LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
March 04/2019

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
Fasting duties and moral obligations
Mathhew 06/16-21: 16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on March 03-04/2019
What is The Ash Monday
The Holy Journey Of The Lent
Iran, Hezbollah Commanding Forces Located Along Golan Order-Report
Lebanese President Invited to Visit Russia
Syrian Regime’s ‘Mandatory’ Entry Permit for Druze Clerics Stirs Debate in Lebanon
PSP Slams Syrian Measure on Druze Clerics after War of Words
Hundreds Protest against Child Marriage in Lebanon
Bahraini FM Calls on EU to Blacklist Hezbollah
Netanyahu: Hezbollah Is a Terrorist Organization in Its Own Right
Maronite Patriarch: Stop Impoverishing the People!
Report: Smuggling Resumes Between Lebanon and Syria
Iran’s and Hezbollah’s missiles against Israel
Britain finally wakes up to Hezbollah’s true colours, sort of
Prostitution scandal puts spotlight on Hezbollah’s criminal dealings
Lebanon’s first female interior minister is undaunted by task

Litles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on March 03-04/2019
Israel, Russia to cooperate on foreign forces exit from Syria: Netanyahu
Syria takes part in first Arab meeting since 2011
Iran official warns Gulf countries of uprising if they continue to rely on the US
On brink of Syria defeat, ISIS unleashes car bombs
Israel hits Hamas sites after ‘explosive balloons’ launched from Gaza
4 European Countries Ask Iran to Amend its Regional Stances
Iran Warns U.S. Allies of 'Humiliated Citizens' Uprising
Iran: Europe’s Behavior Will Influence Expediency Council’s Decision on FATF
Syrian Parliament Speaker in Jordan for Arab Conference
US Envoy to the Middle East Rejects UN Report Against Israel, Blames Hamas
Bouteflika Vows Not to Serve Full Term if Re-Elected as Protests Grow
Protests Erupt in Algeria as Bouteflika Seeks to Submit Presidency Bid
Debate in Iraq over Dismissing Judicial Cases against Sunni Officials
Envelopes Containing Anthrax Delivered to Major Tunisian Figures
Canada Proceeds With Extradition Case Against Huawei CFO

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 03-04/2019
What is The Ash Monday/Elias Bejjani/March 04/19
The Holy Journey Of The Lent/ Elias Bejjani/March 03/19
Iran, Hezbollah Commanding Forces Located Along Golan Order-Report/Jerusalem Post/March 03/19
Iran’s and Hezbollah’s missiles against Israel/Giancarlo Elia Valori/Moder diplomacyGiancarlo/March 03/19
Britain finally wakes up to Hezbollah’s true colours, sort of/Mohamed Kawas/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
Prostitution scandal puts spotlight on Hezbollah’s criminal dealings/Makram Rabah/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
Lebanon’s first female interior minister is undaunted by task/Samar Kadi/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
4 European Countries Ask Iran to Amend its Regional Stances/Khalil Fuleihan/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 03/19
Bouteflika Vows Not to Serve Full Term if Re-Elected as Protests Grow/Agence France Presse/March 03/19
Assad takes victory lap in Tehran amid power struggle among Iran’s elite/Thomas Seibert/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
Despite Assad’s welcome, Iran can be of little help to Damascus/Gareth Smyth/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
Winning the Nuclear Game against Two Giants/Tobin Harshaw/Bloomberg/March, 03/19
Churchill From a Different Perspective/Shashi Tharoor/Bloomberg/March, 03/19
What Parliament’s Breakaway Group Means for Brexit Britain/Matt Singh/Bloomberg/March, 03/19
Report: "11 Christians Killed Every Day for Their Faith"/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/March 03/19
Cyprus Gas Discovery Could Be an East Mediterranean Game-Changer/Simon Henderson/The Washington Institute/March 03/19

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on March 03-04/2019
What is The Ash Monday
Elias Bejjani/March 04/19
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72716/elias-bejjani-what-is-the-ash-monday/
Ash Monday is the first day of Lent and It is a moveable fast, falling on a different date each year because it is dependent on the date of Easter. It derives its name from the practice of placing ashes on the foreheads of adherents as a sign of mourning and repentance to God.
On The Ash Monday the priest ceremonially marks with wet ashes on the worshippers’ foreheads a visible cross while saying “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. Worshippers are reminded of their sinfulness and mortality and thus, implicitly, of their need to repent in time.
Ash Monday (Greek: Καθαρά Δευτέρα), is also known as Clean and Pure Monday.
The common term for this day, refers to the leaving behind of sinful attitudes and non-fasting foods.
Our Maronite Catholic Church is notable amongst the Eastern rites employing the use of ashes on this day.
(In the Western Catholic Churches this day falls on Wednesday and accordingly it is called the “Ash Wednesday”)
Ash Monday is a Christian holy day of prayer, fasting, contemplating one’s transgressions and repentance.
Ash Monday is a reminder that we should begin Lent with good intentions and a desire to clean our spiritual house. It is a day of strict fasting including abstinence not only from meat but from eggs and dairy products as well.
Liturgically, Ash Monday—and thus Lent itself—begins on the preceding (Sunday) night,[2] at a special service called Forgiveness Vespers, which culminates with the Ceremony of Mutual Forgiveness, at which all present will bow down before one another and ask forgiveness. In this way, the faithful begin Lent with a clean conscience, with forgiveness, and with renewed Christian love. The entire first week of Great Lent is often referred to as “Clean Week”, and it is customary to go to Confession during this week, and to clean the house thoroughly.
The theme of Ash Monday is set by the Old Testament reading appointed to be read at the Sixth Hour on this day (Isaiah 1:1–20), which says, in part: Wash yourselves and You shall be clean; put away the wicked ways from your souls before Mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, consider the fatherless, and plead for the widow. Come then, and let us reason together, says the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow; and though they be red like crimson, I will make them white as wool (vv. 16–18).
The Holy Bible stresses the conduct of humility and not bragging for fasting: Mathew 06/16-21: “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
It is worth mentioning that Ashes were used in ancient times to express grief. When Tamar was raped by her half-brother, “she sprinkled ashes on her head, tore her robe, and with her face buried in her hands went away crying” (2 Samuel 13:19).
Examples of the Ash practices among Jews are found in several other books of the Bible, including Numbers 19:9, 19:17, Jonah 3:6, Book of Esther 4:1, and Hebrews 9:13.
Jesus is quoted as speaking of the Ash practice in Matthew 11:21 and Luke 10:13: “If the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago (sitting) in sackcloth and ashes.

