed the policies of Trump and his senior adviser Jared Kushner, including their Middle East plan and UAE deal. They accuse Trump, Kushner and Netanyahu of drawing up blueprints that would leave them only an unviable Palestinian state of separate enclaves scattered across the West Bank. But the Trump vision of limited Palestinian statehood has created strange bedfellows. The Palestinians say it gives them too little. But for the most hardline Israeli settlers it gives the Palestinians too much. For these settlers, any Palestinian state is anathema. In the hilltop settlement of Kedumim, veteran settler leader Daniella Weiss said: “I don’t think the Jewish nation needs to give up any of its treasures, any part ... of our homeland, for a peace treaty.”“I am a pioneer that established an outpost, then my children did it, now my grandchildren are doing it. This is the dream and this is the plan and this is what our movement does.”

Iraq PM Sacks Basra Security Officials after Assassination of Activists
Baghdad – Fadhel al-Nashmi/Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Iraqi Prime Minister and commander-in-chief of the armed forces Mustafa al-Kadhimi sacked on Monday head of police in the southern city of Basra due to the recent string of assassinations that targeted activists from the popular protest movement. The protesters in Basra and other provinces accuse police chief, Rashid Fleih, of being complicit in the oppression of activists. Fleih had previously slammed the protesters, accusing them of “collaborating” with foreign powers. A spokesman for the armed forces announced that he will be replaced by Abbas Naji. He also said that Kadhimi had also relieved head of the national security agency in Basra of his duties. Protesters in Basra have been in uproar after the assassination on Friday of activist Tahseen Usama al-Shahmani. They have been demanding the dismissal of Governor Asaad al-Aidani and Fleih, who was appointed to his post in 2019 during the term of former PM Adel Abdul Mahdi. Activists hailed the news of Fleih’s sacking, demanding that he be held accountable for the killing of protesters. On Monday, they had also set a 24-hour deadline for authorities to uncover Shahmani’s killers. With the expiry of the deadline and no word from the authorities, they attacked the governor’s residence and set some of it on fire. In a sign of the authorities’ ongoing failure to meet protester demands, gunmen on Monday opened fire at three activists in central Basra, wounding two.

International Reports Warn of Economic Contraction, Famine in Yemen
Sanaa - Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
International agencies have warned of the dangers of economic contraction in Yemen and the slide towards famine over the ongoing Houthi coup, and the militias’ undermining of development and social security programs. The coup has caused lack of job opportunities and a decline in income for members of the private and public sectors in most regions, the agencies said in recent reports. They pointed out that almost eight million Yemenis have lost their jobs and now live in areas with minimal or no service. The war in Yemen has caused 1.4 million people to lose their purchasing power due to inflation, resulting in increased unemployment and poverty.Millions are also pushed to the brink of famine, especially those who live in Houthi-run areas. The World Food Program (WFP) said on Friday that Yemen is at risk of sliding into famine due to disruptions to food supply. In a series of tweets, it said the recent fighting escalation in the country has resulted into death of civilians and displacement of household. Devaluation of the national currency, soaring food prices and fall of the remittances have aggravated the food insecurity, it stressed, saying one third of the population can no longer afford purchasing enough food. Consultants at Fox Economies Foundation for Economic Analysis expected Yemen’s economy to contract by 4.3 percent in 2020, 1.7 percentage points lower than July’s forecast, before growing by 4.1 percent in 2021. “Due to the coronavirus crisis, Yemen’s economy will contract again this year after growing for the first time in six years in 2019,” they explained. “The continuation of war will also exacerbate contraction and slow recovery in the future.”According to the consultants, the already exhausted economy has been further hit this year with the national currency devaluating 19 percent since December 2019, and remittances from expatriates declining by 20 percent and oil exports decreasing by 18 percent in H1 2020. Updated estimates of national accounts data have indicated a decrease in the war-torn country’s average per capita income from GDP at current prices from $1,247 in 2014 to $364 in 2018, with a cumulative change rate of 70.8 percent, pushing more Yemenis below the poverty threshold. More than 40% of Yemeni households are estimated to have lost their primary source of income and, consequently, find it difficult to buy even the minimum amount of food. “Poverty is worsening: Whereas before the crisis, it affected almost half the country’s population of about 29 million, now it affects an estimated three-quarters of it—71 to 78 percent of Yemenis. Women are more severely affected than men,” a World Bank overview on Yemen has indicated.

Egypt, Ethiopia, Sudan Exchange Proposals on GERD’s Filling
Cairo, Khartoum - Mohammed Abdo Hassanein and Mohammed Amin Yassin/Asharq Al-Awsat/Wednesday, 19 August, 2020
Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan exchanged on Tuesday proposals on formulating a “unified draft” that would lead to an agreement to regulate the rules for filling and operating the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The African Union-sponsored talks will continue until August 28, in an attempt to resolve outstanding issues. For nearly a decade, talks among the three countries over the operation and filling of the mega-dam, which Addis Ababa is constructing on the Nile River and raises Egyptian and Sudanese concerns, have faltered. Tuesday’s meeting was attended by Cairo, Addis Ababa and Khartoum’s ministers of water resources, observers from the European Union and United States and experts from the AU Commission. Sudan revealed differences among the three countries over the interpretation of procedures for unifying their drafts on a final deal, which was mentioned in the South African Foreign Ministry’s report. According to a statement by Sudan’s Irrigation Ministry, the three countries exchanged proposals for the final text of the agreement. It pointed out that they chose both “legal and technical representatives from each country to participate in the merging of the three texts.”
Sudanese Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas presented proposals for the measures that will be followed during the current round of talks. The statement said the three countries will work to merge their proposals into a unified agreement and hand over a joint project to the AU Chief and South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa.
