English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For June 17/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said, A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 16/16-19:”‘A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me.’Then some of his disciples said to one another, ‘What does he mean by saying to us, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”; and “Because I am going to the Father”?’They said, ‘What does he mean by this “a little while”? We do not know what he is talking about.’Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, ‘Are you discussing among yourselves what I meant when I said, “A little while, and you will no longer see me, and again a little while, and you will see me”?”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 16-17/2020
Nine New Coronavirus Cases in Lebanon
Victims' Rrepresentatives Named in Hamadeh-Hawi-Murr Case
Berri and Hariri Vow to Prevent Strife, Condemn Vandalism
Baabda to Host ‘Broad’ Meeting on June 25
Lebanese Army Erects Sand Barriers on Border with Syria
Arslan on Jumblat Reconciliation: We Reject Any Tensions in Mt. Lebanon
Nasrallah Says Hizbullah Not behind Rioters, Calls Dollar Crisis a U.S. Plot
Lebanese sell their gold for cash as currency crisis deepens
Beirut airport escapes terrorist plot weeks before reopening
Lebanon: Saboteur Convoys Terrorize Tripoli
Wazni Holds Financial Talks with World Bank Delegation
Lebanon to Probe Dollar 'Rumors' and 'Insults' to President
Israel Combs Road Opposite Adaisseh
Security Forces Deploy near Banks in Halba
Army Arrests Dozens after Violent Protests
The Caesar Act adds more uncertainty to the already fragile Lebanese economy/Alicia Medina/Syria Direct/June 16/2020
Zajal Poetry, an ancient form of poetic artistry/Chiri Choukeir/Annahar/16 June 2020
No stranger to hardship, the American University of Beirut endures/Fadlo R Khuri/The National/June 16/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 16-17/2020
Russia’s Lavrov vows to stand firm by Iran on nuclear deal
US official says Iran is ‘greatest threat’ to region’s stability, security
Tunisian party leader Abir Moussi: Muslim Brotherhood members receiving foreign funds
UN Rights Experts Slam Israeli Plan to Annex Palestinian Territory
Netanyahu to Ask Greece, Cyprus to Ease European Opposition to Annexation Plan
Israel’s First Bedouin Diplomat Attacked by Security Officers
Iraqi Leaderships Discuss Washington-Baghdad Dialogue
3 Rockets Land Near Baghdad Int’l Airport
Iraq Slams Turkey for Violating its Airspace
Turkey Determined to Set up Base in Libya’s Watiya, Misrata
Beijing Expands Lockdowns as Cases Top 100 in New Outbreak
North Korea Destroys Inter-Korean Liaison Office as Tension Rise

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 16-17/2020
On Vote-By-Mail/J. Christian Adams/Gatestone Institute/June 16, 2020
Germany Confronted its Past and Flourished. So Can the US/Pankaj Mishra/Bloomberg/June 16/2020
2020 Is Not 1968/Niall Ferguson/Bloomberg/June 16/2020
Trump Must Hold Hamas’ Terror Proxies Accountable/David May/Joe Truzman/FDD/June 16/2020
Whether Trump wins the US election or Biden, change is afoot around the world/Raghida Dergham/The National/June 16/2020
Time to re-energize the GCC-UK strategic partnership/Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/June 16/2020
US Caesar Act will press Russia to decide Bashar Assad’s fate/Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/June 16/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on June 16-17/2020
Nine New Coronavirus Cases in Lebanon
Naharnet/June 16/2020
Lebanon on Tuesday confirmed nine more COVID-19 infections, which raises the country’s tally to 1,473. In its daily statement, the Health Ministry said six of the cases were recorded among residents and three among expats repatriated from Belarus, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The death toll remains unchanged at 32 while the number of recoveries has reached 889. Thirty-five infected individuals were meanwhile admitted into hospitals over the past 24 hours, among them eight into intensive care units.
Four of the local cases were recorded in Wadi al-Nahleh, one in Jabal al-Beddawi and one in al-Qobbeh. The three infected expats hail from Adloun, Ansar and al-Tiri.

Victims' Rrepresentatives Named in Hamadeh-Hawi-Murr Case
Naharnet/June 16/2020
The Registrar of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) Daryl Mundis has designated three counsel to represent the victims participating in the Ayyash case relating to three attacks against Lebanese politicians Marwan Hamadeh on 1 October 2004, Georges Hawi on 21 June 2004 and Elias Murr, on 12 July 2005. The STL Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen decided on 17 April 2020 to grant the status of Victim Participating in the Proceedings to 29 individuals, the STL said in a statement. The Judge also decided to divide the participating victims into three groups, each related to one of the attacks in the Ayyash case and ordered the Registrar to designate a legal representative for each group. The Registrar has designated the following counsel as legal representatives:
- Nidal Jurdi, a Lebanese national admitted to the Tripoli Bar as Legal Representative for the participating victims in Group 1, pertaining to the attack against Hamadeh;
- Antonios Abou Kasm, a Lebanese national admitted to the Beirut Bar as Legal Representative for the participating victims in Group 2, pertaining to the attack against Hawi;
- Adel Nassar, a Lebanese national admitted to the Beirut Bar as Lead Representative for the participating victims in Group 3, pertaining to the attack against Murr.
”The three counsel have been selected on the basis of their relevant experience, skills and competence, including experience and expertise in relation to the rights of victims, international criminal law, and the Lebanese context,” the STL said.
These appointments were made by the Registrar in consultation with the Victims' Participation Unit (VPU). The Legal Representatives of Victims (LRVs) are chosen from the VPU’s List of Counsel, upon “a careful selection process that also takes into consideration the views and preferences of the participating victims.”The main role of the LRVs is to represent Victims Participating in the Proceedings before the Tribunal, presenting their views and concerns during the judicial process. The indictment against Salim Ayyash, a suspected Hizbullah operative who is on the run, was confirmed in September 2019.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon has jurisdiction over persons responsible for attacks that took place in Lebanon between 1 October 2004 and 12 December 2005 if the Tribunal finds that these attacks are connected to the attack of 14 February 2005, which killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and many others. The STL has tried Ayyash and three other Hizbullah operatives in absentia over Hariri's killing and verdicts are expected this year.

Berri and Hariri Vow to Prevent Strife, Condemn Vandalism
Naharnet/June 16/2020
Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri held talks Tuesday in Ain el-Tineh. A joint statement issued after the 90-minute meeting said the two leaders stress that “there is no priority that comes before the priority of preserving civil peace.”They also emphasized “the need to intensify efforts to foil any attempt to plunge the country into strife,” noting that “the vandalization of public and private property and insults against sanctities are totally deplorable and do not reflect people’s pain.”

Baabda to Host ‘Broad’ Meeting on June 25
Naharnet/June 16/2020
A meeting chaired by President Michel Aoun in Baabda later this month is expected to bring together the former presidents, former prime ministers, heads of the parliamentary blocs in addition to PM Hassan Diab and Speaker Nabih Berri. The goal of the meeting is reportedly to vent the tension on the street on one hand, mainly after the violent protests that turned sectarian last week, and appease the political atmospheres between political leaders. Inviting the former PMs to the meeting came at the request of Aoun, while the bloc leaders were invited at the request of Speaker Nabih Berri, said reports. The meeting is scheduled on June 25. Speaker Berri embarked recently on reconciling between bickering political parties in light of numerous crises driving Lebanon deeper into trouble including a worsening economic situation. He invited the two Druze rivals, Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat and MP Talal Arslan for a meeting in Ain el-Tineh on Monday. It was followed by a dinner banquet. According to reports, the meetings that Berri is conducting at his residence aim to pave the way for positive atmospheres before bringing the opponents together at the Baabda table.

Lebanese Army Erects Sand Barriers on Border with Syria
Naharnet/June 16/2020
The Lebanese Army announced Tuesday that it has erected sand barricades on parts of the border with Syria. “As part of the measures that the army is taking to control the border and prevent illegal smuggling operations, an army unity erected sand barriers on the Lebanese-Syrian border, specifically in the Bekaa area of Qanafez,” an army statement said. Separately, army troops on the al-Abbara checkpoint in the Bekaa arrested a Syrian national for driving a stolen Nissan car.

Arslan on Jumblat Reconciliation: We Reject Any Tensions in Mt. Lebanon
Naharnet/June 16/2020
Lebanese Democratic Party leader Talal Arslan on Tuesday described his reconciliation meeting with Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblat as “positive and frank” and “a continuation of the Baabda reconciliation that was made in August.”The meeting was held Monday evening at Speaker Nabih Berri’s residence in Ain el-Tineh. “The incidents were the result of accumulated reasons that led to major tensions and the Qabrshmoun and Choueifat incidents, and we have a responsibility not to commit a new mistake that might lead to a new Qabrshmoun or a new Choueifat,” Arslan said. “Yesterday we were positive and Speaker Berri’s sponsorship was positive, but we cannot in two hours claim that we have addressed all things. We have rather put them on the right track,” Arslan added. “We reject any tensions in Mount Lebanon and in these critical circumstances we are required to immunize ourselves and our community and to restore Mt. Lebanon’s symbolism as to the unity of the Lebanese and coexistence,” Arslan went on to say.

Nasrallah Says Hizbullah Not behind Rioters, Calls Dollar Crisis a U.S. Plot
Naharnet/June 16/2020
Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday distanced his party from the rioters who ransacked central Beirut in the weekend and denied seeking a government change, as he described the dollar shortage crisis as a U.S. "conspiracy.""When protests erupted over the rise in the dollar exchange rate and acts of violence occurred in Beirut and Tripoli, some held the Shiite duo responsible and said the Shiite duo wanted to topple the government. In the past they said this is Hizbullah’s government, so is Hizbullah stupid to topple its government? This is a sign of confusion and absurdity," said Nasrallah in a televised speech. "There is an interest in the continued presence of the government and it should exert as much efforts as possible, seeing as the situation cannot withstand any changes," he added.
Condemning "attacks on public and private property and security forces, the blocking of roads and insults against symbols and sanctities," Nasrallah confirmed that members of Hizbullah and AMAL Movement had deployed on the ground in some areas to prevent motorcycles moving in groups from heading to central Beirut. "We will do anything, even autonomous security, to prevent a return to frontlines, strife and chaos in the country," he pledged.
As for the dollar crisis, Nasrallah said there is "confirmed official information that the Americans are preventing the transfer of sufficient amounts of dollars to Lebanon and are preventing the central bank from pumping enough dollars into the markets.""The problem is bigger than the problem of illegal money changers. This is a simplification of the problem and smoke bombs aimed at concealing the monsters who collected dollars and sent them abroad or those who are preventing the entry of dollars," Nasrallah added.
"The dollar issue is a conspiracy against Lebanon and the Lebanese people and economy before being a conspiracy against Syria," he said.
Nasrallah also accused a Lebanese bank of collecting tens of millions of dollars and sending them out of Lebanon as of August 2019.
"This bank is protected by political parties," he said.
He also recalled that Lebanese officials "said in officials meetings that 20 billion dollars were sent abroad between September 2019 and February 2020."
"They were not sent to Syria or Iran and it was not Hizbullah or AMAL who transferred them abroad," Nasrallah pointed out.
Moreover, Hizbullah's leader said new U.S. sanctions against the Syrian government aim to "starve" the country and its neighbor Lebanon.
"The Caesar Act aims to starve Lebanon just as it aims to starve Syria," Nasrallah said. "Syria has won the war... militarily, in security terms and politically," he added, describing the law which comes into force Wednesday as Washington's "last weapon" against Damascus.
Addressing the United States, Nasrallah said: "Punish us but why are you punishing the Lebanese people?"
Hizbullah is already on U.S. sanctions lists.
"Our weapons will remain in our hands. We will not go hungry and we will kill you," he said, angrily, but didn't elaborate. "We will not go hungry and we will not let our country go hungry."
Nasrallah also said his group would propose to the Lebanese government to turn to Iran to secure its basic needs, without needing U.S. dollars. He said China is also ready to invest in Lebanon. He added that Hizbullah has other cards to play but didn't elaborate.
The U.S. law targets companies that deal with President Bashar al-Assad's regime, which Hizbillah, Tehran and Moscow support in Syria's conflict.
It imposes financial restrictions on the Damascus government to compel it to halt "attacks on the Syrian people," and it is expected for the first time to target Russian and Iranian entities active in Syria.
The Syrian government and loyalist businessmen are already targeted by U.S. and European economic sanctions.
After nine years of war, Syria is mired in an economic crisis compounded by a coronavirus lockdown and a dollar liquidity crisis in Lebanon, a major conduit for regime-held regions.
A large chunk of Syria's population is living in poverty, prices have soared and the value of the Syrian pound has hit record lows against the dollar on the black market. Nasrallah also accused the United States of engineering the collapse of the Syrian currency, but vowed that Assad's allies would stand by the regime. "The allies of Syria, which stood by its side during the war... will not abandon Syria in the face of economic warfare and will not allow its fall, even if they are themselves going through difficult circumstances," he said.
Lebanon too is experiencing the worst financial meltdown since the end of its own 1975-1990 civil war, as well as being rocked by months of anti-government protests. Nasrallah called on the Lebanese government "not to submit" to the Caesar Act. The United States on Tuesday warned Assad that he would never secure a full victory and must reach a political compromise.
Kelly Craft, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, urged him to accept a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, elections and political transition along with U.N.-led talks. "The Assad regime has a clear choice to make: pursue the political path established in Resolution 2254, or leave the United States with no other choice but to continue withholding reconstruction funding and impose sanctions against the regime and its financial backers," Craft said.