The Holy Journey Of The Lent
 Elias Bejjani/March 03/19
 A true believer is the one who through faith can like Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ turn  the water it into wine, and enjoy genuine happiness that never ends.
 http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72693/elias-bejjani-the-holy-journey-of-the-lent/
 Lent that is a forty-day period  that starts on the ASH Monday and ends on the Easter Day.
  Lent in principle is a Holy period that is ought to be utilized with Almighty God in acts of genuine praying, contemplation, self humility, repentance, penances, forgiveness, and conciliation with self and others.
 Lent is a privileged time for an interpersonal pilgrimage towards Almighty God Who is the fount of mercy.
 Lent is a Holy pilgrimage Journey in which Almighty God accompanies us far away from the deserts of our human poverty in a bid of sustaining us on our way towards the intense joy of Easter.
 During the Lent time Almighty God will be guarding us all the time to strengthen our faith and to open our eye, minds and hearts to see and understand the truth.
 Lent through prayers and repentance we can help ourselves to understand  God's Word with particular abundance.
 During the lent and though meditating and internalizing we learn how to live with the Word of God every day.
 During the Lent we are ought to learn a precious and irreplaceable form of prayer; by attentively listening to God, who continues to speak to our hearts.
 Via the lent we nourish the itinerary of faith initiated on the day of our Baptism.
 The Act of Praying during the lent allows us to talk to Our Holy Father, Almighty God all the time.
 The lent is a crossing journey from all that is a mortal lust of instincts to all that is genuine faith and spirituals through graces of Christ.
 Lent is a journey of spiritual joy and an interaction with the heavenly bridegroom.
 Lent is also a process of liberation from selfishness and hatred.
 Lent is a time of repentance and reconciliation with Almighty God, own self and all others
 Lent is  a 40 day period of contemplation, prayers and all possible acts of charity.
 Lent is a period of taming our own mortal hunger and lust for all that is earthly riches.
 Lent is time for sharing and helping those who are in need.

Iran, Hezbollah Commanding Forces Located Along Golan Order-Report
Jerusalem Post/March 03/19
Forces commanded by Hezbollah and Iran are facing Israel along the Golan Heights border and are being used as sources of tactical information, according to a report on the Nziv.net news site.
Hezbollah began returning home to Lebanon after fighting in the Syrian civil war for some eight years, the report said. The fighters, though worn out from the years of intense battle in Syria, were positioned by Iran on the border and tasked with being the "eyes and ears" for the Iranian High Command under the leadership of General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The goal is for these troops to provide tactical intelligence on what is happening on both sides of the border. The report further explained that an additional brigade of Shi'ite fighters was formed. It is comprised of men from Hezbollah, the Iraqi al-Hashd al-Shaabi, Afghani forces and villagers from north Syria. These men are now situated in the Jezreel Valley, north east of the southern Syrian capital Daraa. They will remain in Syria to watch the southeastern Syrian-Israel border.
Similarly, Iranian and Hezbollah commanders are also in the Jezreel Valley in southern Syria. This brigade is focused on capturing the Golan border across from Israel; that border had previously been defeated by rebel and ISIS fighters.
Earlier this month, Al-Masdar News, a Lebanese news site that has been reported as supportive of Syrian President Bashar Assad, said the “Syrian army sent reinforcements to the Golan border.” This was the first time Syrian reinforcements were sent to the border since beginning operations in the Quneitra area near the border. Also, fighters from the pro-Assad National Defense Forces militia joined the reinforcements on the border.

Lebanese President Invited to Visit Russia
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/Lebanese President Michel Aoun received an invitation to visit Russia, his sources confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat. A date has not yet been set for the visit, they added. Russia’s Sputnik news agency quoted a political source close to Aoun as saying, however, that the date for the trip has been set for later this month. The president will be scheduled to meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Discussions between the two leaders will focus on political, diplomatic and economic affairs, as well as Syrian refugees and their return to their homeland through a Moscow-proposed initiative, said the source. They will also address Russia’s efforts in restoring peace in the region and the positive role it is playing to that end, it added.

Syrian Regime’s ‘Mandatory’ Entry Permit for Druze Clerics Stirs Debate in Lebanon
Beirut/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/Lebanon’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) strongly condemned the Syrian regime’s order that Druze clerics seeking to enter its territory obtain a “mandatory” entry permit. It slammed the move as blatant Syria meddling in Lebanese and Druze affairs. The order demands that the clerics obtain a permit with their name. The permit must be signed by Druze senior cleric Nasserddine al-Gharib, who is known for his affiliation to the Damascus regime. PSP chief Walid Jumblat condemned the move, urging Gharib against getting embroiled in such political affairs. PSP sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that the regime order will create obstacles for figures, who do not enjoy Gharib’s political leanings. They slammed the move as meddling in Lebanese affairs, noting that Gharib is appointed by the regime, but enjoys no official status in Lebanon or abroad. The only recognized official Druze representative is Naim al-Hassan, who was unanimously elected by Lebanese lawmakers, they stressed. “I respect Sheikh Gharib’s standing despite the differences in opinion between us and even though his position was created by the local, Syrian and regional resistance axis,” tweeted Jumblat. “I advise him to steer clear from a role that does not suit his standing. Let others play the role formerly occupied by the infamous Rustom Ghazaleh,” he added in reference to Syrian former political security chief. Ghazaleh had also acted as head of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon during Damascus’ period of hegemony over its neighbor. He was killed during the Syrian conflict in 2015. “I have not realized that Rustom Ghazaleh and Jameh Jameh have so quickly been reincarnated into a coast and mountain,” he said in reference to the Syrian former military intelligence chief in Beirut. Jameh was killed during the Syrian conflict in 2013. Lebanese Industry Minister and Jumblat ally Wael Abou Faour said in a statement: “The mandatory channel that has been approved by the regime for Druze clerics to enter Syria is further evidence that the regime has returned to its old habits of interfering in Lebanese internal affairs.”He accused the regime of seeking to create strife in Lebanon, “but it will fail.”He demanded that the Lebanese state take a stand to confront the discriminatory measures that the regime wants to impose on Lebanese citizens.“The Lebanese state must react in kind and impose similar measures on regime supporters seeking to travel to Lebanon,” he suggested.Pro-regime Lebanese MP Talal Arslan was quick to reject Jumblat’s remarks, calling on him to quit targeting Gharib, “who enjoys greater legitimacy than several corrupt figures who hide their crimes under religious garb and who enjoy your protection.” Another pro-regime official, Lebanese former MP Wiam Wahhab defended Gharib, saying: “We are not surprised with the attack directed at the Syrian state’s just decision to protect our Druze clerics.”