The tripartite meetings will continue Wednesday. Sudan’s negotiating delegation stressed during a meeting Sunday the importance of returning to the agenda set by Ramaphosa in early August and the experts' report submitted to the mini-African summit held in July. The meeting is based on the outcomes of the July 21 mini-summit and Sunday’s joint six-party meeting between the ministers of water resources and irrigation and the ministers of foreign affairs from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia. The AU is seeking to formulate a unified draft that includes proposals of the three countries, despite the wide differences between Ethiopia’s demands on one hand, and those of Egypt and Sudan on the other, sources told Asharq Al-Awsat. Cairo fears the potential negative impact of GERD on the flow of its annual share of the Nile’s 55.5 billion cubic meters of water, while Addis Ababa says the dam is not aimed at harming Egypt or Sudan’s interests, stressing that the main objective is to generate electricity to support its development.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 19-20/2020

Can Israel’s symbolic victory turn Khartoum's famous ‘no’s’ into a ‘yes’?
Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem Post/August 19/2020
توفا لازاروف: هل بإمكان إسرائيل رمزياً أن تقلب لاءات الخرطوم الثلاثة من لا إلى نعم
The UAE is only the third Arab country to sign a deal with Israel; Sudan would be the fourth. It’s likely that Bahrain and Oman will follow in their path.
It would be premature to pop champagne bottles over a Sudan-Israel peace deal.
Indeed, initial optimism that a potential agreement was in the works was dimmed somewhat late Tuesday night when Sudan's Foreign Ministry distanced itself from statements its own spokesman Haidar Badawi al-Sadiq had made about efforts to achieve peace that were underway between his country and Israel.
“Relations with Israel was not discussed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in any way, and Ambassador [Sadiq] was not assigned to make any statements in this regard,” the Foreign Ministry stated.
The seismic geo-political shift underway with regard to Israel’s role in the Middle East made Sadiq’s comments to Sky News Arabia plausible to the Israeli ear.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's predictions that Israel would make peace deals with Arab states appeared to be coming to fruition already last Thursday with the announcement of a pending US-brokered agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
At issue is more than just the sudden possibility that Israel could have formalized diplomatic ties with more than just two steadfast regional countries – Egypt with which it signed an agreement in 1979 and Jordan with whom a peace deal was reached in 1994.
The UAE would be only the third Arab country to sign a deal with Israel, and Sudan would be the fourth. It’s likely that Bahrain and Oman will follow in their path.
In the last week, storied concepts of peacemaking under which both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli-Arab conflict have operated have crumbled like the walls of Jericho.
They came down at such a fast pace that it has been almost impossible to comprehend the extent to which Israel, the Palestinians and the larger Arab world have entered into a new paradigm.
It has been publicly clear for the last few years that changes were underway between Israel and Sudan.
Sudan’s foreign ministers have spoken of wanting ties with Israel since 2016. In February, Netanyahu met with the chairman of Sudan’s Sovereignty Council, Lt.-Gen. Abdel Fatah Abdeirahman al-Burhan, to discuss normalizing relations between the two countries.
The meeting itself was significant, but Sadiq’s overtures of peace to Israel on Tuesday, coming in the aftermath of the UAE deal, made the possibility seem much more real.
A PEACE deal with Sudan has symbolic significance above and beyond its impact on the ties between the two countries or the larger regional coalition against Iran that is being formed.
For the last 53 years, Sudan’s capital of Khartoum has been linked with both the Palestinian and Arab world's obstinate rejection of the Jewish state.
It was here in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War that the Arab League met to denounce Israel. It issued what has become known as the three “no’s of Khartoum.” These were: no to recognition of Israel, no to negotiations with Israel and no to peace with Israel.
The tide of obstinacy has weakened over the years, particularly with Egypt and Jordan making peace with Israel and the Palestinians agreeing to negotiate.
The tide of Arab sentiment turned more significantly toward Israel in 2002 with an offer from the Arab League of normalized ties with Israel if it withdrew to the pre-1967 lines and accepted a two-state solution with the Palestinians based on those borders. That offer was integrated into the peace process and widely referenced in almost every international document and United Nations resolution.
The hope had been to entice Israel to accept a two-state solution at the pre-1967 lines. Netanyahu and the Trump administration have argued that instead, the initiative held peace with the Arab world hostage to the Palestinian peace process, a move which helped neither cause.
Netanyahu has long explained that Arab peace must precede Palestinian peace – and so far, that has proven to be correct.
Now, within the space of a week, the 2002 Arab peace initiative could be on the verge of collapsing, and the last walls of Khartoum might now also be crumbling.
Once peace deals are forged between Israel and regional Arab neighbors prior to the conclusion of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, an Arab peace initiative that speaks about Palestinian peace first and Arab peace second becomes virtually irrelevant.
Sudan is only one country out of 22 in the Arab League, but one with important symbolic significance due to what happened at Khartoum.
A peace deal with Israel, would erase the symbolism of Khartoum, turning Sudan from a country once known for its wall of obstinacy against Israel, to one through which the gateways to the Arab world would now be open.
Nothing is certain, of course, until the ink is dried on any of these deals. The announcements of the last week could all be false flares. Sudan’s backpedaling of its peace message is evidence of just how fragile the situation is.
But the stage certainly appears to be increasingly set for a new era of Israeli relations with the Arab world.
 

Peace Between UAE, Israel Isn’t a Deal About Palestine
Camelia Entekhabifard/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
Played by political games of Qatar, Turkey, and Iran, the Palestinian leaders have for years looked for meditators to solve differences between themselves instead of solving the conflict with Israel. Before getting to peace with Israel and forming an independent Palestinian state, they have to pursue a peace deal between two rival Palestinian groups, Hamas and Fatah.
The cause of the Palestinian people, the demand to go back to their homes and take back their occupied land, is alive. The cause is also well alive on the Arab Street. But the events of the last few years, from the Hezbollah-Israel clashes to the wars in Iraq and Syria and Iran’s threats against countries in the region, all testify to the necessity of peace in the region.
The brave pact of peace between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is not a betrayal of Palestinian people. Because this isn’t a deal about Palestine at all. It is an agreement between two sovereign nations based on national interests and mutual need for diplomatic relations.
The Islamic Republic might be in a long slumber to have missed the development and prosperity that has taken root in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf area.
Forty-one years since the Iranian revolution, the countries of the region have gotten to their privileged global position with the goal of leaving Islamic extremism behind and fostering economic development and general prosperity.
Urban expansion, modern construction, job creation, and economic development have turned countries such as Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE, Oman, and even Saudi Arabia to important poles of tourism in the Middle East.