Lebanese sell their gold for cash as currency crisis deepens
Reuters, Video edited by Omar Elkatouri, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday 16 June 2020
The situation is grim at a jewelry store in the heart of the Lebanese capital, where citizens desperate for cash are rushing to sell or pawn their gold amid an escalating financial crisis. Store walls are plastered with signs that read: ‘We buy gold’, to attract those who want to sell their last-standing savings.
One jewelry storeowner, Ahmad Taqi, said spending a day at his shop will leave one depressed. “People are selling [their gold] to pay hospital fees, tuition fees, loans on their homes, which they can’t even pay now, they pay rather for delayed rent payments,” he said. The heavily indebted country has been sliding deeper into trouble since October, when a combination of slowing capital inflows and protests against corruption spilled into a political, banking and financial crisis. Lebanon has kept an official dollar peg of 1,507.5 pounds but with foreign reserves dwindling, that rate is now only available for imports of fuel, medicine, and wheat. On Monday (June 15), most of the money exchange venues were closed and traders who are in need for U.S. dollars seen moving desperately from one exchange shop to the other. Zuhair Ahmadieh, a Lebanese sports equipment company owner, said he came to exchange Lebanese pounds with U.S. dollars to pay for goods he recently imported and was advised to resort to the black market. As the crisis has worsened, nearly a quarter of a million people have lost their jobs, the labor federation says, the Lebanese currency has lost more than 60 percent of its value and savers have been locked out of their deposits.

Beirut airport escapes terrorist plot weeks before reopening
Jacob Boswall, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday 16 June 2020
Lebanon’s only international airport narrowly escaped a terrorist attack earlier in the week, the country's General Security chief has revealed. Over the weekend, a document was leaked that purportedly detailed the plans of attackers to enter the country by sea before detonating explosives in and around the airport on Monday, June 15. General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim confirmed the rumors, after a meeting with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. According to a security source who spoke on condition of anonymity, the main target of the attack was Beirut’s airport security. For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app. “The news got to the airport security and they passed it onto General Security and the Internal Security Forces. Together they took precautions and thwarted the plot,” the source told Al Arabiya English. The attackers were unable to sneak into the country by sea, partly as a result of Hezbollah’s security “belt” protecting the coast south of Beirut, the source said. “Hezbollah has its own forces protecting Dahieh [Beirut's southern suburbs], which extend from Khaldeh to Ras Beirut. This means that nobody can enter or leave [by sea],” the source added.
Asked about where the would-be attackers were planning on coming from, the source could not confirm. Ibrahim and a General Security spokesman were unavailable for comment on the foiled attacks.

Lebanon: Saboteur Convoys Terrorize Tripoli
Tripoli - Sawsan al-Abtah/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
When you pass through the main Boulevard Street in Lebanon's Tripoli, down from Al-Nour Square towards Al-Tal in the city center, you notice that most of the shops were either burned, destroyed or have permanently closed their doors.
Riding motorcycles, groups of young men invaded the main streets of Tripoli over the past few days, attacking a number of restaurants on Monday evening and intimidating the clients, while a number of bank branches were burned, including the Arab Bank and BLOM. Nasser Shaarani, the owner of a well-known shawarma restaurant, recounted that nearly 500 people came for the third night in a row on motorbikes, “shouting and intimidating people, ordering us to shut down, taking what is on the tables, and not caring about the presence of families or women.”“This intimidation is no longer permitted, and we will not be silent if these actions are repeated,” he warned. Shaarani also said that he contacted the Lebanese army and security forces, and received a promise that the appropriate measures would be taken. “Many saboteurs were arrested, while the search for the rest is still ongoing,” he added. While residents disagree about the parties behind these groups, and accuse different sides, there is an overwhelming consensus that money is paid to young people to carry out sabotage missions, saying that $6 is given to the owner of the bike and $5 to the person sitting behind him.

Wazni Holds Financial Talks with World Bank Delegation
Naharnet/June 16/2020
Finance Minister Ghazi Wazni held talks with a World Bank delegation led by its Mashreq Regional Director, Saroj Kumar Jha, where talks focused on the bilateral partnership between Lebanon and the World Bank, the National News Agency reported on Tuesday. "We are working with the Lebanese government on a program to secure a social safety net for the poor and vulnerable groups in Lebanon,” Kumar Jha stated.. “The World Bank and several donors will support this program. Given the current situation in the country, we believe it is necessary to put this program into practice immediately,”he added.

Lebanon to Probe Dollar 'Rumors' and 'Insults' to President
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/June 16/2020
Lebanon's public prosecutor Tuesday ordered a probe into rumors on social media on the plunge in value of the local currency that sparked three nights of violent protests. Hundreds took to the streets from last Thursday to Saturday after the dollar exchange rate soared to almost 5,000 Lebanese pounds on the black market, according to money dealers, despite officially remaining pegged at 1,507 pounds. Some local media or social posts reported the rate had reached as much as 6,000 or 7,000 pounds to the greenback. A prosecutor ordered an investigation into "the spreading Thursday, by a number of people, of information on social media and other means of publication on a lack of dollars in the market and the increase of its exchange rate to 7,000 pounds to sow confusion and panic," the National News Agency said. The result was "extra incitement for people to withdraw their bank deposits in the Lebanese currency to buy dollars... and an unjustified increase in the price of consumer goods," NNA said. Lebanon is in the grips of an economic crisis, its worst since the 1975-1990 war, that in October sparked protests against a political elite accused of incompetence and corruption. Banks have since gradually limited dollar withdrawals, forcing those in need to resort to much higher exchange rates from money changers. Last week, the authorities said they would inject dollars into the market to bring down the exchange rate. On Monday, the public prosecutor also ordered a probe to identify those behind "posts or photos harming... the presidency" in view of pressing defamation charges, NNA said, sparking an outcry on social media.

Israel Combs Road Opposite Adaisseh
Naharnet/June 16/2020
An Israeli infantry unit accompanied by a police dog combed the road near the Mesgav Am settlement, opposite the town of Adaisseh in Marjayoun, the National News Agency reported on Tuesday. An Israeli bulldozer also carried out excavation works on said road outside the technical fence.
Israeli troops were deployed in the area, it added.

Security Forces Deploy near Banks in Halba
Naharnet/June 16/2020
Security forces deployed "heavily" in the northern town of Halba near several banks and government institutions, the state-run National News Agency reported on Tuesday. NNA said the forces reinforced their presence in the early morning. They also deployed near the Grand Serail of Halba. No further details were provided.

Army Arrests Dozens after Violent Protests
Naharnet/June 16/2020
The Lebanese army said it had arrested dozens of suspects for "vandalism", after days of protests triggered by a plunging local currency amid the worst economic crisis in decades. Hundreds of protesters clashed with security forces at the weekend across the Mediterranean nation, after days of resurgent demonstrations against a ruling class deemed corrupt and impotent in tackling the spiralling crisis. "The total number of arrests made by military intelligence between 11 and 15 June in different Lebanese regions is 36 people for acts of vandalism", damaging public and private property and attacking security forces, an army statement said Monday. The official National News Agency reported that the army had launched a series of raids in the northern port of Tripoli, Lebanon's second city. Over the course of three nights, young men attacked banks and shops and threw rocks at security forces in Tripoli who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas. Medical services reported dozens of wounded. They were angered by a steep drop in the Lebanese pound, the sky-rocketing price of food and what they perceive to be the government's failure to reign in the country's economic collapse.
Relative calm returned on Sunday evening, with protesters holding a peaceful rally in the capital Beirut, while dozens marched to a central square in Tripoli. The army's announcement of arrests came after President Michel Aoun on Monday discussed the protests with the country's top security body including ministers and military officials. "Such acts of vandalism will not be allowed after today," Aoun said after the meeting of the Higher Defence Council.
'Deliberate' devaluation
Aoun called for "a wave of arrests, including of those who planned and carried out" such acts and ordered authorities to beef up "preemptive" operations to prevent further violence, a statement said. Prime Minister Hassan Diab also condemned acts of "sabotage" committed by "thugs" in Beirut and Tripoli.
"Thugs have no other motive than vandalism, and they should be thrown in jail, period," said a statement released by his office. On Saturday in Tripoli, protesters blocked trucks suspected of smuggling food products into Syria. But the UN World Food Programme said it had itself sent the convoy of 39 trucks carrying food aid bound for the war-torn country. People who blocked the passage of "trucks carrying food staples on behalf of international agencies" were among those arrested, the army said Monday. The latest wave of demonstrations come almost eight months after the start of a mass protest movement over Lebanon's crumbling economy and corruption. The Lebanese pound had plumbed new lows on Thursday, hitting 5,000 to the dollar for the first time. The next day, authorities vowed to pump greenbacks into the market to limit the rout. A Beirut money-changer told AFP on Monday that the dollar was selling for up to 4,400 pounds. Diab on Monday called for an investigation into the rapid devaluation of the Lebanese pound, calling the fluctuation a "deliberate" act committed by currency manipulators. Lebanon's economic crisis has led to soaring unemployment -- over a third of the workforce is out of work -- and in March the country defaulted on its sovereign debt for the first time. The government has put together a reform package to relaunch the economy and is in talks with the International Monetary Fund to access desperately needed financial aid. Inflation is expected to top 50 percent this year, in a country where 45 percent of the population lives under the poverty line. The economy has been hit hard by years of war in neighbouring Syria.