PSP Slams Syrian Measure on Druze Clerics after War of Words
Naharnet/March 03/19 /The Progressive Socialist Party has condemned a new Syrian measure obliging Druze clerics who want to enter Syria to obtain cards from Sheikh Nassereddine al-Gharib, who is recognized as a community spiritual leader by MP Talal Arslan and ex-minister Wiam Wahhab but not by PSP chief Walid Jumblat. “This decision would lead to clear discrimination between Druze and would put obstacles in the way of those who are politically opposed to al-Gharib, especially that there are historical kin relationships and marriages between the Druze of Lebanon and Syria,” PSP sources told Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in remarks published Sunday. This is “a Syrian interference in Lebanese affairs,” the sources added, reminding that “al-Gharib does not enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of Lebanese authorities as well as abroad,” the sources said. “The spiritual leader elected with the unanimity of Druze MPs is Naim Hassan,” the sources went on to say. Senior sources in the Druze religious leadership meanwhile told al-Hayat newspaper that the Syrian move is “an interference in the affairs of the community.”Jumblat, Arslan and Wahhab had engaged in a war of words on Saturday over the development before deleting their tweets and urging supporters to remain calm. “Sheikh Nassereddine al-Gharib has his position and respect, so I advise that he shun any role that does not befit his status. Let others do the roles of the infamous Rustom Ghazali,” Jumblat tweeted, referring to a late Syrian officer who was in charge of Damascus' security apparatus in Lebanon. Arslan snapped back, accusing Jumblat of “insulting” Druze spiritual leaders and covering “corrupt” and “thievish” clerics. Wahhab for his part hailed “the correct decision that has been taken by the Syrian state,” saying it would “enhance the safety of the clerics' entry and their security.” Jumblat hit back, saying Arslan and Wahhab are the “reincarnations” of Ghazali and slain Syrian security official Jameh Jameh.

Hundreds Protest against Child Marriage in Lebanon
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 03/19/Hundreds have protested in Beirut against child marriage, demanding lawmakers forbid unions below the age of 18, in a country where some faiths allow girls to be wed at 14. Organized by civil society groups, the rally attracted women of all ages -- and some lawmakers -- who marched on parliament in the capital Beirut. Some carried placards with slogans reading "Not before 18" and "Stop early marriage". Abir Abdel Razeq, a 22-year-old who carried her young daughter in her arms, said that she married at 14. "I hope that my daughter does not get married early, and that she finishes school -- I hope that she will not marry before she is 22", Razeq said. The protest came as a bill designating 18 as the minimum age for marriage awaits parliament's consideration. Lebanon does not have nationwide laws on marriage and divorce, since these areas are governed by the country's 18 religious communities. Elements of both the Muslim and Christian communities allow girls to be married at 14.

Bahraini FM Calls on EU to Blacklist Hezbollah
Kataeb.org/Sunday 03rd March 2019/Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa on Saturday urged the European Union to follow the United Kingdom's lead by adding Hezbollah to its terror list. “Many of the member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), including Bahrain, have suffered from terrorism backed by Iran which supports terrorist groups such as Hezbollah,” he said in an interview with Sky News Arabia on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting of the OIC in Abu Dhabi. The top Bahraini diplomat called on the EU and other world countries “to classify Hezbollah as a terrorist group".

Netanyahu: Hezbollah Is a Terrorist Organization in Its Own Right
Kataeb.org/Sunday 03rd March 2019/Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Britain’s decision to blacklist Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist group, calling on countries in Europe and around the world to follow suit. “This is an important decision because Hezbollah is a terrorist organization in its own right, and it is also the main terrorist arm of Iran,” Netanyahu stressed during the Israeli government's weekly Sunday meeting. He also noted that cooperation is ongoing with Russia to remove all foreign forces from Syria. “I made it unequivocally clear that Israel will not allow Iranian military entrenchment in Syria, and I made unequivocally clear that we will continue to militarily act against it,” Netanyahu said as he was briefing his Cabinet members on his meeting with Russia President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week. "President Putin and I also agreed on a shared goal - the removal from Syria of the foreign forces that came in after the civil war erupted," Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet in broadcast remarks. "We agreed to set up a joint task force which, together with others, will work to advance towards this goal."

Maronite Patriarch: Stop Impoverishing the People!
Kataeb.org/Sunday 03rd March 2019/Maronite Patriach Bechara al-Rahi called on the ruling authority to stop impoverishing and aggrieving the people, adding that the Lebanese must not be left mired in deprivation and unemployment. “How would the new government fulfill the reformist pledges it made in its policy statement while it is still burdening the treasury with exorbitant extra-budgetary expenditures, without putting an end to corruption and returning the usurped public funds?" Al-Rahi asked in his Sunday sermon. “How can the government keep mum about the nonfulfillment of the Shura Council's decisions, because this or that person is abstaining or preventing the implementation, either through a domineering attitude or threats or by the power of weapons," he said. "Where is the State’s prestige?"As for the civil marriage topic, the Patriarch deplored the blatant ignorance of the basic values and principles of Christianity, stressing the need for religious education for Christians to get to know better their system of faith. “When we hear how some Christians talk about civil marriage and religious marriage, we realize the extent of ignorance and the need for theological education," he pointed out.

Report: Smuggling Resumes Between Lebanon and Syria
Kataeb.org/Sunday 03rd March 2019/Smuggling of goods between Lebanon and Syria has resumed in recent months as markets in Damascus are suffering from a shortage, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported. Before the Syrian war had erupted, the moved goods were limited to western products that were not sold in Syria, whereas smugglers are today sending bananas, cigarettes, fuel and gas canisters, claims one taxi driver who has been working the Beirut-Damascus route for 27 years. As western sanctions hit Damascus and the local currency plunged against the U.S. dollar, prices in Syria have soared. For instance, the newspaper mentioned, a gas canister is being sold at some 10,000 pounds on the black market in Syria, while it only costs 6,500 pounds when transported from Lebanon. The strange thing, the taxi driver noted, was that security forces at border checkpoints do not scrutinize the gas canisters he is carrying in his taxi. “The regime is aware of the fuel shortage and has ordered security forces to look the other way," he said.