Iran, which was at the forefront of development and modernity in the region, has now gotten to a place to be envious of UAE’s current state. This is what 41 years of the Islamic Republic have brought Iran.
The Islamic Republic still refuses to reverse its mistaken ways. It has preferred getting closer to Turkey and Qatar, two countries in regional isolation and in conflict with the West and the region due to their support for terrorism and Islamic extremist groups. The UAE’s normalization of ties with Israel is a very ordinary action in diplomatic norms, aimed at securing national interests of both countries.
Qatar has had ties with Israel for years. Israel has had a trade representative in Doha since 1996. But the dual and dangerous policies followed by Qatar in the region stop them from taking open positions.
On one side, Qatar hosts Ismail Haniya, a leader of Hamas. On the other side, it is visited by Yossi Cohen, head of Mossad.
Qatar’s wealth and the rivalry between Iran and Turkey on one side and Saudi Arabia on the other have deceived the small country.
The Islamic Republic is bankrupt and unable to realize basic needs of its 80 million people. Yet it still harbors big dreams for Islamic leadership and expanding revolutionary and Shiite influence. Economic and political ruin has not stopped the Islamic Republic from pursuing its dreams of destruction. Today it is so destitute that it has to share its jewel in the crown, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, with Qatar.
Turkey follows a similar dual policy. On one side, it has vast relations with Israel. On the other, it doesn’t tolerate UAE-Israeli ties.
The dual policy has only brought economic and political crisis for Turkey.
Turkey, even more bankrupt than the Islamic Republic, wants to find a foothold in Lebanon. Turkey’s foreign minister speaks of Ankara’s willingness to help in Beirut’s reconstruction. There is no doubt that Qatar and Iran know of the sensitivities around their presence in Lebanon which is why they hide behind Turkey. Qatar’s dollars secure the interests of the Islamic Republic and Turkey and it also paves the way for itself. With its sick ideology, its constant construction of enemies added to the missile threats by the IRGC and its acolytes, ranging from the Yemeni Houthis to Hashad Shabi militias in Iraq and extremist Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Republic has left the countries of the Persian Gulf region with no choice but to look for new coalitions without Iran.
The Hormuz Peace Endeavor (HOPE) presented by Iran’s President Rouhani, or the nonaggression pact suggested by Zarif, paved the path for the UAE-Israel deal.
The non-aggression pact was, in effect, Iran directly threatening its Arab neighbors. For friendship and peace with the countries of the region there is no need for force, threats, or imposition of forced deals. It is the Islamic Republic that has brought isolation for Iran due to its extremist ideology and its constant construction of enemies. The countries of the region once regarded Iran as a model for their own development. But four decades of tension means that they pursue their dreams of peace and security in deals without Iran.
Iran’s late ruler, the Shah, had established friendly relations with all countries of the region including Israel and the Palestinians. While keeping friendship with Israel, he was able to also back the interests of Palestinians. If the Iranian revolution hadn’t taken place, no doubt the Shah would have helped form an independent Palestinian state years ago.
Iran could have used its position and power to mediate for peace and stability and easing of tensions in the region. It could have used this to get to a privileged position in the world. But four decades of rule by the Islamic Republic has squandered this golden opportunity for Iran.

Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv...The Truth is Painful
Salman Al-Dossary/Asharq Al Awsat/August 19/2020
The term "state sovereignty" has been violated to such an extent that it made it lose the concept of interstate relations. Qatar secretly funds Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and al-Nusra Front. When the matter is exposed, Qatar says it a sovereign matter. Turkey violates international law in Libya, Iraq and Syria, and attacks the Greek continental shelf, yet it views its behavior as a sovereign matter. Iran messes with four Arab capitals, and also justifies what it is doing as a pure sovereign affair.
But when the UAE establishes relations with Israel, there are those who deny that it's a sovereign right and blame it for making such a step without returning to them and asking for their permission!
This leads us to ask a very important question: Does a country, any country, have the right to prevent another from making sovereign decisions?
In my opinion, the answer depends on these decisions, and whether they reflect negatively on other countries or cause harm to their national security.
Will the Emirati decision change the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? To put it frankly, the UAE’s decision not to establish normal relations with Israel has not and will not affect the future of the Palestinian issue and its complexities, and will not return to the Palestinians one percent of their lands. Similarly, establishing full diplomatic relations between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv will not give the Israelis any additional advantage.
What no one wants to hear is that the Palestinian cause is going through its worst situation, not because of the UAE and its new relationship with Israel, but because of the accumulation of complex problems and the political and economic conditions that have become more difficult year after year.
The dilemma of the region does not lie in Israel, which has become a reality that cannot be changed whether we like it or not. The real dilemma is that slogans still replace logic and reliance on populism is much easier than facing facts.
Qatar took the same path 25 years ago with the normalization with Israel, but it failed in it because it sought to fight with its neighbors more than gaining actual interests in establishing those relations.
Iran? It is not surprising that it continues to exploit the Palestinian Cause for its own purposes, not to mention that Iran, not Israel, has been occupying Emirati islands for fifty years.
Turkey? It wants to remove its ambassador from the UAE, although it has had relations with Tel Aviv since 1949, and is the largest Muslim country that has economic ties with Israel. These three countries should be a little ashamed of themselves when they put forth the Palestinian cause.
As why is it permissible for the Emirates and forbidden for Qatar?! The answer, in short, is that the UAE did not try outshine Qatar and Oman, for example, when they received the Israeli Prime Minister in their capitals and opened commercial offices, nor did it deny Jordan’s sovereign right to establish full relations, even when it did not back those countries in their decisions.
Moreover, the UAE did not incite against them and betray them in the media, unlike what the Qatari and Turkish regimes are currently doing, while their relations with the Israelis are exposed and known.
If only the solution of the Palestinian Cause depended on the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel... I am certain that it’s not. Unfortunately, delaying interests has only resulted in the head-in-the-sand situation - a situation that populists enjoy instead of facing reality.
Perhaps it was necessary for the Emirates to do it with courage and confront everyone with what they are looking at but not truly seeing.
For those blaming Abu Dhabi, we say: Which one is more harmful to the Emirati interests, Israel or Turkey? Which one is more hostile to Bahrain, Israel or Iran? Everyone knows the answer, but they want to cover the truth and maintain their collective coma for another 80 years.