The Caesar Act adds more uncertainty to the already fragile Lebanese economy
Alicia Medina/Syria Direct/June 16/2020
BEIRUT – Amid a deepening economic crisis, Lebanon awaits to discern what might be the repercussions of the American Caesar Act, which takes effect tomorrow, and imposes sanctions on the Syrian government, as well as companies, institutions and individuals that do business with it.
Unlike the European Union sanctions targeting specific individuals tied to the Syrian government, the Caesar Act introduces broad sanctions, thus creating uncertainty regarding who will be targeted. According to Syria Report, a specialist economic publication, in 2011 and 2012, the US passed secondary sanctions but were not always implemented. This time sanctions are mandatory.
Although the Syrian regime is the ultimate target of these sanctions, Lebanon is also in the spotlight given the growing role and influence of Hezbollah in the government, the ties between the Lebanese and Syrian banking systems and the smuggling routes along the two countries’ shared border.
A gateway to circumvent sanctions
Lebanon has historically been a gateway for Syria to avoid Western sanctions. Damascus has been subjected to US sanctions since 1979, when the country was listed as a state that sponsors terrorism.” Today Lebanon remains “very important for Syria to do a lot of things that they can not do from their territory any longer, through middlemen in Lebanon,” Bente Scheller, Head of the Middle East and North Africa Department at the Heinrich Boll Foundation, told Syria Direct. With the activation of the Caesar Act, “things will become a bit more complicated,” she added.
“The Syrian regime and particularly Hezbollah will not stop trying to use Lebanon as their way to bypass sanctions, including the Caesar Act,” said Makram Rabah, Lecturer of History at the American University of Beirut.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, tries to downplay the effects of the new sanctions. “We have been under direct sanctions from the Americans and under indirect sanctions through the sanctions targeting the Iranians, and we have coped and survived, nothing impacted our will to stay allies with the Syrians,” Aya Ali Ahmad, spokeswoman of the Hezbollah Media Office in Beirut told Syria Direct.
While the new sanctions aim to halt any normalization efforts between foreign countries and Syria, Rabah also ruled out any progress in the near future between Beirut and Damascus. “Normalization has been promoted under the premise that this will help in the return of refugees and that is not something on the table at the moment,” he said. Nonetheless, Hezbollah, a key ally of the Assad government, is pushing to reestablish ties with the neighboring country. “Lebanon should normalize its relations with Syria, not because of Syrian benefit but because of the Lebanese benefit; we count on the Syrian border to export our products in the agriculture sector,” said Ali Ahmad.
The elephant in the room
The current Lebanese government led by Hassan Diab is backed by Hezbollah, among other political forces. Since 2012, the Lebanese Shia militia has been supporting Bashar al-Assad militarily in Syria. The deep ties between Hezbollah and the Syrian government “gives U.S. officials an opportunity to sanction Lebanese individuals, channels, and instruments that Hezbollah and Damascus use to keep the regime afloat,” pointed out Hanin Ghaddar in her Policy Analysis published by the Washington Institute.
“If the Lebanese government and its various entities continue to support Assad as they have done in the past they are certainly under the risks of being included in the sanctions list,” said Rabah, adding, however, that the Lebanese government may as well be considered “too big to fail and too big to be sanctioned.”
Conversely, although Scheller doesn’t perceive “a big political will in the US to go after Lebanon and put it under pressure,” she doesn’t discard the idea either because the sanctions are formulated in very broad terms. Hezbollah – designated as a terrorist group by the US - is already under US sanctions. The European Union distinguishes between the political and military wing of Hezbollah, sanctioning only the latter.
The possibility of seeing the Lebanese government getting sanctioned under the Caesar Act risks deepening the fragile political equilibrium in Lebanon. “Other actors in Lebanon could become very critical of this vulnerability and of Hezbollah bringing additional risks for the country, so we may see deepening political divides,” pointed Scheller.
With the Lebanese pound in free fall and the country suffocated by a public debt equivalent to 170% of its GDP, Diab’s government has requested the International Monetary Fund (IMF) an aid package of $10 billion. “The IMF will not be operating under an umbrella by a government that is under risks of sanctions,” said Rabah.
On the other hand, Scheller didn’t see “indications” that the Caesar Act will derail talks with the IMF, an entity that is considered by many the last resort for the indebted Lebanese economy. “Everything that happens through the IMF or other big international institutions might be the least affected,” Scheller said.
Syria Direct has reached out to the press office of Prime Minister Diab’s cabinet but they declined to comment on this issue, although the Information Minister had previously said that this topic was on the agenda of Monday’s ministerial committee meeting.
Banks, trade and smuggling
Lebanese banks will be targeted by the Caesar Act “if they are tied in any way to logistical support for Hezbollah military operations in Syria,” wrote Ghaddar in her analysis and echoed by Scheller who sees a possibility that “the US will consider the Lebanese banks too close in connection with Syrian banks and therefore the sanctions may hit that sector.”
Depositors in Lebanon are already struggling with informal capital controls in banks due to the dollar scarcity in the country. “If the banking sector is really affected [by the Caesar Act] that will probably have the biggest effect because that affects all life and business in Lebanon,” said Scheller.
In terms of trade between Syria and Lebanon in 2019, according to the Lebanese Customs Administration there was a total of $92 million in imports and $190 million in exports. While trade of goods is not per se targeted in the Caesar Act, many Lebanese businesses depend on the route via Syria to export their products to Jordan or Iraq. “These businesses need to be reassured that Caesar is not meant to target them or further damage the fragile economy,” pointed Ghaddar.
The off-the-books trade, that is, smuggling, is a delicate issue. Last May, the Lebanese government announced a “crackdown” on illegal imports and exports towards Syria. Fuel smuggling to Syria is controversial because currently, Lebanon allows fuel importers to acquire dollars at the official rate, which means it is de facto subsidizing 60% of the fuel import costs. But part of that fuel, instead of being consumed in Lebanon is being smuggled to Syria, thus aggravating the economic situation in Lebanon.
In her analysis, Ghaddar urged US officials to pressure the Lebanese government to tighten border controls so “Hezbollah would be less free to exploit national institutions in support of the Assad regime next door.” The spokeswoman of Hezbollah denied the accusations that Hezbollah was behind the smuggling routes and said that “it is the government responsibility to make sure the border is secure.”
Cracking down on long-established smuggling routes is no easy task. Given that they operate under the radar, it will be difficult to identify them and then establish if their goods will end up in the hands of the Syrian government or not, and thus should or should not be sanctioned under Caesar List.
The Caesar Act also aims to hinder reconstruction efforts at the service of the Syrian government. Although the ‘boom’ of the reconstruction business in Syria doesn’t appear to be happening in the near future, Lebanon could be key in this sector, not only because its construction sector is “significant” but also due to its geographical position, as the port of Tripoli (north Lebanon) could play a vital role in transporting materials into Syria, reminded Scheller.
Beyond who is included or not in the sanctions list, the risk of over-compliance looms large. “It is not only about the political will to use the sanctions, but it is also about the hesitance and the fear to risk a conflict with the US that third parties may have,” explained Sheller. Foreign banks, companies or international organizations may be hesitant to deal with a Lebanese partner if they fear it may be affected by sanctions.

Zajal Poetry, an ancient form of poetic artistry
Chiri Choukeir/Annahar/16 June 2020
BEIRUT: From Zaghloul alDamour to Moussa Zgheib, Asaad Said, Khalil Rukoz, and many more Lebanese legends, Zajal poetry has been part of the Lebanese culture for decades with numerous new poets springing up from their Zajal ancestors and bringing a new face to the tradition.
Zajal poetry comes from different origins and used to be widely practiced in the Arab world. Its sung or spoken poetry, whose language is the common Arabic language, the "Aamiye" instead of the "Fosha", does not follow particular grammatical rules which tend to govern the majority of Arabic poetry.
This led to the popularization of Zajal in Lebanese traditions while other Arab countries found it harder to understand the “Aamiye” language. Lebanon, however, embraced the unruled poetry in the early 1920s and flourished with many of its poets even competing in international Zajal competitions.
Young Lebanese poet Michael Michel Bou Sleiman told Annahar about his deeply rooted connection to Zajal poetry. “I loved Zajal right from the start. Both my father and grandfather are Zajal poets, so the love and connection I felt to Zajal poetry came very naturally to me.”
In the pieces he has published on his social media account, which surpass 300 verses of Zajal poetry, Bou Sleiman tells stories of death, love, heartache, current news, and social issues through stanzas which he is currently working on compiling and publishing as a book.
“When it comes to Zajal, there are so many types of it, so many origins, so many different forms,” Bou Sleiman explained, “That’s what gives it its allure, and why I feel drawn to it. It’s a challenge, they don’t only rhyme certain words together, they tell a story and paint pictures with words.”
While this particular young poet does not compete in official Zajal competitions for personal reasons, many others make it their goal to become the best Zajal poets in the Arab world and go on to compete internationally.
Zajal competitions consist of two poets or two groups who stand opposite to each other and improvise Zajal poetry on the spot in a battle manner, where poetry singing becomes a competitive sport and resembles a boxing match with hooks and knockout rhymes thrown.
Lebanon is home for many Zajal competitions, as the Zajal Poets’ Syndicate in Lebanon has, over the years, organized multiple competitions and events in order to spread the art form even further. Yet, the art form is not very popular within society itself, and many of the younger generations find no interest in reading or writing Zajal.
“Zajal is more than just an art form, it’s something that is within us, within our culture and being,” Bou Sleiman added, “It’s a sad reality that not many are still interested in this tradition. We should embrace it more, add more of it to our educational curriculums, try to educate more about it would be a shame to lose this cultural art form.”
To further explain how Zajal poetry is written and thought out, Bou Sleiman improvised a Zajal composition during his interview with Annahar, the poem is dedicated to the An-Nahar Newspaper which the young poet enjoys reading. Bou Sleiman wrote:
"مجلة النهار حبي لها صار
لولاها ما بيشرق نهاري
بحبها وبحب فلفش بالاخبار
وعالدوم عنها راسيي خباري"
The poem explains the poet’s love for the Annahar newspaper, without which, “his day would not shine.” He continues describing how much he loves exploring all that the Lebanese daily offers its readers and reading all the news which he ponders about and which the newspaper consistently reports.
*Welcome to Carpe Diem, Annahar's new literary section featuring poetry- old and new, published or hidden within the nooks of unveiled pages of Lebanese writers. We welcome all contributions with the caveat that the section hopes to see rawness and authenticity in thought and emotion. Please send inquiries to Carpe Diem editor kantarjianperla@gmail.com