Iran’s and Hezbollah’s missiles against Israel
تقرير أميركي: مشروع إيراني سري لتطوير صواريخ حزب الله
Giancarlo Elia Valori/Moder diplomacyGiancarlo
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72685/%D8%AA%D9%82%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%A3%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%B1%D9%83%D9%8A-%D9%85%D8%B4%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B9-%D8%A5%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%86%D9%8A-%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%8A-%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B7%D9%88%D9%8A%D8%B1-%D8%B5/
The “precision project” of Iranian missiles, especially the Zelzal model (where the word “zelzal” means earthquake in Farsi), currently operating in the Lebanon, has reached a severe critical point.
The “Party of God” is currently the most important non-State military actor in the world, which is certainly even more powerful than the Lebanese army itself, with at least 30,000 full-time fighters and additional 25,000 reservists.
All very well trained by the Iranian Pasdaran, who in 1982 founded the Party with a personal decision of Imam Khomeini.
The Zelzal missiles (and those currently available to Hezbollah are above all the Zelzal 3) are solid propellant surface-to-surface missiles, a model officially created in 2007, with a stable range of over 250 kilometres.
According to the Iranian and Lebanese governments, these missiles have a range between 180 and 250 kilometres; a length of 9,600 millimetres; a diameter of616 millimetres; a maximum weight of the armed warhead equal to 900 kilograms and an average margin of error at arrival lower than five metres. The propellant is the HTBP, an oligomer of butadiene having the following formula.
They have a maximum weight of 1,980 kilos and operate in a maximum of 20 seconds. Their maximum service cycle is seven years.
For the time being, the Iranian project in the Lebanon – and only for Hezbollah-entails the turning of over 14,000 Zelzal2 and 3 into high-precision missiles.
The missile infrastructure project can convert Zelzal-2 into high-precision missiles with a unit cost – over a few hours – of approximately 5,000-10,000 US dollars. An operation that Iran has been doing for some time, also for the Houthi guerrilla warfare in Yemen.
Obviously, this fast rapid reconversion immediately endangers Israel’s commercial, intelligence and military networks in the Red Sea, but also directly all US bases in the Greater Middle East.
Initially Iran tried to send these missiles to the Lebanon directly via Syria, along the Iraqi-Lebanese Shiite “corridor”. Israel, however, has long been carrying out many precise air raids, capable of making the old “corridor” from Iraq to the Lebanon – the real target of Iran’s war in Syria – completely unsafe and above all making also the production of Zelzal 2 and 3missiles in Syria ineffective.
In response, Iran launched its own technical and intelligence operation, with a view to enabling the Zelzal 2 and 3 missiles already present in the Lebanon (which are currently estimated at approximately 14,000 units) to have an autonomous and advanced GPS (and also Russian GLONASS) guidance system.
The most important parts of these missiles are still transported, obviously disassembled, from Iran and Iraq to the Lebanon, in Hezbollah’s covert factories, both by land – in the parallel network of the Iraqi-Lebanese “corridor” – and by air from Syria, using the private commercial lines owned by the Pasdaran.
When the missiles arrive in the Lebanese factories in the hands of Hezbollah (and the Iranian Pasdaran) – often located underground – the Zelzal 2 and 3missiles are upgraded in their intermediate control and command sector. A system is installed for GPS guidance or for the Russian satellite system, a new integrated command and control system. All this basically regards the turning of a Zelzal 2 into a new Fateh 110 missile.
The Fateh 110 is precisely a short-range Iranian missile, usable on land-based mobile launchers, always with solid propellant.
Probably it also incorporates Chinese-made guidance systems and has, however, a length of 8.86 metres; a diameter of 0.61 metres; a weight at launch of 3,450 kilos and a maximum charge of 500 kilos, as well as a maximum operating range of 300 kilometres.
It is not yet completely clear how many Zelzal 2missiles turned into Fateh 110 are now available to Hezbollah, but it is thought that the “Party of God” currently has approximately 150 high-precision missiles.
However, the Lebanese Zelzal 2missiles not yet upgraded are supposed to be 14,000.
It should be recalled that Hezbollah has already attacked with missiles the refinery in Haifa – fortunately without repeating the 1947 massacre – some Israeli air bases, the areas near the nuclear reactor of Dimona, and the Kirya military base of the Israeli Armed Forces, as well as the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Hence, this is the problem: while it is certainly true that Israel has the maximum coverage at missile level, it is equally true that absolute protection is no longer possible.
It is therefore tragically probable that, in the future, the Israeli Defence may be forced to choose between the protection of critical infrastructure and the protection of the most populated centres.
The best strategic solution for Israel can be a direct preventive attack into the Lebanon, which would lead to a full outbreak with the Lebanon, but also with Syria, with the Sunni groups operating there, with Iran and with a share of Shiite militants from Iraq already stationing on the Bekaa-Golan border.
One of the current Israeli strategies, however, is to maintain a focus of international attention and intelligence on Hezbollah’s missiles and to disclose, at the same time, much accurate intelligence data, capable of assessing and checking the danger of this new composition of forces on the Israeli borders.
Incidentally, however, are we really sure that Iran wants to start destroying the Jewish State – just for mere silly anti-Semitic madness – thus setting the region on fire to finally do a favour probably only to its Sunni enemies?
As well as eventually favour a complete clash with the Iranian interests in the Lebanon and Syria of the Western forces, which would easily enter from a destabilized Israel into Iran?
If only the Europeans were less foolish, they could also put credible pressure on Hezbollah, thus letting Hariri’s new government – that still appears friendly to Westerners -know that all this is a clear and very severe violation of the UN Resolution n. 1701.
A pressure capable of forcing also the Russian Federation and China to become milder and more reasonable.
Certainly, the situation is increasingly complex.
As already said, Hezbollah owns approximately 140,000 Iranian-made missiles, hidden in private houses on the Lebanese border with Israel. According to the statistics of the last conflict between the “Party of God” and Israel in 2006, at least 14,000 of them, which are certainly Zelzal 2 and 3 missiles, can be launched at a rate between 180 and 1,200 per day.
Obviously, the saturation of launches from the Lebanon is capable of causing damage against resources or forces, which could jeopardize Israel’s military response and its internal social stability.
As already said, currently Hezbollah’s “precision project” is organized directly by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards.
Considering Israel’s internal structure, it is enough to hit some critical infrastructure (airports, including the civilian ones, factories, inhabited centres) and the more accurate missiles are, the fewer they are needed to achieve seriously destructive effects.
It should be recalled, however, that Hezbollah has also SCUD 2 missiles available, always deployed in the Lebanon, which are supposed to have an operating range between 200 and 400 kilometres.
The “Party of God” also bought from Bashar al-Assad’s Syria some M-600 Tishreen missiles, the Syrian version of the already mentioned Fateh 110,with different guidance and control systems.
The GPS accuracy of missiles, however, is critical for their strategic effects.
Precision missiles are such especially because they have a low Circular Error Probability (CEP).
CEPis the radius of the circle that should enclose 50% of the points of arrival of the missiles launched.
Hence the lower the CEP, the fewer missiles are needed to destroy a target.
The missiles with GPS and GLONASS systems reach their target through inertial mechanisms.
The main coordinates of the target are entered into the missile, at the time of launch, via laptop.
GPS and GLONASS systems use accelerometers and gyroscopes that move wings and external supports on the missile surface. With immediate feedback on the route and the amount of inertia-fuel that is evaluated immediately and automatically by the missile itself.
The solid propellant engine, however, lasts about 30 seconds and then the missile is driven by inertia.
Corrections to the route are possible until the time of impact.
All these Iranian missiles available to Hezbollah, however, are mobile by road.
The non-negligible size of the missile makes it liable, for a short period, to be hit before the launch, but it is certainly a particularly difficult operation.
The Zelzal 2 and Fateh 110missiles are similar and hence their refitting with GPS or GLONASS systems is relatively simple and entails small additional parts which are easy to transfer.
It should be noted once again that Iran uses both the Western GPS and the Russian Glonass as satellite sensor.
Just 2-3 hours per missile are enough to turn an old Zelzal into a precision missile, i.e. the time needed to replace the guidance system, the new surface fins and the inertial control system.
Some hundreds of Lebanese militants for the Hezbollah missile system are trained in a special section of the Imam Husseyn University in Tehran, the official university of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but only to upgrade the missiles, and many of the “Party of God” have already returned to the Lebanon.
Spare parts and materials are sent to Syria and the Lebanon by land or by air, with the formally civilian airlines owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The new parts are stored and checked especially in the warehouses of Damascus airport, but the Syrian factories of missile parts have all been placed under the Pasdaran direct control since December 2016.
Hence the Hezbollah logic is probably that the more missiles – even low-precision ones – are available, less possible will be for Israel to choose a preventive strategy of destruction of the arsenals before they are used.
How much damage can such a missile -upgraded by Iran for the Lebanese Shiites – do?
The Fateh 110missile has a 100-metre CEP and can hence destroy a standard target with a 75% probability rate.
For urban targets in highly populated areas the Fateh 110 CEP decreases further.
Israel is small and densely populated, with a very high distribution of critical targets between resident population and urban systems.
Particularly important centres are located very close to each other, in an area that, on average, is about 20 kilometres wide and 100 metres deep.
Israel has 20 energy production areas, three commercial ports and a large international airport.
It has also the military bases of Palmahim, Tel Nof, Nevatimand Hatzor, as well as Dimona, the Haifa refinery, and the IDF headquarters in the centre of Tel Aviv.
The operational coverage of Hezbollah’s missile factories in the Lebanon is also varied: under a football field, just north of the Beirut airport, near the Uza’i canal and in many private houses, often of individuals not reported as Shiite militants.
There are also Lebanese missile depots in Latakia – right near the Russian positions and, probably, in such a way as to make them also the target of an Israeli counter-operation –as well as in Safita, Hisya and, as already mentioned, in Damascus.
It should be recalled, however, that all Israeli air raids against the launch sites, factories and areas for upgrading Hezbollah’s Iranian missiles – starting from the one of November 2017 in Hisya to the one on Jamaraya, in February 2018, until the operation on Latakia of September 2018- were carried out by Israel in full agreement with the Russian Federation.
Nevertheless, unlike what happened in Syria, Israel has still no intention of carrying out stable preventive actions on the Lebanese territory, in a region that could quickly trigger off a major conflict with Syria, Iran, the Sunni groups and many others.
In terms of protection and missile response, Israel can still count on the Iron Dome, a network of sensors and early warning missile batteries, with additional advanced mortar batteries – operational since 2012 – but above all operating against the old Qassam or Soviet Katiusce rockets.
It works optimally for targets around 70-100 kilometres.
Since 2017 Israel has also been operating David’s Sling, a medium range and medium-high charge missile network, operating up to 300 kilometres, which is useful precisely against the Fateh 110, the Zelzal 2 and 3missiles, as well as against the Syrian M-600 missiles, including those upgraded with the Iranian GPS-GLONASS. Israel also owns the Arrow 2 network, with ballistic missiles having a long range of over 200 kilometres, which has been operating since 2000. Finally, since 2017 Israel has also been operating Arrow 3, a network of sensors and missiles with a range over 200 kilometres and spatial guidance in their final trajectory phase.
However, there is still a problem.
The anti-missile networks, even the most specialized and modern such as the Israeli ones, can be quickly saturated by a very high rate of almost simultaneous launches and by missile decoding actions in flight, which can blind or otherwise limit the full anti-missile response.
While it is true that Israel has no difficulty in selecting missiles targeted to critical areas of its territory, or those targeted to irrelevant areas, it is equally true that the interceptors are extremely expensive to be placed on site, infinitely more expensive than the missiles they have to intercept, especially if they are short-range missiles.
Hence, in a tragic future, the Jewish State might be forced to choose to defend only the critical infrastructure, thus leaving some populated centres overexposed.
A politically suicidal choice for any government.
Obviously,an unavoidable option for Israel will also be to bring the war – probably not just the air one – into the Lebanon, with evident cascading effects for all the forces present in the region.
Therefore it is fully rational that the Israeli government has made the choice of creating a new IDF “missile Corps” to specifically face this new type of threat, which will come from the North, but also from the South, from the Gaza Strip and, possibly, from the jihadist networks now controlling the Sinai region.
Iran’s technology in the field of missile precision guidance, however, comes from the US Paveway IV (CEP 15 metres, 70,000 US dollars per missile), which is a missile incorporating a dual communication system, carrying out anti-jamming activity on the GPS network (but not on GLONASS), and a semi-active laser guidance.
Currently Great Britain uses the Brimstone, with a CEP lower than one metre and a particularly advanced laser guidance system.
Great Britain has also the Exactor 2 available, a multirole missile with a 30-kilometre range.
A system that is almost completely automated.
All technologies also available to Iran.
The fast reverse engineering of the allied and Western materials found in Syria worked miracles for Iran.
According to Israeli sources, the cost of the new Iranian project on precision missiles in the Lebanon should total 17 billion US dollars, all invested in Hezbollah’s networks only.
Currently the final unit cost per missile is expected to be 10,000 US dollars.
As disclosed by various intelligence sources, however, the Lebanese program still has only 250 missiles already operational, as demonstrated by the documentary film produced by the Lebanese Shiite group, which shows an IDF border patrol, the 401th armoured brigade, hit in an accident occurred four years ago.
It is strange: the Israeli patrol had an M4 Windbreaker tank available, which has a significant passive and active anti-missile defence. Hence Hezbollah, however, has correctly inferred that Israel has currently the ability to send units by land to the Lebanese territory to bring the confrontation to the Lebanese Shiite region.
Which is exactly what Hezbollah does not want at all.
Both the Israeli military services and the Israeli Armed Forces, however, have explicitly stated that Hezbollah “has not yet the industrial capacity to turn the missiles supplied by Iran into precision missiles”.
For the time being, however, the “Party of God” is supposed to have 90-250 missiles available, already prepared for high-precision actions.
It is not what Iran and Hezbollah need to carry out the missile saturation operation they have in mind.
It should also be considered that the “Party of God” normally fails at least 10% of launches, while currently the international standard is 4% for small and medium-sized missiles.
Hence with 50% of the missiles stopped at departure or in flight by Israeli forces – as always happens – finally only 50 of the 250 missiles upgraded by Iran could be currently launched and become really dangerous for Israel.
The political and strategic effect would remain anyway, considering the population density and the complexity of the Israeli defence and infrastructure system.
Therefore the problem is not solved anyway by waiting.
Hence both Iran and Hezbollah have recently decided to confine the upgrade program only to the 14,000 Zelzal 2 missiles already present and operational, without updates, in the Lebanese Shiite group’s arsenal.
Here again, however, there are many problems.
New factories are needed, with a piece-by-piece process that turns a Zelzal 2 or 3 into a Fateh 110missile, which has a 300-kilometre range.
Which is exactly what the Iranian and Lebanese Shiites need in the first missile salvo.
Nevertheless, while Iran has already produced4,000 new high-precision missiles in the above mentioned university research centres in Tehran, so far only 1,000 have safely reached the Lebanon.
Another problem for Hezbollah and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the inevitably significant areas needed to upgrade the missiles both in Syria and in the Lebanon.
All areas already hit by Israeli attacks that, however, are still limited and well-known.
The few factories that have recently been operational in Syria and the Lebanon have already been hit by Israeli air strikes.
Hence, for the time being, Hezbollah has solved the problem by distributing the missiles to be upgraded to small and widespread factories, located throughout Southern Lebanon, and the few ones still existing in Syria.
This means that the process for upgrading the missiles becomes slower, more difficult and hence less qualitatively significant.
Therefore, the previously mentioned costs increase proportionately to the difficulties of technical upgrading. Hence, if the upgraded missiles cost at least 11,000 US dollars each, the total technological upgrade of Hezbollah’s missiles will be worth at least 145 million US dollars.
Therefore, everything is resolved in the standard time needed for the Iranian upgrade and for Israeli response and certainly for a new possible indirect agreement between Israeli and Syria, not mediated – today, as in the 1990s – by the United States.
A tacit agreement that is worth, today, in a framework of agreements between Syria itself, which got its grip on the Lebanon and currently cannot hold it any longer, and Israel itself, which could accept – after a credible threat on Hezbollah- a Russian or even US mediation on the current equilibria in the Lebanon.
Published on February 26, 2019
https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2019/02/26/irans-and-hezbollahs-missiles-against-israel/