Covid-19 Vaccine Push Lacks a Key Ingredient: Trust
Timothy L. O'Brien and Max Nisen/Bloomberg/August 19/2020
In the war against the coronavirus, only one weapon has the potential to ease the conflict quickly: a vaccine. With about 164,000 Americans dead from Covid-19, the economy battered and communities forced into recurring lockdowns, the federal government has made a $10 billion wager that public funds and expertise wedded to private research and production can jump-start a vaccine’s arrival — possibly by early next year.
Operation Warp Speed, launched in April, is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority, and the Department of Defense, along with several other federal agencies. A handful of pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca Plc, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna Inc., Novavax Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Sanofi SA, have received the lion’s share of the federal funding.
The companies are spending those billions on vaccine development and clinical trials, as well as the cost of manufacturing and delivering a successful candidate to the government. Companies aren’t required to repay the money, and the government is getting no equity stake or profit participation in return for the taxpayer dollars. But the companies have committed to delivering hundreds of millions of doses of their vaccines directly to the government, which promises free inoculations for Americans.
There’s likely to be plenty of wreckage along the way. Many companies may not be able to engineer a vaccine, much less deliver one, and billions of dollars will go down the drain. It’s a calculated risk worth taking, as long as it speeds an effective vaccine to market. Drug companies normally develop drugs slowly in order to minimize pricey failures. A cushion of federal funding allows Big Pharma to begin manufacturing possibly money-losing drugs even while trials are underway, compressing years of work into months.
Warp Speed’s upside — saving lives — is well worth any money that may get lost. But the program also has been shrouded in secrecy. The government has good reasons to keep some parts of the program under wraps, particularly negotiations that could affect the stock prices of companies making bids. But the process for deciding which companies were tapped to participate in the public health equivalent of the Manhattan Project has been entirely too opaque. And that lack of transparency is also likely to make the public — the folks who will have to line up for inoculations — skeptical that the government has ensured that we wind up with an effective, safe vaccine.
Two of the men overseeing Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui and Gary Disbrow, say they aren’t cutting any corners around testing or safety protocols before a vaccine is released into the wild, but time is of the essence.
“If we were to wait to scale up manufacturing until we had results of Phase 3 clinical trials, we would be looking at a six- to eight-month delay before we even started manufacturing,” says Disbrow, who has worked for Barda since 2007 and is now the agency’s acting director. “The financial burden for lives lost and the financial burden to our overall economy for not allowing our people to go back to a somewhat normal routine is much greater than the financial burden that we're assuming in developing these vaccines.”
Slaoui is a well-regarded, Moroccan-born research scientist who spent three decades at GlaxoSmithKline, most recently as head of the drug giant’s vaccines department, before he retired in 2017. He also served on several corporate boards of directors, including Moderna’s, before President Donald Trump’s administration appointed him as Warp Speed’s chief adviser in May.
“As I took the role coming from industry, I had a few hesitations, concerns that I may get myself into some kind of a moving sand and bureaucracy,” he says. “And it’s just in the reverse. It’s incredible. I think the level of focus and alignment and empowerment and lack of interference — it’s just perfect. And I think as an executive team we’re running at a thousand miles an hour.”
Slaoui also has little patience for critics of Warp Speed’s structure or goals: “Many, many experts are saying, ‘Why, this has never been done,’ and ‘Why, it’s impossible to do.’ I would like to ask them: Please, can you take 10% of your time and help us try to make it work? … Of course its very difficult. Of course it could fail.”
That doesn’t address one of the most pertinent criticisms: that Warp Speed’s contracts and spending aren’t transparent. The House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis has just called for Warp Speed officials to provide more information on its operations.
In a recent Senate hearing, legislators grilled Disbrow, along with Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, about how the operation is being run.
“The administration still has not provided any explanation of how it is selecting vaccine candidates, what the risks are of narrowing down that shortlist or addressed concerns about potential conflicts in contracts that predate this crisis,” Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state, observed during the hearing.The Warp Speed leaders declined to offer specifics to senators on which companies were candidates or how the selection process works. Disbrow noted that Barda has been making Warp Speed investments public as soon as the agency believes it’s appropriate to do so. (The full list can be found here.) Collins said his agency convened a panel of experts who reviewed 50 Covid-19 vaccine candidates before the list was winnowed down.
All three men told the senators that they hadn’t come under pressure from the White House or anyone else in government to select particular Warp Speed participants or to expedite the delivery of a vaccine to improve President Trump’s re-election prospects.
But political controversy has haunted every discussion of Warp Speed and its timeline for delivering a vaccine. And for good reason. Trump has frequently highlighted the possibility that a vaccine will arrive much sooner than experts and Warp Speed’s own leaders predict, and he has forced agencies such as the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration — both part of the Warp Speed effort — to bend to his will or follow his lead on medically dubious initiatives.
Slaoui says a vaccine could be available by the end of the year for some at-risk individuals, but that would require emergency approval from the FDA. Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, has said his agency will maintain high standards in its approval process, but Trump has also made his preferences clear. That could put pressure on Hahn, an inexperienced commissioner who already flip-flopped on granting emergency authorization for the use of hydroxychloroquine, a controversial and ineffective drug favored by the president.
Members of the medical community have also raised red flags about Warp Speed’s opaque selection process. They contend that some companies appeared to have been selected because they could manufacture a vaccine quickly, not because they demonstrated the most promising scientific approaches. “It’s typical Operation Warp Speed, where everything is sort of cryptic and it’s unclear what they’re actually saying,” Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher at Baylor College of Medicine, told Science Magazine in June. “What have these vaccines been chosen to do?”
Slaoui and Disbrow say transparency is a priority but that they’re negotiating with publicly traded companies and have to be circumspect about disclosure to avoid moving their stock prices. They say they will soon disclose extensive data from trials the companies have conducted.
“We intend to publish it in a way that does not interfere with the quality and outcome of the clinical trials,” Slaoui says. “That would be the only limitation I can think of: Would this undermine the quality of the work?”
“We have to be transparent,” he adds. “We have to be accountable, of course, of course. Don’t assume that something Machiavellian is happening. … Something beautiful is happening, which is we’re getting our act together to help humanity.”