No stranger to hardship, the American University of Beirut endures
Fadlo R Khuri/The National/June 16/2020
فضلو خوري رئيس الجامعة الأميركية في بيروت: ليس غريباً أن تواجه الجامعة الأميركية في بيروت الصعاب.. وهي تتحمل
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/87371/fadlo-r-khuri-no-stranger-to-hardship-the-american-university-of-beirut-endures-%d9%81%d8%b6%d9%84%d9%88-%d8%ae%d9%88%d8%b1%d9%8a-%d8%b1%d8%a6%d9%8a%d8%b3-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%ac%d8%a7%d9%85%d8%b9%d8%a9/
One of the Middle East's most respected universities is suffering the fallout of the pandemic, but it will continue to lead, as it always has
The global Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent recession have scrambled conventions, atomised assumptions and forced serious reconsideration of short and long-term strategies. It has become evident that universities and healthcare systems have been particularly affected.
Only relevant and resilient institutions will survive the forced adaptation, and some of the world’s finest universities have already cut salaries, slashed retirement funds, halted construction projects and started layoffs. How we navigate these momentous times will define us for decades to come.
Like any great institution, the American University of Beirut (AUB) is a child of its times. Forged in the aftermath of two civil wars, one in Mount Lebanon (1860-1864) and one in the US (1861-65), the university grew out of the missionary zeal of Daniel Bliss and his Presbyterian brethren. They came to Lebanon to right not one but two historical wrongs.
One was the flaw in the American constitution that enabled the compromise leading to slavery. The other was the lack of emancipation and self-determination of the peoples of the world. Initially a Presbyterian missionary school, the future AUB, or Syrian Protestant College (SPC) as it was christened in 1866, took a radical turn towards secular humanism in the last decades of the 19th century following the “Lewis Affair”.
A devout Presbyterian professor, Edwin Lewis, espoused Darwin’s theory of evolution and was forced out of the faculty by Bliss himself and the board of trustees. This led consequently and rapidly to the departure in solidarity of the entirety of the occidental faculty of SPC, all of whom were fluent in Arabic.
After nine months of supporting our community as fully as possible, there is no choice now but to lay off non-academic staff
As the curriculum switched to English under the incoming professoriate, so too did the course of AUB’s history. Rather than Christian evangelisation, the transformation to secular humanism and modern liberal arts education became complete under Howard Bliss, Daniel Bliss’s son and the second university president. He went to the Conference of Versailles to advocate for the right of self-determination of the Arab peoples, and it was he who changed the name of the institution to the American University of Beirut.
Thus was born AUB’s true mission: the empowerment of citizens to determine their own destiny. That is evident in the inscription on the walls of the Main Gate: “That they may have life and have it more abundantly.”
The university, which includes a cutting-edge medical centre, has been through many crises, but none quite like today’s. It has stood the test of time and lived through the fires. In the First World War, it sought to protect all Lebanese – or Syrians as they were then known – from war, famine and the subsequent Spanish Flu pandemic, playing an outsize role from its campus in Ras Beirut.
Following the catastrophe of the Second World War, AUB contributed almost half of the founding authors of the UN Charter – more of its alumni than any other university in the world. AUB has educated and empowered more political, business, health, humanist and research leaders from the Arab world than any other university.
During the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war, AUB became a safe haven for all, as its medical centre treated the most gravely injured and ill patients, irrespective of political affiliation or religious background. The same was true for the teaching mission of the institution, which survived the deeply partisan and violent civil war.Since 1990, AUB has taken a leading role in the intellectual and social rehabilitation and physical reconstruction of Lebanon and the region by educating the best and brightest from all backgrounds. It has fostered innovation and civic engagement in the most vulnerable and underrepresented communities. AUB produces more high impact research per faculty member than any other university in the Arab world. The university is the only one in the region to consistently rank among the top 50 universities globally in terms of the employability of our students and their ability to be accepted into top graduate, medical and professional programmes abroad.
Today’s economic breakdown has deeply wounded the university and will cause us to lose many of our community members. In addition to the global pandemic and deepening of the region’s economic crisis, AUB must survive Lebanon’s perfect storm, a complete economic collapse and confluence of severe social, financial, structural and political crises.
After nine months of supporting our community as fully as possible, there is no choice now but to lay off non-academic staff. The exact number of departures has yet to be determined, but it could affect 20-25 per cent of the workforce – painful but necessary in order to ensure the university’s sustainability, its long-term relevance and its excellence in teaching and healthcare.
Those who depart will remain closely tied to the university’s family through a carefully crafted safety net in the absence of adequate protection from the state. This safety net includes a sliding scale of generous severance packages totalling up to 24 months’ salary for those who served AUB for 25 years, expanded access to our healthcare system, continued education of our departing members’ children currently enrolled at the university and the creation of an AUB talent pool for the future. Meanwhile, AUB must find the resources to continue to invest in research and recruit the best and brightest students from all over the world, irrespective of their ability to finance their tuition.
The American University of Beirut is a resilient, enduring and impactful institution. Born in the aftermath of two civil wars, it survived two world wars and sustained the city of Beirut and its region through the most damaging and enduring Lebanese civil war. Despite Lebanon’s accelerating deterioration over the last decade, AUB continues to rise in all relevant college rankings, producing the lion’s share of high-quality research in Lebanon and attracting some of the very best students and scholars to the Arab world.
By holding true to its mission and values, AUB will surely survive this period of collapse and help lead Lebanon and the Arab world once more to far firmer ground, and to a more inclusive, fair and just future.
*Fadlo R Khuri is the president of American University of Beirut

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on June 16-17/2020
Russia’s Lavrov vows to stand firm by Iran on nuclear deal
AFP/Tuesday 16 June 2020
Russia on Tuesday vowed to stand by its ally Iran and resist any attempts to promote an anti-Iranian agenda amid tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the comments during a visit to Moscow by his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif amid a fresh row over access to Iranian sites where past nuclear activity may have occurred. The standoff comes as a landmark deal between Iran and world powers brokered in 2015 continues to unravel. “We will be doing everything so that no one can destroy these agreements,” Lavrov told reporters after face-to-face talks with Zarif. “Washington has no right to punish Iran.”Moscow’s top diplomat said at the start of the talks that Russia would firmly oppose any “attempts to use this situation in order to manipulate the (United Nations) Security Council and to promote an anti-Iranian agenda.”Zarif, for his part, described developments around the Iranian nuclear deal – formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – as “very dangerous.”
Iran committed under the deal to curb its nuclear activities for sanctions relief and other benefits. But the Islamic Republic has slowly abandoned its commitments after US President Donald Trump’s decision two years ago to renounce the deal and reimpose sanctions. Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium is now almost eight times the limit fixed in the accord, according to an IAEA assessment. However, the level of enrichment is still far below what would be needed for a nuclear weapon. On Monday, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog called on Iran to allow prompt access to two sites where past nuclear activity may have occurred.

US official says Iran is ‘greatest threat’ to region’s stability, security
Joanne Serrieh, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday 16 June 2020
Iran is the “greatest threat” to the region’s stability and security because of its “funding of terrorism and terrorist organizations,” a top United States commander said on Tuesday. “Iran is propping up the murderous Assad regime [and] providing advanced weapons to Houthis in Yemen,” United States Marine General Kenneth Frank McKenzie was quoted in a US Central Command Twitter thread as saying. For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app. McKenzie also mentioned Iran’s “direct attacks” on international oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, refineries in Saudi Arabia and on US troops in Iraq. “The regime in Iran has taken a great portion of the country's wealth and prosperity and repeatedly invested it in instruments of instability and proxies,” he was quoted in the Twitter thread as saying.

Tunisian party leader Abir Moussi: Muslim Brotherhood members receiving foreign funds
Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English/Tuesday 16 June 2020
The head of Tunisia's Free Destourian Party (Free Constitutional Party) bloc Abir Moussi said a draft list to add more countries and groups to the country’s terror list has been rejected by the representative of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc.
Moussi described the meeting on Monday to discuss the list ended in chaos after members of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood bloc in parliament, primarily led by the Ennahda party, refused to move the list forward to a plenary parliament session, she said during an interview with Al Arabiya and Al Hadath channels. “In fact, the meeting witnessed a lot of confusion on the part of the representative of the Muslim Brotherhood’s bloc and a strong desire not to pass this draft motion to the plenary session, and therefore, the meeting witnessed attempts to convince us that these lists do not have any benefit and that this list will contribute to the division of the Tunisian people and that it is not a priority for parliament,” Moussi said during her interview with the network. Moussi accused the ruling Ennahda party of having links with terrorism and called for an investigation into the party, adding that the current motion by her party’s bloc in parliament threatens the Islamists in parliament who stand to benefit from “external funds” to their movement from outside the country. “This party [Ennahda] exists in the political arena and enters the elections based on the fallacy that it leads, and this fallacy means that this party presents itself as a civil party, as a Tunisian party, as a party that has no relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, and all the organizations associated with it,” Moussi said. “We want, through this proposed list and through these discussions, and through this motion to designate, to break with these fallacies and to clarify to the public opinion the relationship that links this party to the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist crimes, and suspicious movements across the world,” she added. Moussi said that the Ennahda party falsely presents itself as a civil party in an attempt to attract the votes of Tunisians, but it is originally linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is a banned movement across several countries in the region and has been designated as a terrorist organization by countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.

UN Rights Experts Slam Israeli Plan to Annex Palestinian Territory
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
UN human rights experts said on Tuesday that Israel's plan to annex significant parts of the occupied Palestinian West Bank would violate international law. The experts said taking territory by force must be banned and called on other countries to oppose this move. The joint statement, signed by nearly 50 independent experts, also expressed dismay at US support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to extend sovereignty, de facto annexation of land that the Palestinians seek for a state, calling the plan as "unlawful." "The annexation of occupied territory is a serious violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions, and contrary to the fundamental rule affirmed many times by the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly that the acquisition of territory by war or force is inadmissible," it said. What would be left of the West Bank after annexation of about 30% would amount to a "Palestinian Bantustan", it said, Reuters reported. There was no immediate reaction from the Israel's government which has set July 1 as the date to begin advancing the plan to annex settlements and the Jordan Valley in the West Bank. "The United Nations has stated on many occasions that the 53-year-old Israeli occupation is the source of profound human rights violations against the Palestinian people," the experts' statement said. Violations have included land confiscation, settler violence, home demolitions, excessive use of force and torture, restrictions on the media and freedom of expression, and "a two-tier system of disparate political, legal, social, cultural and economic rights based on ethnicity and nationality", it said. "These human rights violations would only intensify after annexation," it added.

Netanyahu to Ask Greece, Cyprus to Ease European Opposition to Annexation Plan
Tel Aviv – Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
Political sources in Tel Aviv revealed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will ask his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who arrives in Israel on Tuesday, and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, who will visit Israel next week, to work to scale down the EU stance against annexation plans for portions of the West Bank. Mitsotakis will travel to Israel on Tuesday for wide-ranging talks covering energy and his counterpart’s controversial annexation plans. He will lead the largest high-level delegation to Israel since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with six ministers in tow including defense and tourism. Anastasiades will lead a delegation with three ministers. Netanyahu will seek advantage of the two visits to have Athens and Nicosia support Israel in the face of European threats of sanctions over annexation plans. Israel, Greece and Cyprus in January signed the EastMed deal for a huge pipeline to ship gas from the eastern Mediterranean to Europe, despite objections from Turkey. The European Union is weighing retaliatory measures as a response to Israeli annexation, which could begin from July 1, although sanctions would require the agreement of all 27 member states. Israel is counting on European allies such as Austria and Hungary — who last month refused to back a resolution against annexation — and “friendly” countries such as Greece and Cyprus to tone down the EU response. “Our request to Greece is to support us at the EU level, to make sure the European Union has sensible language when dealing with the peace plan,” an Israeli source told AFP.

Israel’s First Bedouin Diplomat Attacked by Security Officers
Tel Aviv - Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
Israel’s first Bedouin diplomat said Monday he was attacked by security at Jerusalem's central bus station, prompting the foreign ministry to call for an investigation. Ishmael Khaldi, 49, whose diplomatic missions included London and San Francisco, said he was thrown to the ground on Thursday and choked by a security guard. “He put his foot on my neck and head. I was on the floor for almost five minutes, as four guards held me cruelly and pressed on me, even as I moaned in agony and begged them to let me go and others around yelled at them to leave me be,” he added. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the incident began after the security guard requested from Khaldi to show his ID, according to rules and regulations, but apparently, he refused. “Both were called into the police station to give their testimony of the incident,” Rosenfeld told Agence France Presse (AFP).
He said there is no procedure that allows an Israeli officer to carry out an arrest by placing a knee on the neck of a suspect. The foreign ministry announced it was “appalled” by the incident and expected a thorough and comprehensive investigation. Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi offered Khaldi his support and condemned the violence. “I trust in law enforcement authorities to probe the case until its end,” tweeted Ashkenazi, adding there's no room for violence in Israeli society. Arabs constitute around 20 percent of Israel's nine million population and include some 250,000 Bedouin, most of whom live in the southern Negev desert. Leaders of the Arab minority say they are discriminated against by Israel compared to the majority Jewish citizens. In August, Druze Israeli diplomat Reda Mansour said he had been humiliated at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport by a security guard.
Arab Israelis are the grandchildren of 160,000 Palestinian who remained in the territories after 1948.