Britain finally wakes up to Hezbollah’s true colours, sort of
Mohamed Kawas/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
We do not see how London will deal with the “Hezbollah government,” by some Lebanese descriptions.
Hezbollah supporters wave flags of Iran and their Shia group during a rally to mark the anniversary of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, February 6. (DPA)
Two sides of the same coin. Hezbollah supporters wave flags of Iran and their Shia group during a rally to mark the anniversary of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, February 6. (DPA).
“It is no longer tenable to distinguish between the military and political wings of [Hezbollah],” a British government statement read. British Home Secretary Sajid Javid has finally woken up to this truth and “proscribed” Hezbollah “in its entirety” as a terrorist organisation.
The fact is that this discovery by the UK government came too late because Hezbollah has been repeating for ages, especially via Deputy Secretary-General Sheikh Naim Qassem, that there is no difference between the military wing and the political wing inside Hezbollah and that “the party is unified by its very nature.”The notion of Hezbollah’s two wings is a European diplomacy invention to give with the left hand what it will withdraw with the right. If the 2012 Burgas bombing in Bulgaria established a European consensus base against Hezbollah’s military wing in 2012, the other European consensus not to characterise Hezbollah’s political wing as terrorist was a sign of naivety and a source of ridicule in the Middle East, particularly inside Hezbollah itself.
As incredible as it may sound, the sophisticated European diplomacy considers that the operations carried out by Hezbollah, which Europe describes as terrorist acts, are an abomination committed by a military group totally disconnected from any political decision coming from the party’s leadership.
Thus, the kidnapping of Westerners in Beirut, the bomb explosion in Buenos Aires and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s claim that Hezbollah elements were involved in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri or even the bombing in Bulgaria were all carried out independently of any consultations with the political body of the party.
Not only that, but when Hezbollah declares openly that its two wings are one and the same, European diplomats rush to correct for the party its own information by trying to convince it that it has a military wing that is evil and terrorist and a gentle political wing interested only in working for the public good.
Europe has dealt with Hezbollah as if its existence were a matter of fact and of force. After the deadly attacks of 1983, the Americans and the French gathered their dead and wounded and left Beirut. It was rumoured that Hezbollah was behind the attacks on their barracks in Beirut but they did nothing.
When Europeans were abducted in Beirut, Europe dealt with the events as if they were training exercises in foreign diplomacy and international relations, by exercising understanding, negotiations or even paying monetary and political ransoms. After each deal, French, German and British diplomats, and those from other EU countries, meet with political figures from Hezbollah as if nothing had happened.
The British decision draws attention to a development outside the debate in the United Kingdom. It was at this precise time that London, which is preoccupied with the Brexit file and where major local political developments are brewing, realised that Hezbollah was a terrorist organisation and therefore placed it in the same bag as terrorist organisations active in Mali and in Burkina Faso.
This is the same London that, along with the rest of the Western world, has focused on terrorism practiced by Sunni groups but failed to see the same in Iran’s jihadist groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.
With the decision, Hezbollah ended up in the company of Sunni terrorist groups and thus Britain and Europe have ended an era of impunity and exception that Hezbollah had enjoyed in the corridors of British and European diplomacy.
The rest of Europe has yet to follow Britain’s example. French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris can still see clearly the line between the military wing and the political wing of Hezbollah and that France sees the party’s military militia as terrorist but appreciates the party’s politics as it remains open to dialogue. That seems also to be the position of the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini.
London, however, threw a stone into the stagnate still waters that characterise Europe’s old-fashioned protocol with Hezbollah.
Europe is not going to stay united about this matter, given that one of its major members, even as it works on leaving the union, considers Hezbollah a terrorist organisation. After all, Britain remains a key reference in matters of security and European security in particular.
Granted that the intimate relationship between London and Washington dictated to the British to look at Hezbollah with American eyes and the United States is not alone in placing Hezbollah on its black list. Eleven other countries and political entities, including the Arab League, have done so. Britain is not the only European country that is lovey-dovey with the United States and others might soon follow suit.
Britain has discovered that Hezbollah, a political, ideological, military and financial ally of Iran, is a terrorist organisation, exactly as Washington has claimed. Britain, however, does not see Iran, which the United States has labelled as a sponsor of terrorism, as a terrorist state.
Herein lies a structural contradiction in Javid’s and the British government’s decision. The branch is seen as evil but the root tree is seen as a full-fledged state worthy of British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s visit last November.
What is worse is that Iran itself has not kicked up a storm in reaction to London’s decision. As long as it remains excluded, let the branches take the fall.
London, however, doesn’t stop there and offers more Machiavellianism than the word diplomacy can bear. Hunt explained that the decision to place Hezbollah (and its political wing in particular) on the terrorist lists will not affect his country’s plans to support Lebanon and its government.
We do not see how London will deal with the “Hezbollah government,” by some Lebanese descriptions. We do not know how the British government will deal with a Lebanese government that includes ministers from a terrorist party, by London’s own descriptions.
Lebanese officialdom did not see a big problem in this matter. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said it was Britain’s concern, not Lebanon’s, and Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said the decision would not affect Lebanese-British relations.
The world is changing and Lebanon does not want to believe it. Perhaps there is in this position a right perspective based on disappointing international precedents.