Because the Trump administration hired Slaoui as a consultant rather than as an employee, he isn’t required to disclose his financial holdings or adhere to federal ethics guidelines. Critics say this could allow him to benefit financially from Warp Speed. Slaoui disclosed that he sold his Moderna shares, worth at least $10 million, when he joined Warp Speed — and forfeited options that were worth about $4.2 million. He still holds about $10 million of GlaxoSmithKline shares; he says he relies on dividend payments to fund his retirement. He has promised to make a charitable donation based on any appreciation in the price of those shares during his time with Warp Speed.
HHS says it has reviewed Slaoui’s finances and business relationships and doesn’t believe there are financial conflicts that would prevent him from doing his job properly. Disbrow pointed out that Slaoui has no power to award Warp Speed contracts and that individual contracts are managed by other government employees. While Slaoui says he understands and respects the need for the scrutiny his finances have received, he also feels his honesty has been unfairly put into play. “The question is asked in a way that assumes that I’m a thief,” he says. “Doing this to enrich my former colleagues or myself. I disagree with that statement.”Disbrow says that public service, not enrichment, is what drew him and his colleagues to Warp Speed. “I’ve worked in the government now for 14 years. This is an unprecedented collaboration,” he says. “We’re doing this for the American people and for the world. I mean, I know that may sound like a cliche, but we all have friends and family members who potentially could be impacted by this, so our No. 1 goal is to develop a safe and effective vaccine.”
Warp Speed awarded contracts after companies applied through an open solicitation process run by Barda and the Department of Defense (Gustave Perna, a four-star US Army general, is Warp Speed’s chief operating officer). Disbrow says that experts across the federal government, including contracting officers, reviewed all of the proposals and financial awards.
John Shiver, the head of vaccine research and development at Sanofi, a Warp Speed participant, describes the process as involved. “There is a formal application process and a fairly detailed plan in the application on the technical aspects,” he says. “How it’s made, how it’s characterized, data that evolves, data preclinically and in development, animal immunogenicity, are all provided in great detail as well as data on manufacturing and the doses we can provide.”
Slaoui says speed was a priority in what he describes as a well-defined selection strategy, but it wasn’t the only one. Warp Speed wanted to fund a broad array of vaccine research and manufacturing in order to avoid focusing on a single approach, ensure abundant supply and hedge against possible failures. “Our first priority was, and continues to be, we must be able to have vaccines that are safe and effective, and we must have enough doses of vaccines as quickly as possible,” he says.
The government is funding two cutting-edge shots from Moderna and Pfizer that use messenger RNA or mRNA, molecules that carry genetic instructions, to turn cells into tiny vaccine factories that generate antiviral protection. These shots are easier to make than other options and have raced into clinical trials, but regulators haven’t previously approved such a vaccine.
Warp Speed is also funding more proven approaches. Sanofi’s effort relies on chunks of factory-grown virus protein made with the same process used for one of its successful flu vaccines. This vaccine is to be paired with a booster made by GlaxoSmithKline that could make it more effective and easier to produce in large volumes. Novavax is using a similar method.
In the middle of the range between brand-new and tried-and-true approaches are candidates from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. Both drugmakers are using a harmless virus to deliver material that helps the immune system recognize the novel coronavirus. There is no broadly used vaccine of this type on the market, but the approach has more human testing behind it than mRNA does. Johnson & Johnson hopes that its vaccine will work with just one shot, in contrast to the two-dose regimen required by other finalists.
Having already secured 800 million potential doses of six shots, Warp Speed plans to fund at least two more unspecified vaccines that would protect against the virus in yet another way.

Arabs Are Fed Up With the 'Ungrateful' Palestinians
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/August 19/ 2020
"It is stupid to burn my country's flag and want me to salute you." — Dr. Waseem Yousef, Emirati academic, on Twitter.
"When I see the flag of my country being burned by some Palestinians because of the peace treaty with Israel – I apologize to every Israeli man if I offended him in the past." — Dr. Waseem Yousef.
"Imagine that in just 17 years, Saudi Arabia paid [the Palestinians] $6 billion and the UAE $2.5 billion. This means that in 40 years, we are talking about no less than $20 billion. I expect that had we spent this money on Israel, its people would have converted to Islam." — From a UAE-affiliated account on Twitter.
The Palestinian leaders' strong condemnation of the UAE and other Arab states that support normalization with Israel has also driven many Arabs to raise the issue of financial corruption of the Palestinian leadership. Some Gulf citizens pointed out that the personal fortunes of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal are worth at least $9 billion, while others claimed that Mahmoud Abbas's personal wealth is estimated at $200 million.
Scenes of Palestinians burning and trampling flags of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and pictures of its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed, have sparked a wave of protests in a number of Arab countries. Pictured: Palestinians in Ramallah burn pictures of Bin Zayed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, on August 15, 2020. (Photo by Abbas Momani/AFP via Getty Images)
Scenes of Palestinians burning and trampling flags of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and pictures of its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed, have sparked a wave of protests in a number of Arab countries. Their citizens are accusing the Palestinians of ingratitude, treason and hypocrisy.
The powerful reactions of many Arabs to the Palestinian campaign of incitement against the UAE -- after its agreement establish relations with Israel -- are yet another sign of the increased disillusionment in the Arab world with the Palestinians.
The message the Arabs are sending to the Palestinians is roughly, "We are fed up with you and your cause. You people are ungrateful, hypocritical and vindictive. Decade after decade, we pumped billions of dollars into your coffers -- and now you have the arrogance to burn our flags and pictures of our leaders and hurl insults at us."
As Emirati academic Dr. Waseem Yousef wrote on Twitter: "It is stupid to burn my country's flag and want me to salute you." In other posts, Yousef commented on the Israel-UAE deal: "When I see the flag of my country being burned by some Palestinians because of the peace treaty with Israel – I apologize to every Israeli man if I offended him in the past."
Yousef also wrote: "The happiness of the Israeli people with the peace agreement shocked me. I was not expecting it – the peoples want peace".