Iraqi Leaderships Discuss Washington-Baghdad Dialogue
Baghdad – Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
Political leaderships in Iraq have been discussing the outcomes of the Baghdad-Washington strategic dialogue that took place last week. Despite cautious political calm, hardline Shiite parties still insist on the importance of the US withdrawal being on top of the agenda of dialogue during the coming period. Meanwhile, Iraq’s Joint Operations Command (JOC) announced on Sunday capturing a flatbed truck in northern Baghdad that had been turned into a Katyusha rocket launcher. According to the statement tweeted by the JOC, which oversees most of the Iraqi Army, the vehicle was discovered in the northern neighborhood of Rashidiya. The JOC noted that while Iraqi forces approached the truck, two missiles fired “spontaneously” but “fell in a remote area without significant losses.” The JOC did not say to which group it believed the truck’s operators pledged allegiance. Another Kia truck fitted for firing the unguided rockets was also found in Rashidiya in March, although the launch tubes were of a different design. Even though the truck’s seizure is considered the first lead in the search for parties threatening US interests in Iraq, especially the embassy in the green zone and bases where US troops are located, Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi ordered unifying army speech so that it does not conflict with political statements and stances. This came after Kadhimi headed a meeting on national security. According to officials, Kadhimi ordered military and security agencies and leaders to avoid expressing political views on social media.
Security expert Hisham al-Hashimi says that Kadhimi’s orders follow chaos created by conflicting statements issued by military and security agencies and aims at organizing those bodies. “It is clear that the political process in Iraq has reached a deadlock. As a result, it has become necessary to find nonconventional solutions to back the political process,” political analyst and former lawmaker Haidar al-Mala told Asharq Al-Awsat.

3 Rockets Land Near Baghdad Int’l Airport
Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
Three Katyusha rockets landed near Baghdad International Airport late on Monday, the Iraqi military said. The military said it found rocket launchers with several rockets in a rural area in western Baghdad, and there were no reports of damage or casualties. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Monday’s development was the latest in a string of rocket attacks in the country. Two Katyusha rockets hit an Iraqi base north of Baghdad late Saturday but missed US-led coalition troops stationed there, Iraq's military and a coalition official said.
A statement from Iraq's security forces said the rockets were launched north of Baghdad and did not cause any damage to the Taji base. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. It was the third attack in a week to target US troops or diplomats. The attacks follow several weeks of relative respite from more than two dozen similar incidents in recent months. Since October, at least 30 attacks have targeted American troops or diplomats, severely straining ties between Baghdad and Washington. Tensions reached boiling point in January when the US killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Popular Mobilization Forces commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a drone strike in Baghdad. Washington has accused armed groups backed by Iran for the repeated rocket attacks. But it also blamed the Iraqi government for not doing enough to protect US installations.

Iraq Slams Turkey for Violating its Airspace
Ankara - Saeed Abdulrazek/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
Baghdad slammed on Monday Turkey for using its airspace during an operation against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) positions in northern Iraq. The joint operations command said that such acts are a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, good neighborliness and international agreements. It called on Turkey against launching such attacks again and committing any other violations, saying it must respect the common interests of both countries. Iraq said it was prepared to cooperate with Turkey over securing their joint borders.
Leading member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Rashad Galali described as “shameful” Turkey’s repeated attacks on Iraqi territory that have been met with no deterrent response from the federal. Turkey is undermining Iraqi sovereignty and is no longer concerned about it, he added. Baghdad and Erbil’s lack of deterrent stance only encourages Ankara, he remarked, slamming their “weak” responses against the “crimes Turkey is committing in isolated areas that have nothing to do with the PKK.”He explained that Turkey is targeting camps hosting Turkish refugees who are in no way affiliated with the PKK. It also attacked Yazidi villages in Sinjar and agricultural areas in Duhok and Erbil. The victims are regular Kurdish citizens because Turkey is hostile to Kurds wherever they may be, Galali said. Turkish fighter jets struck on Sunday night PKK positions in northern Iraq, destroying “terrorist” hideouts, announced its Defense Ministry. “The Claw-Eagle Operation has started. Our planes are bringing the caves down on the terrorists’ heads,” it said on Twitter. Turkey regularly targets PKK positions, both in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast and in northern Iraq, where the group is based. The ministry said the air operation targeted the PKK in the region of its stronghold at Qandil, near the Iranian border, as well as the areas of Sinjar, Zap, Avasin-Basyan and Hakurk. The PKK, designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict, focused in southeast Turkey.

Turkey Determined to Set up Base in Libya’s Watiya, Misrata
Cairo, Ankara – Khaled Mahmoud and Saeed Abdulrazek/Asharq Al-Awsat/Tuesday, 16 June, 2020
Turkey is planning on setting up permanent military bases in Libya, revealed a Turkish source to Reuters on Monday. Ankara is seeking to keep a permanent foothold in the North African country at the al-Watiya airbase and the port of the coastal city of Misrata. Talks are underway with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) over the issue, added the source. Ankara threw its support behind the government in Tripoli last year after the GNA signed a maritime demarcation accord that it says gives Turkish drilling rights near Crete, but that is opposed by Greece, Cyprus and the European Union.
Meanwhile, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Fatih Donmez revealed that GNA chief, Fayez al-Sarraj, had discussed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the boosting of cooperation in oil and gas drilling. Sarraj had visited Ankara last week. Donmez said his country was determined to build two major powerplants in Libya, adding that the state-operated oil company will begin drilling in the Mediterranean within three weeks. Separately, Speaker of the east-based Libyan parliament, Aguila Saleh, was quick to deny rumors that he was planning on paying a visit to Turkey soon. He also denied receiving an invitation to travel to the country. “This issue isn’t even up for debate,” he said. Meanwhile, Libyan National Army (LNA) spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari revealed that seven Turkish warships were anchored off Libya’s coast. He accused Ankara of sending several mercenaries, troops and Turkish officers after several of the forces it backs suffered major losses in equipment and lives in ongoing fighting in the country. He urged the international community to blacklist Erdogan as a “war criminal” for the atrocities his forces and mercenaries have committed against humanity in Libya. The crimes of the pro-Erdogan militias south of Tripoli, in Tarhuna and al-Asaba have been documented, Mismari added. He also urged the United Nations to immediately launch a probe in the recently unearthed mass graves in Tarhuna, but doubted that any such effort would be a success due to the militias’ control of the city.

Beijing Expands Lockdowns as Cases Top 100 in New Outbreak
Associated Press/Naharnet/June 16/2020
Chinese authorities locked down a third neighborhood in Beijing on Tuesday as they rushed to prevent the spread of a new coronavirus outbreak that has infected more than 100 people in a country that appeared to have largely contained the virus. The resurgence in China highlighted public health expert calls for vigilance as many nations move forward with easing virus restrictions to revive their economies. New Zealand, which hadn't seen a new case in three weeks, said it is investigating a case in which two women who flew in from London to see a dying parent were allowed to leave quarantine and drive halfway across the country before they were tested and found to be positive. And the Philippines reimposed a strict lockdown on the city of Cebu after a rise in cases. China reported 40 more coronavirus infections nationwide through the end of Monday, including 27 in Beijing, bringing the total to 106 in the nation's capital since Thursday. At least one patient was in critical condition and two were in serious condition. Four cases were also reported in neighboring Hebei province, with three linked to the Beijing outbreak.
Most of the cases have been linked to the Xinfadi wholesale food market, and people lined up around the city for massive testing campaigns of anyone who had visited the market in the past two weeks or come in contact with them. About 9,000 workers at the market were tested previously.
The initial spread happened among market workers, Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told state broadcaster CCTV. He said that authorities detected the outbreak early enough to be confident they can contain it.
"For those who were infected, they will start showing symptoms either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," he said. "So, if there's no sharp increase of newly reported cases tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, the outbreak this time will basically stay at the current scale."
Authorities locked down seven residential compounds in Beijing's Xicheng district, where the first case was confirmed on Thursday. They also barring residents of areas considered high-risk from leaving Beijing and banned taxis and car-hailing services from taking people out of the city. The number of passengers on buses, trains and subways will also be limited and all are required to wear masks.
Fresh meat and seafood in the city and elsewhere in China was also being inspected, though experts have expressed doubt the virus could be spread via food supplies. Nonetheless, Chinese media reports said that salmon had been pulled from shelves in 14 cities including Beijing after the virus was found in a sample taken from a salmon chopping board at Xinfadi market. The market has been closed for disinfection, as has a second market where three cases were confirmed. Residential communities around both markets have been put under lockdown, affecting 90,000 people in a city of 20 million.
China had relaxed many of its coronavirus controls after the ruling Communist Party in March declared victory over the virus, which was first detected the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year. The two women in New Zealand had been allowed to leave quarantine for compassionate reasons and traveled from Auckland to Wellington by car. Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said that as part of their travel plan, they had no contact with any people or any public facilities on their road trip. The women remain in isolation in Wellington, and tests were being conducted on passengers and staff on their flights, others at the Auckland hotel they initially quarantined at and a family member they met in Wellington. South Korea, also battling to prevent a resurgence of the virus, reported 34 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday. Half were in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area where officials have been scrambling to stem transmissions linked to leisure and religious activities and low-income workers who can't afford to stay home.
The Seoul government has so far resisted calls to reimpose stronger social distancing guidelines, fearing further damage to the fragile economy. Besides Cebu, Philippine officials retained quarantine restrictions in Manila for another two weeks as infections continued to spike. "The battle with COVID isn't over," Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said. Turkey, which has seen an uptick in cases since easing restrictions in early June, made the wearing of face masks mandatory in five more provinces on Tuesday. "We cannot struggle against the virus without masks," Health Minister Fahrettin Koca tweeted. The epidemic continues to grow sharply in India, which recorded 10,667 new cases, taking the tally to 343,091. Health services in the worst-hit cities of Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai have been swamped by the rising infections. Nearly 10,000 people have died.
In the United States, Vice President Mike Pence encouraged governors Monday to highlight the "good news" around efforts to fight the virus despite several states reporting a rise in infections, which could intensify as people return to work and venture out during the summer. In audio of the call obtained by The Associated Press, Pence said the U.S. is seeing strong drops in virus-related hospitalization and mortality rates and urged governors to make it clear to residents that "there's a lot of really, really good news."One governor, Nevada's Steve Sisolak, announced that current limits on businesses and gatherings would remain in place while health officials evaluate whether the state's uptick in cases is cause for concern. Sisolak said he and state health officials anticipated an increase in new cases after reopening and expanding testing capacity throughout June. "Recently we've experienced some trends that require additional evaluation and analysis," he said at a news conference,