Prostitution scandal puts spotlight on Hezbollah’s criminal dealings
Makram Rabah/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
Hezbollah should be judged on a harsher scale than the rest because it has sanctified its leadership and its actions.
The Lebanese law enforcement crackdown on a brothel in eastern Lebanon was not really news until it was discovered that the house of ill repute was owned and operated by a high-ranking Hezbollah official.
The revelation was made more shocking when it was reported that a Lebanese police colonel was implicated in the scandal, allegedly receiving kickbacks in return for protection.
To add insult to injury, Hezbollah refused to surrender the alleged pimp and conducted its own investigation and interrogation, while Lebanese authorities were content to arrest and question the police officer.
Hezbollah diabolically stayed silent in the face of the scandal and the Internal Security Force issued a weak, unconvincing communique unequivocally denying that such a brothel existed or that a member of Hezbollah and a police colonel were involved.
Hezbollah’s prostitution ring story comes at a time the Iran-backed organisation proclaimed itself a crusader for anti-corruption and publicly vowed that it would not rest until corrupt politicians are brought to justice.
The face of Hezbollah’s anti-corruption campaign, MP Hassan Fadlallah, with his firm and honey-tongued rhetoric, took to the parliament pulpit to declare that Hezbollah has conclusive evidence and documentation implicating many government officials, yet refrained from naming any culprit or producing any evidence. Hezbollah’s crusade excludes its allies, the Christian Free Patriotic Movement and the Shia Amal Movement, which are part and parcel of the successive cabinets and parliaments that are to blame for Lebanon’s $80 billion in public debt.
While some may argue that Hezbollah’s intentions are genuine, its actions only affirm that its anti-corruption talk is merely a tool it wishes to use to further consolidate its grip over what remains of the crumbling Lebanese state.
Contrary to what Hezbollah wishes the public to believe, this fascio-religious outfit is not immune to the supposed corruption of the Lebanese clientelist system.
True that Hezbollah’s access to immense Iranian funds excuses it from partaking in the political racketeering, yet the impunity it established for itself using its weapons has led to the spread of corruption and crime amid the Shia constituency it claims to represent.
With the exodus of the Syrians from Lebanon in 2005 and Hezbollah’s later involvement in Syria, Hezbollah transformed from a self-proclaimed Spartan society to one that is excessively implicated in illicit activities ranging from weapons to drug rings and now prostitution.
Alarmingly, these criminal endeavours have been linked to senior Hezbollah members or their immediate families, suggesting that, despite its self-righteous claims, Hezbollah members are no different from mere hoodlums.
Hezbollah should be judged on a harsher scale than the rest because it has sanctified its leadership and its actions. Acts that placed Lebanon and its economy on a spiral downfall, equally or perhaps more harmful than the corruption Hezbollah is claiming to fight. Fadlallah is fully entitled to preach morality and to demand that former PM Fouad Siniora be questioned over allegations of mismanagement and waste of public funds but, if the Hezbollah MP is truly convinced, he should equally empower the Lebanese state rather than weaken it as his party has done.
This empowerment should start by allowing the Lebanese state and its agencies to arrest the many pimps and hoodlums who pose as members of Hezbollah. Until Hezbollah and other alleged reformers practise what they preach they will be no different from harlots who preach morality and abstinence — ironic and shameless at best.