Most of the Arabs who feel offended and betrayed by the Palestinians are citizens of the UAE and Saudi Arabia who have taken to social media outlets and other platforms to express their disgust with the Palestinians and their Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Two popular anti-Palestinian hashtags that have been trending on Twitter in recent months are called: "To Hell With You And Your Cause" and "Palestine Is Not My Cause."
The hashtags, managed by citizens of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are basically telling the Palestinians that the Arabs are fed up with them and their failed leaders. The UAE and Saudi citizens are also using the social media posts to express outrage over the Palestinians' growing incitement against several Arab states and their leaders, particularly concerning readiness of some Arabs to normalize their relations with Israel.
"Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the most powerful supporters of Palestine," noted one of the UAE-affiliated accounts on Twitter. "Imagine that in just 17 years, Saudi Arabia paid [the Palestinians] $6 billion and the UAE $2.5 billion. This means that in 40 years, we are talking about no less than $20 billion. I expect that had we spent this money on Israel, its people would have converted to Islam."
"We spent on the Palestinians what is equivalent of the budgets of five African countries, and in the end they cursed us and accused us of being traitors," replied another UAE-affiliated social media user, referring to charges by Palestinian leaders that the UAE has "betrayed Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem and Palestine" by agreeing to establish relations with Israel.
A number of Saudi and Emirati political activists and academics seized the opportunity to remind the world of the Palestinians' previous meddling in the internal affairs of Arab countries, specifically Jordan and Lebanon.
The activists and academics reminded the Palestinians and other Arabs of the PLO's involvement in the 1970 Jordanian crisis, also known as Black September, when the Jordanian Armed Forces clashed with PLO members who were acting as a state within a state in the kingdom.
Tensions between the PLO and the Jordanians reached a peak in September 1970. A week after the failed assassination of King Hussein on September 1, four airliners were hijacked by the PLO's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), prompting the Jordanian government to declare martial law in the kingdom. In the next few weeks, heavy fighting erupted between the Palestinians and the Jordanian army. By the summer of 1971, all Palestinian forces had been expelled from Jordan to Lebanon.
They Saudis and Emiratis also reminded everyone of the role the PLO played in the Lebanese civil war, which erupted in 1975 and resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
"On April 13, 1975, a series of skirmishes started when the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas on a bus fired weapons as they passed a church," according to Calude Salhani, a columnist for The Arab Weekly.
"When they refused to be diverted by [Christian] Phalangist militias directing traffic, an altercation took place in which the PLO bus driver was killed. Some time later, unidentified gunmen approached the church in two cars and opened fire, killing four people. That date is now considered the start of the civil war. A major contributor was religion. Another was the presence of heavily armed Palestinian commandos."
The Arab political activists and academic did not forget to call out the Palestinians for their biggest betrayal of all Arabs: Supporting Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
According to some studies, hundreds of Palestinians joined the Iraqi security forces' newly established "popular army" in Kuwait and assisted in the oppression of the Kuwaiti people.
"During the day, the Palestinians hurl insults at the Gulf and accuse the Arabs of selling out [to Israel], but at night these Palestinians go to work in Jewish bars," according to another comment posted under the hashtag "To Hell With You And Your Cause."
Several Gulf citizens have expressed gratitude to Israeli policemen who stopped Palestinians from burning UAE flags and photos of Bin Zayed during Friday prayers at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque.
"A thousand greetings to our [Jewish] cousins," commented Gulf citizen Adnan al-Ameri in response to a video showing Israeli policemen preventing Palestinians from trampling on a poster of Bin Zayed. "By God, they [the Israeli policemen] are more honorable than some of the [Palestinian] homeless. A video that deserves to be retweeted with full force."
The Palestinian leaders' strong condemnation of the UAE and other Arab states that support normalization with Israel has also driven many Arabs to raise the issue of financial corruption of the Palestinian leadership. Some Gulf citizens pointed out that the personal fortunes of Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal are worth at least $9 billion, while others claimed that Mahmoud Abbas's personal wealth is estimated at $200 million.
A public opinion poll published last year showed that 80% of Palestinians feel that they have been abandoned by the Arab countries. Judging from the reactions of many Arabs to the Palestinian campaign of incitement against Arab governments seeking peace with Israel, it is safe to assume that this percentage will increase sharply.
The Palestinians are good at making enemies, and this time it seems that they have been wildly successful in earning both the wrath and the disgust of a large number of Arabs. At this rate, the Palestinians will soon wake up to discover that they have more support in China and Europe than in their own backyard.
Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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The Dangerous Illusion of Restraining U.S. Power
Jonathan Schanzer and Mark Dubowitz/Foreign Policy/August 19/2020
Isolationists among both Democrats and Republicans want to withdraw from foreign entanglements. That would make the world much less safe.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper announced on July 29 that 11,900 U.S. military personnel will be leaving Germany, reducing the United States’ footprint there from 36,000 to 24,000 soldiers. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is weighing a similar drawdown from the 28,500 U.S. troops currently stationed in South Korea. And that may be just the beginning. According to Richard Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany who briefly served as acting director of national intelligence this spring, the goal is to “bring [home] troops from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, from South Korea, Japan, and from Germany.”
The call for the United States to show “restraint” by withdrawing from foreign entanglements and keeping the focus at home is growing in foreign-policy circles—and not just in the Trump administration. The current movement appears to have started in 2014, when Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Barry Posen published the seminal work on foreign-policy restraint. His work, not surprisingly, resonated with realists-cum-isolationists such as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, not to mention a gaggle of libertarians who found a new bottle for their old laissez-faire wine. There is even a restrainers’ think tank, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, erroneously named for former President John Quincy Adams owing to a fundamental misreading of his thinking and a failed attempt to apply cavalry-era strategizing to 21st-century superpower affairs.
Isolationist ideas clearly appeal to Trump. But they have also taken hold on the left. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s wing of the Democratic Party ensured that a call for the end of “forever wars” found its way into the Democrats’ platform. At this week’s virtual convention, Democrats will surely blame Trump for undermining U.S. influence—but it’s unclear how many Democrats actually support a return to greater U.S. commitments around the world. Presumptive candidate Joe Biden’s long record in the U.S. Senate as a foreign-policy internationalist—as well as his choice of Sen. Kamala Harris from the party’s moderate wing as his running mate—offers hope for greater U.S. engagement with traditional allies. Yet it remains uncertain whether a Biden administration would push back decisively against the country’s most determined adversaries. And as vice president, Biden had a seat at the table when then President Barack Obama adopted his own elements of isolationism, including his withdrawal of troops from Iraq, his unwillingness to enforce his own “red line” against the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons, and his tepid response to Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea.