North Korea Destroys Inter-Korean Liaison Office as Tension Rise
Associated Press/Naharnet/June 16/2020
North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office building just inside its border in an act Tuesday that sharply raises tensions on the Korean Peninsula amid deadlocked nuclear diplomacy with the United States.
Seoul's Unification Ministry said the building in the North Korean border town of Kaesong was destroyed at 2:49 p.m. It gave no further details.
Photos from Yonhap News Agency showed smoke rising from what appeared to be a complex of buildings. The agency said the area was part of a now-shuttered industrial park where the liaison office was located. North Korea had earlier threatened to demolish the office as it stepped up its fiery rhetoric over Seoul's failure to stop activists from flying propaganda leaflets across the border. Some experts say North Korea is expressing its frustration because Seoul is unable to resume joint economic projects due to U.S.-led sanctions.
On Saturday night, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korea's leader, warned that Seoul will soon witness "a tragic scene of the useless North-South liaison office (in North Korea) being completely collapsed." She also said she would leave to North Korea's military the right to take the next step of retaliation against South Korea. In 2018 , the rival Koreas opened their first liaison office at Kaesong to facilitate better communication and exchanges since their division at the end of the World War II in 1945. When the office opened, relations between the Koreas flourished after North Korea entered talks on its nuclear weapons program. Earlier Tuesday, North Korea's military threatened to move back into zones that were demilitarized under inter-Korean peace agreements. The General Staff of the Korean People's Army said it's reviewing a ruling party recommendation to advance into unspecified border areas that had been demilitarized under agreements with the South, which would "turn the front line into a fortress." While it wasn't immediately clear what actions North Korea's military might take against the South, the North has threatened to abandon a bilateral military agreement reached in 2018 to reduce tensions across the border. Inter-Korean relations began strained since the breakdown of a second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in Vietnam in early 2019. That summit fell apart because of disputes over how much sanctions should be lifted in return for Kim's dismantling his main nuclear complex. Kim later vowed to expand his nuclear arsenal, introduce a new strategic weapon and overcome the U.S.-led sanctions that he said "stifles" his country's economy.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on June 16-17/2020
On Vote-By-Mail
J. Christian Adams/Gatestone Institute/June 16, 2020
Vote by mail might sound good, until you look at the data. The federal election assistance commission keeps tabs. Their data show that 28,000,000 million ballots mailed since 2012 simply vanished. They were sent out, but never came back and were counted. Some say they are in landfills, others figure they are in file cabinets.
It gets worse. Hundreds of thousands came back but had defects that prevented them from being counted. The voters who sent these ballots probably do not even know that their ballot was not counted after they sent it back.
Making all of this even worse are the hundreds of millions of dollars that leftist foundations dedicate to this process fight. There is money for media outlets to publish stories that voter fraud is a myth. They even lend struggling newspapers foundation-funded "reporters" to work for free, as long as they publish stories saying voter fraud is a myth.
Mail voting also destroys the transparency of our elections. Observers from each side are unable to watch the process. Mail ballots are uniquely vulnerable to fraud because they are voted behind closed doors where third parties regularly attempt to influence the process.
It surprises people to learn that in the middle of an Ebola epidemic in 2014, Liberia conducted an in person national election. Ebola had a fatality rate of 46%, yet people still came into polling places and voted in person. The solutions were simple – sanitization protocols, distancing, disinfectant on surfaces.
Never before in the history of the country has the election process system been under greater attack. In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic, heavily funded organizations and lawyers with fat trust deposits have been seeking to undo how we elect the President, Congress and state officials.
Like the rioters in the streets of American cities, they are taking advantage of a crisis to try to fundamentally transform American institutions.
They are seeking to throw out state laws designed to protect the integrity of American elections.
The first target of the election transformation was Congress. Soon after the pandemic reached our shores, House Democrats passed emergency legislation that would have federalized election process rules.
The Constitution decentralizes how we run elections because decentralization promotes individual liberty. When elections are decentralized, no single malevolent actor can manipulate or control the outcome.
During both the Bush and Obama administrations, I worked in the Voting Section at the United States Department of Justice. I witnessed firsthand how federal bureaucrats could manipulate, coerce and threaten state officials who did not conform to the bureaucrat's sensibilities about how elections should be run.
Naturally the federal government has a role in ensuring that elections are conducted in a way that complies with federal laws and the Constitution. For example, the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 do not allow discrimination on the basis of race.
But apart from these limited federal carve-outs, the Constitution vests states with the power to run their own elections and set the qualifications to vote.
The bill that passed the House would have mandated automatic vote by mail in every state. It would have mandated same-day voter registration as well as weeks of early voting. It would have banished voter photo identification laws. It would have legalized vote harvesting in every state. Other proposals in Congress would have allowed mail ballots to be counted even if they were not postmarked by election day.
What the bills would actually do is foment chaos. The election would not be decided on election day. Millions of mail ballots would keep appearing, keep rolling in, until there were enough votes to make the difference. If there was a dispute, lawyers would steal the show, subjecting America to weeks of post-election court contests to force a particular outcome.
Making all of this even worse are the hundreds of millions of dollars that leftist foundations dedicate to this process fight. There is money for media outlets to publish stories that voter fraud is a myth. They even lend struggling newspapers foundation-funded "reporters" to work for free, as long as they publish stories saying voter fraud is a myth.
Of course, there is money for lawyers. When the House election transformation bill failed in the Senate– largely thanks to Majority Leader McConnell and Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-AL) -- those trying to transform the elections rushed to the courts. The bill would have nationalized vote by mail, banned voter ID, and mandated that every state offer a month of early voting and allow same-day registration.
Across the country there are dozens of lawsuits trying to force states to abandon state election integrity procedures. My organization has been involved in a number of them, and it is quite an eye-opener. In Virginia, for example, the League of Women Voters sued the state to force the end of the witness requirement on absentee ballots. They argued that finding a witness would be a violation of federal voting rights.
Unbelievably, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring capitulated and surrendered. The purported adversaries decided to enter into a collusive consent decree, tossing out the law.
Remember, the duly elected legislature of Virginia -- both the House and Senate -- passed a witness requirement and an elected governor signed the bill. The agreement between the plaintiffs and defendants in the case of League of Women Voters of Virginia vs. Virginia State Board of Elections erased the democratic will of the people of Virginia manifested in law.
This story is repeating itself all over the United States. Lawsuit after lawsuit is being filed to cancel state election integrity laws. One case in Texas actually claims the stamp you put on your absentee ballot is the same as a Jim Crow era poll tax.
All of this diminishes the real fight for civil rights that occurred a half century ago.
Lawyers are trying to accomplish in courts what could not be accomplished in Congress. Judges are being used as substitutes for the will of the people. People who seemingly would like to be able to manipulate election results are forum-shopping for the most sympathetic courts. And in some places, the plaintiffs and defendants are in agreement that state election laws should be struck down without contested litigation. The case is filed, and the states surrender.
When I attended law school, this is not what they taught. Laws, at least we were told, represented the will of the people. They were to be respected. Lawyers, particularly lawyers for a state attorney general, are under an ethical obligation to defend a law, even if they did not agree with it.
Yet in one hearing I attended in the Virginia litigation, the federal judge asked the Virginia Attorney General if they ever intended to file any pleading in court to contest the case. The lawyer hemmed and hawed. The answer should have been yes. Instead it was a successful attempt to obscure the answer.
Virginia's only response was a white flag.
So now the same people who support the lawsuits around the country are still trying to move elections to an all-mail election. This would put the fate of the election into the hands of the same people who regularly deliver to you and your neighbor's mail.
Vote by mail might sound good, until you look at the data. The federal election assistance commission keeps tabs. Their data show that 28 million ballots mailed since 2012 simply vanished. They were sent out, but never came back and were counted. Some say they are in landfills, others figure they are in file cabinets. The truth is, we do not know. All we know is that the mail ballots never accomplished what they were intended to accomplish.
It gets worse. Hundreds of thousands came back but had defects that prevented them from being counted. The voters who sent these ballots probably do not even know that their ballot was not counted after they sent it back.
Mail voting also destroys the transparency of our elections. Observers from each side are unable to watch the process. Mail ballots are uniquely vulnerable to fraud because they are voted behind closed doors where third parties regularly attempt to influence the process. Senior citizens already enjoy rights to request an absentee ballot in every state.
It surprises people to learn that in the middle of an Ebola epidemic in 2014, Liberia conducted an in-person national election. Ebola had a fatality rate of 46%, yet people still came into polling places and voted in person. The solutions were simple -- sanitization protocols, distancing, disinfectant on surfaces.
Putting the Presidency into the hands of the United States Postal Service would be a serious mistake. Some factions, however, do not care about mistakes. They care more about transforming an election system so they can transform a nation.
J. Christian Adams is President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, at 501(c)(3) law firm devoted entirely to election integrity. He served on President Trump's election integrity advisory commission and in the Voting Section at the United States Department of Justice.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Germany Confronted its Past and Flourished. So Can the US
Pankaj Mishra/Bloomberg/June 16/2020
A cultural revolution is sweeping across Great Britain and the United States. Toppling statues of slave owners, protesters are demanding moral reparations — an acknowledgement that slavery and imperialism underpinned the wealth and power of two of the world’s most prominent countries, condemning millions of people with darker skins to generations of poverty and indignity.
The iconoclasts have shifted much public opinion in their favor, as can be witnessed in the truly incredible (if also slightly absurd) scene of Democratic lawmakers in Kente stoles kneeling in solidarity with victims of racist violence. A range of individuals and institutions have come out vigorously in favor of racial justice; those found in violation of it are being named and shamed.
But a deeper, longer and harder battle is only just beginning — over the new national identity the US and UK need, especially as they seek to emerge from the ruins of a devastating pandemic.
Just as the self-evident truths of slave-owners no longer persuade a large number of people in the US, a sentimental attachment to empire and to fantasies of resurrecting British glory and power won’t survive the ineptitude of a Tory government that seems to know only how to “get Brexit done” — and not even that. As they search for a post-racial, post-imperial identity, the US and Britain would be wise to take lessons from their implacable enemy in two world wars: Germany. For while white supremacists unfurled swastika banners and chanted “blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Virginia, and British politicians and journalists spread falsehoods about immigrants en route to Brexit, Germany hosted a “welcome culture” for more than one million refugees — what Susan Neiman in her timely book “Learning from the Germans” calls “the largest and broadest social movement in Germany since the war.”
Germany's most successful postwar far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), rose to subvert this German consensus. But it has failed repeatedly to broaden its small base and, presently afflicted by a civil war and a muddled coronavirus strategy, is being pushed back to the margins. Moreover, AfD’s attempts to deny or minimize the country’s Nazi past have served to consolidate anti-racist sentiment in the country.
This broad and consistent recoiling from ethnic-racial supremacists confirms that Germany has achieved a high, if not perfect, degree of immunity to the kind of toxic politics that have ravaged Anglo-America in recent years.
This didn’t happen overnight. Neiman, a philosopher of Jewish origin who grew up in the segregationist American South and has long lived in Berlin, writes that it “took decades of hard work before those who committed what are arguably the greatest crimes in history could acknowledge those crimes, and begin to atone for them.” De-Nazification, demanded initially by West Germany’s American occupiers, was only partly accomplished. US intelligence operatives found many Nazi criminals useful in the cold war against Soviet communism — indeed, the student revolt of the 1960s in Germany was largely provoked by a postwar dispensation in which government officials, industrialists, bankers and professors of the Nazi era managed to retain their influence.
Many Germans saw themselves as victims, too. Still, over the decades, a strong culture of remembrance and commemoration flourished both inside and outside classrooms. Big and small monuments to the victims of Nazi crimes went up across the country, ranging from the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to “stumbling stones” in a local street that record the names and the dates of birth and deportation of the people who once lived there.
In 1970, many older Germans recoiled at the sight of German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling before the memorial to the Warsaw ghetto in apology to the world for Nazi crimes. But the image was extraordinarily potent. In retrospect, it announced a society and culture that was being steadily renewed by moral introspection and historical inquiry.
Contrast this with Anglo-American attitudes — for instance, the left-leaning British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declaring on a trip to East Africa in 2005 that “the days of Britain having to apologize for its colonial past are over.” (Never mind that Britain never apologized).
A German-style reckoning with the past couldn't come sooner in Anglo-America. For unrepentant racial supremacism, as represented by the rants of Trump and Fox’s Tucker Carlson, can only deepen the political and socio-economic impasse that Britain and the US find themselves in.
Those in thrall to racial, national and imperialist myths will no doubt see weakness in any admission of crimes in their society’s long past. Yet it seems irrefutable now, as Germany towers, morally as well as politically and economically, over its old Anglo-American rivals, that the willingness to confront shameful history is ultimately a source of great strength.