Lebanon’s first female interior minister is undaunted by task
Samar Kadi/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
“It’s a big responsibility but, if you are able to make a change, then you can do the work (regardless of gender)," said Lebanese Interior Minister Raya el-Hassan.
Lebanese Interior Minister Raya el-Hassan, the first Arab woman to assume the key government portfolio, said she is keen on setting a standard for other women while working to improve the image of the ministry itself.
Being a woman, she said, does not undermine her ability to tackle the large spectrum of files under her authority which, in addition to security, include local governance, law enforcement, prisons and human rights.
“Women have fared as well as men — if not better — in even more male-oriented positions in the world. In the Arab region it is more complex because of our patriarchal society but there is always a first time. We need to break the glass ceiling and try to effect change in the mentality of the society,” Hassan said in an interview with The Arab Weekly.
“It’s a big responsibility but, if you are able to make a change, then you can do the work (regardless of gender),” she said.
While security remains her top priority, the 51-year-old politician and mother of three, is determined to make the ministry more people friendly and centred on serving the public. “At the Interior Ministry we have direct contact with the people and I believe that we need to change the image of the ministry for the people to feel that they have a recourse for complaints or reservations about any issue be it human rights, the way security people treat them, freedom of expression, et cetera,” Hassan said.
“It’s not going to happen overnight. It is a transformation process that would take months if not years but it is important to start somewhere.”
Hassan, an ally of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and member of his Future Movement, said she spent much time digesting information and assessing deficiencies in each of the portfolios pertaining to the Interior Ministry. “I don’t claim I would be able to sort everything but under each file we can identify quick wins that can hopefully unleash a momentum to build on down the line,” she said.
As minister of interior, she has a gamut of priorities varying from addressing traffic violations, easing the country’s traffic congestion and upgrading road safety, improving prison conditions, upholding freedom of expression and defending human rights.
Despite limited funding, quick fixes such as enforcing traffic laws, separating juveniles from adult prisoners, ensuring respect of basic human rights at police stations, can be achieved in the short term, Hassan said.
Her first act on taking office was to order the removal of concrete security blocks in front of the ministry building in a busy area of Beirut, allowing traffic to move more freely. The more intricate file of local governance, which requires institutional changes, is a longer-term project, Hassan said.
“I don’t allege to have quick fixes here. With more than 900 municipalities across Lebanon, each with long-standing issues, you need a strategic framework to identify needs and development priorities. However, I think we need to have a planning framework of some sort so that we can move ahead.”
Hassan, who has set a precedent as finance minister (2009-11), touched off the first controversy since her appointment by voicing support to the establishment of civil marriage in Lebanon, drawing backlash from religious authorities.
“I believe in civil marriage but am not advocating for it nor standing against it, I am just saying that any topic should be discussed and then it is the decision of the parliament to approve or not,” Hassan said.
In Lebanon, no civil code exists to regulate personal status issues, such as marriage and divorce. Rather, such matters are governed by 15 religious laws, overseen by associated courts depending on a person’s religious affiliation.
Despite the complexities of the Lebanese political system, Hassan is counting on the government’s support, notably from Lebanese President Michel Aoun, Hariri and parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, to effect the change she is seeking.
“I was given assurances that they are behind me in implementing the law. Any change should happen progressively. It is important to start addressing islands of reforms hoping that these will come together to create a catalyst,” she said.
Despite being surprised by her appointment, Hassan said that her long experience in government was helping her feel comfortable in the new role. “I have been working within the public sector for the last 25 years. It is still the same bureaucracy, the same public administration, the same political players and the same dynamics but a different file,” she said. Holder of a master’s degree in finance and investments from George Washington University, Hassan was in charge of developing a special economic zone in her native city of Tripoli before her latest appointment. She also worked as an adviser to the minister of economy and trade (2000-03) and assistant to the minister of finance (1995-99).