The common theme among restrainers: The United States has no business intervening in other nations’ affairs. Or, as H.R. McMaster, a 34-year veteran of the U.S. Army and former national security advisor to Trump, has noted, isolationists hold the “romantic view that restraint abroad is almost always an unmitigated good.”
Isolationist ideas clearly appeal to Trump, but they have also taken hold on the left.
In some ways, the restraint movement echoes the isolationism championed in the 1930s and 1940s by Charles Lindbergh’s America First Committee. Like that earlier isolationism, the restraint movement attempts to draw lessons and inferences from U.S. wars. In the 1930s, isolationists invoked World War I, in which almost 120,000 Americans perished, as a reason to avoid challenging German and Japanese fascism. The thought was that if Americans just stayed out of World War II, the totalitarians would leave them alone.
Today’s restrainers similarly seek to capitalize on the suffering and difficulties associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the broader fight against terrorism, when they argue for the withdrawal of the remaining forces in these conflicts and others. Restrainers, however, often conflate the decision to intervene at all with how a conflict is subsequently managed or how eventually to withdraw. These are different policy decisions. Indeed, one can be critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and how the war was managed—while also believing that Washington should retain a modest U.S. military presence there to help prevent a return of the Islamic State or to counter the influence of Iran.
Restrainers have also attempted to use the Great Recession and the current economic crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic as leverage to incite populist passions. They do this by falsely suggesting that defense spending is the primary source of the federal deficit and debt. They also suggest a false choice between domestic priorities and spending on defense, which amounts to less than 4 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.
The restraint movement echoes the isolationism championed in the 1930s and 1940s by Charles Lindbergh’s America First Committee.
Restrainers consistently paint existing and potential conflicts and U.S. military deployments with the same brush, warning of another “forever war.” However, not every conflict leads to an interminable quagmire. Even the so-called war on terror, despite its headaches, so far has helped prevent another major foreign terrorist attack on the United States, which many had predicted to be inevitable after 9/11.
The term “forever war” is itself curious. History, unfortunately, is a forever war—the chronicle of states’ struggles with their enemies. To be sure, one can write a truly wondrous history of human achievement. But sadly, as the Spanish writer George Santayana observed, “only the dead have seen the end of war.”
It is for this reason that former President Ronald Reagan advocated “peace through strength.” This view served the United States and its NATO allies well in Europe during the Cold War. Reagan, of course, was only borrowing from the Roman adage: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” The Chinese strategist Sun Tzu and his Prussian counterpart Carl von Clausewitz offered similar advice. Their common belief: Weakness and lack of resolution invite aggression.
Restrainers operate under the mistaken assertion that the world would be a safer or better place if U.S. influence would simply recede. The 20th century tells another story. As the historian Robert Kagan argued in his 2012 book The World America Made, the U.S.-led world order has heralded a global rise in liberalism and human rights, better education and health, greater wealth, and more access to information.
Equally puzzling is the notion that the world’s problems and conflicts are of little consequence to the United States. Isolationism doesn’t work, however, because the enemy gets a vote, and what happens abroad inevitably affects Americans at home. Al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks despite the United States’ best efforts to steer clear of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where al Qaeda was based. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor despite the United States’ best efforts to stay out of the fray. Isolationists initially blocked then President Franklin D. Roosevelt from providing greater support to an embattled Britain, and millions of lives were lost from not confronting German leader Adolf Hitler sooner. In fact, had the United States stayed engaged in Europe in the 1920s, Hitler’s rise might have been preventable.
Isolationism doesn’t work because the enemy gets a vote, and what happens abroad inevitably affects Americans at home.
The best way to preserve the U.S.-led global order and to prevent attacks on the United States is to remain engaged and keep a well-designed, forward-deployed military presence alongside allies and partners. As Jakub J. Grygiel and A. Wess Mitchell have noted, U.S. deployments of varying magnitude along what they call the “unquiet frontier” that stretches from the Baltic Sea to the South China Sea counter the rise of revisionist powers such as China, Russia, and Iran. Support for U.S. allies, coupled with a U.S. military presence in forward bases, today helps deter gathering threats.
Trump’s decision to remove significant numbers of U.S. troops from Germany, and his threat to do the same from South Korea, may be a negotiating tactic to extract greater cost-sharing from other NATO members and Seoul. But that approach is ill-advised. U.S. soldiers are not mercenaries available to the highest bidder. Nor is the U.S. military presence in these countries charity; U.S. troops are forward-deployed to deter adversaries and protect core U.S. national security interests.
When Washington plays an outsized role in shaping and maintaining the international rules-based order, Americans and people around the world are safer and more prosperous. That’s what the United States has done, for the most part, since World War II. And that leadership role has helped ensure that global conflicts such as the Cold War did not erupt into devastating military confrontations.
Admittedly, the U.S.-led international order certainly has not prevented all wars. There have been costly mistakes along the way. But responding to those mistakes by relinquishing the United States’ leadership role—and deliberately drawing down U.S. military power—would be shortsighted and counterproductive.
Those who welcome the demise of U.S. power have yet to fully answer one important question: What happens after the United States goes home? When the British Empire unraveled after World War II, the United States stepped into the void, promoting an international system based on the rule of law. Who will follow the United States? The alternatives are frightening.
Those who welcome the demise of U.S. power have yet to fully answer one important question: What happens after the United States goes home?
Russia is far less equipped to become a superpower, but would be a particularly predatory, corrupt, and avaricious one under Russian President Vladimir Putin. China seeks global leadership. But the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian hostility to democracy; weaponization of data; human rights abuses; support for rogue states such as Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan; threats to Hong Kong and Taiwan; militarization of the South China Sea; and massive theft of intellectual property should all serve as warnings. And let us all dispense with the fiction that the European Union could be an alternative to the United States in defending democracies.