2020 Is Not 1968
Niall Ferguson/Bloomberg/June 16/2020
The American death toll is rising. An unpopular president fears for his re-election chances. The US sends men into space. Down on Earth, the economy is in trouble. Racial tensions boil over into rallies, looting and violent confrontations with police in cities across the nation, intensifying political polarization and widening the generational divide. The president considers invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act, which empowers a president to deploy the armed forces and National Guard in any state.
Yes, as writers across the political spectrum such as David Frum, James Fallows, Max Boot, Julian Zelizer and Zachary Karabell have pointed out, 2020 is looking a lot like 1968. For Vietnam, read Covid-19. For Lyndon B. Johnson, read Donald J. Trump. For Apollo 8’s successful orbit of the moon, read the docking of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon with the Space Station. And for Washington, Chicago and many other cities in 1968, read Minneapolis, Atlanta and many other cities in the last few weeks.
Ah yes, interjected Boston Globe columnist Michael Cohen, but today we are dealing with a pandemic. Actually, they had one in 1968 as well: the Hong Kong flu, caused by the influenza virus A/H3N2, which was ultimately responsible for more than 100,000 excess deaths in the US and a million around the world. It’s easy to forget that Woodstock, the following year, was a super-spreader event.
True, since Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd in the street outside Cup Foods in Minneapolis on the night of Monday May 25, there have been protests and riots in dozens of American cities. More curfews have been imposed than in any year since, you guessed it, 1968. But is this the correct analogy? Or is the baby-boomers’ obsession with their own exciting teenage years leading us, not for the first time, to think too much about the late 20th century and not enough about other, more relevant periods?
Like the over-used Weimar analogy, allusions to 1968 are a kind of shorthand — just a superior way of saying, “This is really bad.” I’m betting that most of the people bandying these analogies about haven’t ever pored over documents from 1968 or 1933.
For millennia, historians have noted that pandemics can destabilize the societies they strike. Of the Athenian plague of 430 BC, Thucydides wrote: “The catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.” Defeat at the hands of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War was followed by a period of political instability, culminating in a temporary breakdown of Athenian democracy in 411 BC.
The two great plagues that struck the Roman Empire — the Antonine Plague (165-180 AD), probably a smallpox pandemic, and the Plague of Justinian (542 AD), which was a bubonic plague — also weakened the structures of Roman rule, allowing barbarian invaders to make significant inroads.
Recent scholarship on England after the Black Death of the 1340s shows that efforts by the landowning class to offset the effects of chronic labor shortages led to escalating tensions that ultimately erupted in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
Across Europe, the Black Death prompted a wave of millenarian movements, notably the flagellant orders, groups of men who roamed from town to town whipping themselves in the belief that acts of penance might ward off the Last Judgment. These religious cults often had a revolutionary undertone and came into conflict with local temporal and spiritual hierarchies.
The devastation caused by waves of bubonic and pneumonic plagues — which killed more than a third of the population in many parts of Europe — also led to widespread violence, particularly outbreaks of anti-Semitism. In 1349, for example, the Jewish communities in Cologne, Frankfurt and Mainz were wiped out. Conspiracy theories circulated widely that the Jews had caused the Black Death by poisoning the water supply. The Jews of Strasbourg were offered a choice between conversion and death. Those who refused to convert were burned alive in the Jewish cemetery.
The recurrence of bubonic plague in the 1890s led to conflicts between British rulers and their subjects from South Africa to India. In Honolulu and San Francisco, it led to measures that discriminated against the local Asian population. Such ethnic scapegoating often occurred in situations where a disease seemed to take an outsized toll on a specific community. The 1907 and 1916 polio epidemics hit wealthy, white New York especially hard. (In poorer populations, infants were routinely exposed because of bad sanitation, and therefore were more likely to have antibodies.) Southern European immigrants, particularly Italians, were blamed for the outbreak.
In short, history shows that pandemics all too often exacerbate existing social tensions between classes and ethnic groups. It also provides numerous examples of quarantines and public social restrictions intensifying citizens’ mistrust of the state. In 19th-century Europe, cholera riots were frequent, from St. Petersburg in 1831 to Donetsk in 1892. In North America, smallpox quarantines led mobs to burn down hospitals and police stations. The residents of Marblehead, near Boston, twice rioted against smallpox inoculation, in 1730 and 1773.
The spread of Covid-19 from China to the rest of the world, and the generally inept responses of the US authorities to the pandemic, have combined to create perfect conditions for urban unrest. The disease has disproportionately hurt minority communities, especially African-Americans. In the US, as in the UK, people of color are more likely than whites to work in contagion-exposed, low-skilled, “essential” occupations; to live in crowded conditions; and to have co-morbidities such as obesity and diabetes. The economic consequences of lockdowns have also hit African-Americans harder than white Americans. You really don’t need 1968 to explain 2020.
As a white, middle-aged, upper-middle-class immigrant, I’m hardly the person to speak to the politics of race in America. So I turned to an African-American friend, the economist Roland Fryer, whom I’ve known since we were colleagues at Harvard. 1
In 2016, he published a brilliant but controversial paper which argued that the police did not disproportionately use lethal violence against black people, though they were more likely to use non-lethal force against them. (Shootings made up more than 90% of fatal incidents.) A paper published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lent strong support to Fryer’s thesis.
He has a new, unpublished paper that looks at a perverse effect of investigations into police shootings. I asked Fryer to walk me through the argument.
“If you have a police shooting that goes viral online but isn’t investigated,” he explained, “then nothing changes — levels of police activity and crime are about the same. But if you have a viral shooting that is investigated, then police activity plummets, and crime goes up dramatically.” In just five cities – Baltimore; Chicago; Cincinnati; Ferguson, Missouri; and Riverside, California -- this led to excess homicides of almost 900 people in the subsequent 24 months, 80% them black, with an average age of 28.
It's a dangerous Catch-22: You're damned if you don't investigate “viral” incidents, and in even worse shape if you do.
How does Fryer interpret the current protests? “People are fed up,” he told me. “They are frustrated by the disparities they see in educational outcomes. Frustrated by the disparities they see in criminal justice. Frustrated by racial disparities in life expectancy. We are all to blame — this happened on our watch.” And when you add to that the fact that Covid-19 disproportionately affected the black community: “Folks have had enough. People are very much on edge.”
Such conversations, as much as any article or book, change the way I look at an issue. For years, I have confidently said that 1968 was much worse than the present. But could it be the other way around — not in terms of standards of living or rates of violence, but in terms of politics and the perceptions that shape it? That was a question put to me by Coleman Hughes, another African-American friend, whose recent essays on race in America have been essential reading.
In calling himself the “president of law and order” in the White House Rose Garden last Monday, Trump (or more likely his speechwriter) was echoing a mantra of Richard Nixon’s successful 1968 campaign. But Trump is the incumbent, unlike Nixon in 1968. The pandemic and the recession have hit Americans on his watch, just as surely as the Vietnam War escalated on Lyndon Johnson’s. A pandemic at home is very different from a distant war which, in mid-1968, more than a third of Americans still supported. The devastating economic consequences of the lockdowns make the early signs of inflation in 1968 seem trivial. The electorate is radically different from that of 1968: older, but also more ethnically diverse because of immigration and variations in birth rates. Traditional news media did not cover violent protest sympathetically in 1968. In all these respects, Trump’s chances of re-election should look worse than Johnson’s.
Yet on March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek a second term because, as he put it on prime-time television, “There is division in the American house now.” Do not expect any such capitulation from Donald Trump. Division in the American house is precisely what gives him a shot at four more years.

Trump Must Hold Hamas’ Terror Proxies Accountable
David May/Joe Truzman/FDD/June 16/2020
By employing HAA as a proxy, Hamas can carry out terrorist attacks while maintaining plausible deniability.
The balloons near an Israeli playground in February should have been a welcome sight. Instead, they were carrying bombs intended to kill, maim, and terrify. Panicked teachers hurried their students inside.
The explosives were part of a Palestinian campaign to attack Israeli population centers with bombs and incendiary devices that float to their targets with the aid of balloons, inflated latex gloves, and even condoms. One group responsible for such attacks is Humat al Aqsa (HAA), or the Defenders of al Aqsa. This small but violent organization is a proxy of the Hamas terrorist group, which itself is a proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. HAA is not yet sanctioned by the U.S. government, but it should be.
Humat al Aqsa was reportedly founded in April 2006. According to Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, Fathi Hamad, a senior Hamas official who is subject to U.S. sanctions, established and funded the group. HAA has identified Muhammad Naji, also known as “Abu Naji,” as its secretary-general.
By employing HAA as a proxy, Hamas can carry out terrorist attacks while maintaining plausible deniability. Hamas seeks deniability because it has sought to rebrand itself as a pragmatic, moderate force despite its oppressive rule in the Gaza Strip and its commitment to destroying Israel. HAA lets Hamas pursue its genocidal aspirations without being held to account.
No one should be fooled by Hamas’ ruse, however. HAA’s most famous terrorist attack demonstrated the close ties it enjoys with Hamas. In 2008, HAA attacked the convoy of Israeli Minister of Internal Security Avi Dichter. Ahmed Jabari, then-commander of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military arm, advised HAA on this attack. Though Dichter escaped unscathed, HAA and the Qassam Brigades published videos glorifying the assault.
HAA’s depredations didn’t stop there. The group has repeatedly threatened Israelis with violence and carried out numerous attacks. HAA also disseminated several videos of its fighters prepping and launching rockets and mortars against Israel. In one video, a fighter in a ghillie suit aims his .50 caliber sniper rifle at Israeli soldiers. In May 2019, HAA published martyrdom posters for Imad Muhammad Nasir, who was killed by the Israel Defense Forces in the northern Gaza strip as he was firing mortars at Israel. And in January 2020, HAA posted a banner of thirteen “martyred” fighters on its social media.
As disturbing as the videos are, the clips are even more sinister because HAA is operating out of civilian areas. This effectively turns nearby Palestinians into human shields. The use of human shields is a war crime and is sanctionable pursuant to the Sanctioning the Use of Civilians as Defenseless Shields Act of 2018.
Part of HAA’s novelty is its brazenness; it is the only Palestinian group known to have used its emblem on a video taking credit for launching explosive balloons at Israel. In a February 2020 video, men hold a banner with the HAA logo and name, fill condoms with helium, and then send them toward Israel. These unconventional infiltrating weapons, or Trojan horses, have scorched forests, caused millions of dollars in damage, and terrorized the population of southern Israel.
Furthermore, HAA is thoroughly enmeshed among Gaza’s terrorist groups. In January 2020, the group posted a photo of its members meeting with the representatives of other terrorist organizations, including Khaled al Batsh, a senior member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In February, HAA’s leadership participated in an event marking the fifty-first anniversary of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist group. HAA has also stated that it is a member of the Joint Operations Room, a grouping of militant factions in Gaza that operates as a quasi-army.
HAA doesn’t only threaten America’s ally Israel, it threatens the United States and its interests. Many American expatriates live near the Gaza border. In November 2019, a Washington, DC-based law firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of American citizens harmed by rockets, mortars and incendiary devices launched from Gaza. And American vessels often dock at the port of Ashdod, less than twenty miles from the border with Gaza.
HAA is committed to Israel’s destruction, as demonstrated by its Quranic motto: “And kill them wherever you catch them, and drive them out from where they drove you out,” a reference to Jewish Israelis. In keeping with the U.S. government’s leadership and commitment to designating violent groups that perpetrate terrorism against civilian populations, and in light of the overwhelming evidence of its terrorist activities, the U.S. government should sanction HAA.
*David May is a research analyst and contributor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). Joe Truzman is an analyst and contributor at the Long War Journal (LWJ), a project of FDD. For more analysis from David, Joe, CMPP and LWJ,, please subscribe HERE. Follow Joe and David on Twitter @DavidSamuelMay and @Jtruzmah. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_CMPP and @LongWarJournal. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Whether Trump wins the US election or Biden, change is afoot around the world
Raghida Dergham/The National/June 16/2020
Amidst geopolitical uncertainty until November, people are turning to the arts, culture and education to find solutions to humankind's more profound problems
America's inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic may have shocked the rest of the world and perhaps even dimmed the allure of its model, at least in the minds of some. The killing of an African-American man, George Floyd, in police custody exposed the bitter political divisions that already exist in the country. Furthermore, the pandemic left economic devastation in its wake.
There might be a feeling of schadenfreude among some critics of the US, while many others will be pondering on the implications of the country’s current problems for the international community.
The world is, therefore, keeping an eye on the presidential election in November. Some observers believe that Donald Trump will be re-elected, even though polling numbers show Mr Trump lagging behind his opponent, Joe Biden. The President could enjoy a resurgence in September and October based on two factors: probable recovery of the US economy and Democratic rival Mr Biden's weaknesses as a candidate.
Anticipating a shift in the wind, many Democrats are hoping that by naming a female African-American running mate, Mr Biden would secure the minority vote. They will also be intent on underscoring the dysfunctional state of the country under Mr Trump.This race is one that is being closely watched around the world, especially by the country's supposed adversaries.
I am given to understand that Russia would prefer to have Mr Trump back in the White House because Moscow enjoys fair to middling relations with the current administration. There might also be concerns that Mr Biden would be tougher on Russia, just as Hillary Clinton, fellow Democrat and 2016 presidential candidate, was expected to be had she won.
China is holding its cards close to its chest. It is not clear which candidate Beijing prefers, even though Mr Trump's rhetoric regarding the superpower has been confrontational.
For its part, Iran is hoping for Mr Trump's defeat, given his decision to impose, and even expand, sanctions on Tehran. Recent punitive measures targeting more than 50 oil tankers, especially those operating between Venezuela and Iran, have led to discussions among the regime’s generals about launching another "tanker war", like the one we witnessed last year.
All this could translate to even greater unrest in many parts of the world until the election is over, especially because resolutions to many an international conflict will be put on hold until the end of the year. The bigger problem is that in the intervening period, we could see great instability not just on the geopolitical and economic fronts but also in the personal lives of many.
In such circumstances, it has come to my notice that individuals around the world are turning to arts, culture and education to restore balance to their lives. But how do politics, economics and culture overlap in the human experience even as individuals seek to find reassurance in a world struggling to deal with disease, unemployment and unrest?
The sixth e-policy circle of the Beirut Institute Summit in Abu Dhabi tried to tackle this question in a session titled Stability redefined: Who authors the future?
Prof Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Saint Petersburg Hermitage Museum, said the world is in a state of division – a trend that would continue beyond the pandemic as nations retreat in order to tend to their wounds, while people distance themselves from one another. Prof Piotrovsky argued that culture might already offer a "cure" to the effects of such isolation.
Before the Covid-19 outbreak, for example, the Hermitage Museum used to receive five million visitors every year. In the space of just two months since the outbreak, the number swelled up to 34 million – all of them virtual. Another example is that of Zayed University in Abu Dhabi, which has remotely delivered lessons to 7,000 students even as efforts are under way to develop its courses to suit a post-coronavirus world.
These trends are encouraging because it shows that people and institutions are thinking creatively and, in the process, trying to reinvent themselves.
Of course, it is also true that there is a yearning to return to normality. To be sure, some things will never change. As pointed out by Noura Al Kaabi, UAE’s Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development, humans will never lose the urge to use their five senses and to keep in touch with their surroundings. But the question that arises is whether we will go back to our flawed ways of living as well. Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki said we should not miss the opportunity to reform existing systems many of which have been built on the foundations of corruption, greed, over-consumption and disregard for nature. This is, perhaps, where our politics will play an important role.
Artists perform in front of screens showing audience via the Zoom application during the first six-hour online music festival at a studio in Bangkok earlier this month. Reuters
Artists perform in front of screens showing audience via the Zoom application during the first six-hour online music festival at a studio in Bangkok earlier this month. Reuters
French Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem expressed hope that our awareness of the fragility of those systems would lead us to capitalise on the solidarity that we have witnessed during these difficult times, and turn this experience into something positive over the long term.
It is fascinating, therefore, to imagine what the world might look like in the distant future. But one thing is for sure: changes are already under way in how we live our lives – whatever may be the result of the US election, although that outcome could perhaps have a bearing on the pace and direction of these changes.
*Raghida Dergham is the founder and executive chairwoman of the Beirut Institute

Time to re-energize the GCC-UK strategic partnership
Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg/Arab News/June 16/2020
When the UK finally exited the EU in January, it accelerated its efforts to enhance the relationships it had already cultivated with other countries and blocs, including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Since 2016, the GCC and UK have engaged constructively in many areas, including political, security and economic cooperation, at both the bilateral and collective GCC levels, most recently on combating the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. However, the pace of that partnership needs to be accelerated, despite the health challenges.
Building on historical ties and a robust trading relationship that goes back centuries, the GCC and UK are now seeking to establish a free trade area, where goods are exchanged with lower tariffs while services and investments are given preferential treatment.
In December 2016, then-Prime Minister Theresa May met with GCC leaders in Bahrain in the first GCC-UK summit. May proposed the establishment of a UK-GCC Strategic Partnership. The summit communique that announced the new partnership stressed the two sides’ political and security cooperation, trade and investment ties, and cultural and social engagement. It also signaled greater coordination in humanitarian and development assistance programs, as well as cooperation on refugees, migration and combating human trafficking.
With the UK leaving the EU, it has begun to cultivate new trade agreements. When the transition period ends on Dec. 31, EU arrangements will no longer provide Britain with market access to other countries and trading blocs, and Britain has to find alternatives. The GCC is one of the most important markets for British exports and it has the potential to provide greater access when a trade deal is concluded. In 2019, GCC-UK trade in goods and services exceeded $55 billion, while the stock of investments is estimated in the tens of billions. The GCC is the third biggest destination for British exports after the EU and the US. The UK is negotiating trade deals with the EU and US, and is now also exploring one with the GCC.
When the free trade agreement (FTA) is concluded, it would create a substantial $4 trillion market, where goods and services are exchanged with minimum hassle and investors are encouraged to expand their markets. Britain has been, for some time, a favorite destination for GCC investors, students and visitors. It is estimated that about 1 million GCC visitors go to the UK annually, making it their top European destination. Much more work is needed, but it is encouraging that the two sides already enjoy a strong foothold in each other’s market. British brands and investments have a solid presence in the GCC region despite stiff competition from other sources. About 500,000 Britons live in the Gulf, half of them in the UAE alone, while many more regularly visit the region.
For this trading partnership to flourish, with or without an FTA, other aspects of the GCC-UK Strategic Partnership need to be bolstered. First, political dialogue and security coordination need to be more open and regular. It is normal for the two sides to have different views on political or regional security issues. The 2016 GCC-UK summit established multiple channels for dialogue, but they need to be utilized more regularly and reliably.
Second, people-to-people engagement needs to be facilitated more. It is still difficult for most GCC nationals to enter Britain to study, invest, receive medical care, or just for tourism. UK visas are among the most difficult and expensive to obtain. Student and scholar exchanges also need to be facilitated more. To increase student exchange, GCC students seeking admission to British colleges need more help to match them with the right universities. Scholar exchanges are quite limited despite the fact that many professors at GCC universities graduated from prominent British universities. Independent artists and writers face greater challenges in moving and working in the two realms.
Much more work is needed, but it is encouraging that the two sides already enjoy a strong foothold in each other’s market.
Third, Britain and the GCC need to coordinate more on regional security, stabilization and development. Both are interested in providing humanitarian and development assistance to countries in need in this region, and aid coordination does exist between them, albeit at a limited level. They also have a common interest in restoring peace and stability in countries in conflict. They will benefit from regular consultations on these issues.
With Brexit finally happening, there is now more certainty in Britain after a few years — following the 2016 referendum — of lingering questions about its relationship with the EU and the rest of the world. Despite COVID-19 worries, now is the time to resume regular joint work between the GCC and UK to put more flesh on the bones of their strategic partnership.
*Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg is the Gulf Cooperation Council’s assistant secretary-general for political affairs and negotiation, and a columnist for Arab News. The views expressed in this piece are personal and do not necessarily represent those of the GCC. Twitter: @abuhamad1

US Caesar Act will press Russia to decide Bashar Assad’s fate
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib/Arab News/June 16/2020
On Wednesday, the US’ Caesar Act, which will place renewed pressure on the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, will come into effect. Assad is becoming more and more of a liability. The situation in Daraa and this week’s protests in Suwayda show that he cannot consolidate his power or secure the interests of Russia, his main patron. This means Moscow faces a conundrum about how to engineer a face-saving exit for Assad.
The Russian elites are starting to shift their opinion regarding Assad. More and more, they see in him a stumbling block facing Russia’s interests. But, so far, the people at the top, including President Vladimir Putin, have not changed their mind. Backing down on Assad may signal weakness and could affect the image of Russia as a loyal ally. Since its intervention in Syria began, Russia has been building alliances in the region. The main competitive advantage it promotes to potential allies is that, unlike the US, which has turned its back on its allies when its interests shift, Russia stands by its allies until the end.
Russia also links Syria to other points of contention with the US and the West, such as Libya and Ukraine, while the US wants to treat each issue separately. Russia wants Syria to be a platform from which it can garner international recognition as a superpower. Hence, Putin has called for a meeting similar to the one held in Yalta, in Crimea, at the end of the Second World War, through which Europe was divided into recognized areas of influence between the West and the Soviet Union. Therefore, Assad’s exit comes with a very expensive price tag.
The Caesar Act is likely to further isolate Russia and the Russian companies that do business in Syria. No one would want to deal with a Russian entity that does business with Assad and so is subject to sanctions. Moscow recently claimed increased basing rights in Syria. However, an enlarged presence on the Syrian coastline will not break its potential isolation. To reach the Mediterranean, Russian ships must pass through Turkey’s Dardanelles and Bosporus straits. Historically, Turkey and Russia have fought wars over those two waterways. Moscow won’t be able to send ships to Syria if there is no agreement with Turkey, which brings us back to the Caesar Act.
Russia’s all-or-nothing strategy seems more and more risky. It would be better off cashing in what it has rather than aiming for the jackpot, which might not materialize. The US Congress is quite united on the Caesar Act, while Europe is not backing down on its anti-Assad stance. Germany has put on trial regime officers accused of being accomplices in torture. There is also international recognition that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people. The West will never accept Assad — hence Russia’s need for a deal with international players to guarantee its interests in Syria. That deal will have to exclude Assad.
As new sanctions are looming, core supporters of the Syrian regime are asking Assad to step down. Dr. Mohammed Al-Ahmad, a prominent Alawite whose father was part of the Ba’ath Party’s leadership, is among those asking the president to spare Syria a dire fate under the Caesar Act. And, thanks to the Rami Makhlouf soap opera, more and more members of the regime are worried they will face the same fate as the cousin who fell out of favor. They have started taking their money out of the country, which has further contributed to Syria’s economic meltdown and currency crash.
The Russians should pay attention to their image inside Syria. The protests in Suwayda were against Assad and his patrons, including Moscow. If Russia wants to stay in Syria in the long run, it should show the people that it is on their side. Protecting peaceful protesters from Assad’s violent crackdowns would be a good confidence-building measure.
If the Russian leadership takes these factors into account, it should redo its calculations. But another hurdle emerges if Russia wants to remove Assad: He would never accept such a move, no matter what guarantees Moscow gives him. He knows that he would never be immune from prosecution. No one could guarantee that no Syrian person or group would file a lawsuit against him with the International Criminal Court. He has committed so many crimes that there will always be people who hate him to the point that they would follow him to the end of the earth to take revenge.
It is too late for Assad to leave and take refuge in a gilded cage — he should have done that at the beginning of the conflict, like Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak, before his hands got stained with the blood of half a million Syrians, including the children who died from chemical attacks. He has lived his entire life in Syria as an absolute monarch. Will he accept living the rest of his life in hiding? Never. Assad will not step down willingly. His only means of survival is to remain in power.
Moscow would be better off cashing in what it has rather than aiming for the jackpot, which might not materialize.
So Russia needs to orchestrate a coup, which brings us back to the image of the loyal ally that Moscow does not want to tarnish. The other option would be to side with the people. Here, Russia has a face-saving opportunity. Putin has always said that he cannot be the one to decide on the future of Syria; that is down to the Syrian people. This proposition is more likely to guarantee Russia’s long-term interests in Syria than a dictator who has lost touch with reality and has no legitimacy, even within his own Alawite camp. Russia can let the popular protests take their natural course, leading to Assad’s removal from power.
Putin is a clever politician who has returned Russia’s prestige in world affairs — a standing it lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, a clever politician also knows that politics is the art of the possible. Keeping Assad is no longer a possibility.
*Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib is a specialist in US-Arab relations with a focus on lobbying. She holds a PhD in politics from the University of Exeter and is an affiliated scholar with the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.