U.S. power, therefore, must be retained, not restrained.
Retaining U.S. power should take different forms depending on the region and country. A reflexive tendency to retain all U.S. military deployments would be as unwise as a reflexive tendency to withdraw them. Each must be measured methodically in terms of U.S. interests and threats to them. And this should be accomplished with the smallest U.S. force posture necessary.
Thankfully, the military isn’t the only tool of national power at Washington’s disposal. Another is economic warfare. The economic tools created in the aftermath of 9/11 are targeted and surgical. Their strength derives from the dollar-denominated financial system constructed by the United States, and under which the world still operates. Sanctions have allowed the United States to maintain important leverage over adversaries. These tools must be used judiciously, as should all instruments of national power. But restrainers often deride these economic tools, claiming they are a gateway to war rather than a means of suasion and avoiding war. They lambaste their use against U.S. enemies and adversaries such as Iran and Russia, even as some restrainers seem eager to use the same tools of economic warfare against U.S. allies such as Israel.
Restrainers are, of course, justified in their desire to avoid needless conflict. But the importance of the United States’ willingness to confront challenges cannot be discounted. Weakness makes war more likely, not less. Diplomacy without leverage leads to discussions about how much the United States is willing to retreat. This will only leave Americans more alone and more insecure.
U.S. wealth should be guarded—the goal should be to fight battles only when core national interests demand it.
In the end, not all conflict is avoidable, just as not all withdrawals are advisable. The United States must therefore wield its military judiciously, not least to protect its service members. And U.S. wealth should be guarded—the goal should be to fight battles only when core national interests demand it.
But in the 21st century, if Americans want to be safe at home, some of their best and brightest must stand watch abroad. For that reason, restraint in the form of reflexive military withdrawal is the wrong prescription. With new threats gathering, it’s the retainers who should win this debate.
*Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at FDD and a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Mark Dubowitz is the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Jon and Mark on Twitter @JSchanzer and @mdubowitz.

‘Snapback’ sanctions on Iran could make up for UN Security Council’s error
Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri/Arab News/August 19/2020
The UN Security Council last week rejected a draft resolution submitted by the US to extend the arms embargo imposed on Iran, which is due to expire in October. This was a major mistake.
The world was supposed to unite in confronting the premier country in terms of support for terrorism and the only nation in the world that possesses militias and terrorist organizations numbering in the hundreds. Iran has provided such groups with advanced weaponry, even ballistic missiles, which threaten the security and stability of the world generally and the Middle East in particular. Tehran does not respect diplomatic laws and norms.
Iran, in addition to its shameful record on terrorism, has a repressive record that does not take into account human rights inside or outside its borders. Iran is ranked second in the world when it comes to executions, with its famous cranes being a tool for hanging those citizens who disagree with the regime politically. The horrors of this country also include its rigging of elections and use of a terrorist militia called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which does not stop planning evil or financing and training terrorist militias. Above all, it has a ballistic missile program that worries the world and the region, besides its nuclear program, which could turn the Middle East into a battlefield if it was to succeed and make everyone look to obtain a nuclear bomb.
How could a country like this be allowed to have its ban on weapons imports lifted? Is the purpose only for material gain from selling weapons, without a thought of how it will use them? Is the Security Council rewarding terrorists instead of punishing them? Is it really a “security council” or a council of war, devastation and destruction?
Those countries that voted against lifting the ban are partners in Tehran’s criminality and are legitimizing its terrorism, killings and destruction. Millions of people have suffered from Tehran’s terror in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere. But soon Iran could have more tools of death and destruction. The region and the world will not forget that the Security Council is no longer the same, and many of those who have issues and disputes will instead solve their problems outside of its framework because they no longer trust this council or its decisions.
In any case, the free world that is genuinely fighting terrorism has to line up and activate its mechanisms to confront this danger. It must respond to Tehran and its supporters and make them lose.
The US will work on the principle of the “snapback” mechanism, meaning the “automatic return of sanctions,” as stipulated in Security Council resolution 2231. This mechanism allows any of the signatory countries to the nuclear agreement to submit a complaint to the UN if Iran violates any of the terms of the deal. It also allows member states to unilaterally reapply all the international sanctions on Iran that were lifted as part of the nuclear deal.
With the end of the arms embargo only two months away, the US government wants Iran to suspend all enrichment-related activities, including research and development, and ban the import of anything that contributes to those activities. In addition, Iran will be prevented from developing ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and sanctions will be reimposed on dozens of individuals and entities. Countries will also be urged to inspect shipments to and from Iran and will obtain permits to confiscate any prohibited shipment.
As well as the banning of oil and gas exports, sanctions will be imposed on exports such as petrochemicals, which have become the only outlet for the ailing Iranian economy, as its currency is witnessing a historic collapse and the disruption of industry has led to continuous strikes and protests.
It is also necessary to implement “snapback-plus,” by which I mean confronting Tehran, tightening the screws on it economically and preventing it from selling oil to buy weapons. For example, Washington last week announced that it had confiscated the loads of four Iranian oil tankers that were destined for Venezuela, estimated at about 1.1 million barrels in total. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said the proceeds from the forfeiture would “support the US Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund instead of those engaging in terrorism, like the (IRGC).” This is one of the methods that must be used, along with preventing it from getting the revenues it currently earns from its trade with Iraq, such as from supplying its neighbor with electricity and smuggling oil through the country, which are the lungs that allow it to breathe.
Those countries that voted against lifting the ban are partners in Tehran’s criminality.
Likewise, there must be restrictions placed on Iran’s activities in Latin America via Hezbollah, which has links to drug trafficking and contraband, and the Venezuelan-Iranian cooperation in the field of oil, which is offset by Venezuelan gold.
One of Tehran’s most important weapons that has to be dismantled and destroyed is its terrorist militias in the region, which are Iran’s spearhead. There is currently a favorable opportunity for the return of security and stability in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen if Iran’s proxies are confronted and dismantled.
While the Security Council votes in favor of Tehran, most of the region and the US must change the equation on the ground in order to achieve international peace and security, and confront Tehran’s terrorism and its militias.
*Dr. Hamdan Al-Shehri is a political analyst and international relations scholar. Twitter: @DrHamsheri