Latest LCCC English Miscellaneous Reports & News published on March 03-04/2019
Israel, Russia to cooperate on foreign forces exit from Syria: Netanyahu
Reuters, Jerusalem/Sunday, 3 March 2019/Israel and Russia will work together on securing an exit of foreign forces from Syria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday after visiting Moscow to advocate against the Iranian presence in the country. As Syrian President Bashar al-Assad beats back an eight-year-old insurgency, Israel worries that his reinforcements from Iran and the Tehran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah will stay on to form a new front against it. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against suspected Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria. These operations have been largely ignored by Russia, which intervened militarily on Assad’s behalf in 2015, turning the tide of the war. While being hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, Netanyahu said that he had made it “unequivocally clear” that such strikes would continue, with an Israeli-Russian military hotline continuing to prevent accidental clashes between the countries. “President Putin and I also agreed on a shared goal - the removal from Syria of the foreign forces that came in after the civil war erupted,” Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet in broadcast remarks. The Israeli premier added: “We agreed to set up a joint task force which, together with others, will work to advance toward this goal.”He did not elaborate. Moscow had no immediate comment. In the past, Russia has spoken in favor of other forces leaving Syria, though it plans to keep a long-term garrison there. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in an interview with Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) published on Sunday, said the situation in Syria had visibly stabilized after operations by Syrian government forces with Russian aerial support. But Lavrov said it was too early to declare the “terrorist threat” in Syria - a reference to extremist-led rebels - eliminated. The United States has been drawing down its own forces in Syria as ISIS extremist insurgents near defeat.

Syria takes part in first Arab meeting since 2011
AFP, Amman/Sunday, 3 March 2019/Syria attended a meeting of Arab states on Sunday for the first time since its conflict broke out in 2011, marking another step towards the country’s political reintegration into the region. Syria’s parliament speaker, Hammouda Sabbagh, travelled to Amman to attend the 29th Conference of the Arab Parliamentary Union. His Jordanian counterpart, Atef al-Tarawneh, called in a speech for regional countries “to work toward a political settlement to the Syrian crisis... and for Syria to regain its place” in the Arab world. A growing number of Arab states have voiced support for Syria’s return to the Arab League, which suspended the country’s membership in November 2011 as the death toll mounted in its war. Divisions within the pan-Arab organization, however, have stalled the readmission of Syria, which with the support of Russia and Iran has largely regained control of its territory from rebel groups and extremists. But the UAE reopened its Damascus embassy in December, the same month as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir made the first visit of any Arab leader to the Syrian capital since 2011.

Iran official warns Gulf countries of uprising if they continue to rely on the US
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English/Sunday, 3 March 2019/US allies in the Middle East risk an uprising by their “humiliated citizens” if they continue to rely on Washington, a top Iranian security official warned Sunday in comments carried by state media. “Our prediction about America’s allies in the region is that if they continue the policy of relying on Islam’s enemies, they will face the uprising of their humiliated citizens,” said Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, whose comments were published by the official IRNA news agency. “(US President) Trump and even his underlings ridicule and humiliate Saudi Arabia and the (United Arab) Emirates day and night, saying that you’re nothing without us and cannot last a day without America’s support,” said Shamkhani. Iran’s relations with its Gulf neighbors witnessed escalated tension last month when the Islamic Republic accused Riyadh and Abu Dhabi of being complicit in a suicide bombing that killed 27 Iranian troops. Days after the deadly car bombing, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, deputy head of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reportedly threatened to “break America, Israel and Saudi Arabia”, vowing that Tehran will “never lay down” its weapons. Salami went on to describe the United States as “distressed” and called into question its world power status. “America, too, has been defeated. The Zionist regime is struggling to survive by using psychological warfare,” he said, adding, “We shall fight them on the global level, not just in one spot. Our war is not a local war. We have plans to defeat the world powers. The February 13 bombing targeted a busload of Guards in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan and was claimed by Jaish al-Adl, a Pakistan-based extremist group blacklisted by Iran as terrorists.

On brink of Syria defeat, ISIS unleashes car bombs
ReutersSunday, 3 March 2019/ISIS launched car bombs and suicide attackers against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) assaulting Baghouz, in a last-ditch effort to stave off defeat in its final patch of territory, fighters from the US-backed force said on Sunday. Capturing the village in eastern Syria will be a milestone in international efforts to roll back the extremists, whose self-styled “caliphate” covered roughly one-third of Syria and Iraq at its height in 2014. But it is universally accepted that the group, which has been in territorial retreat since then and suffered its major defeats in 2017, will remain a security threat as an insurgent force with sleeper cells and some desolate pockets of territory. The SDF had said it expected a “decisive battle” on Sunday after advancing gradually for 18 hours to avoid land mines sown by ISIS, whose fighters are also using underground tunnels to stage ambushes and then disappear.
By midday, however, there was no sign of the battle being over, and a spokesman for the US-led international coalition supporting the SDF said the pace of the advance had ebbed. “ISIS fighters have been using suicide vests and car bombs to slow down the SDF offensive and hide from Coalition strikes in the area of Baghuz,” Col. Sean Ryan told Reuters. “They still hold civilians and are lacing the tunnels with IEDs as well,” he said, referring to improvised explosive devices.A Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighter fires a machine gun through a hole in a wall near Baghouz, Syria. (ANHA/Reuters) The SDF has previously estimated several hundred IS insurgents to be inside Baghouz, mostly foreigners, and the coalition has described them as the “most hardened” militants. But Ryan said their hiding underground made it difficult to determine current numbers. From a position, about 3 km from the front line on Sunday afternoon, warplanes and the pounding of artillery could be heard overhead as plumes of smoke rose over Baghouz. An SDF commander there told Reuters that IS had sent explosive-ridden vehicles towards advancing fighters the night before. Air strikes destroyed two of them, and the SDF fired on a third to blow it up, he said. The extremists also shelled the approaching force. Sinjar Shammar, from the Kurdish YPG which spearheads the SDF coalition, was wounded when shrapnel from a shell struck the armored vehicle he was driving. “My comrade was sent to the hospital. His leg is gone,” said Shammar, 22, as his arm was being bandaged at a first-aid point. “(But) morale is great (at the front line). I will return to the comrades in a bit... God willing, we will triumph.”

Israel hits Hamas sites after ‘explosive balloons’ launched from Gaza
AFP, Gaza CitySunday, 3 March 2019/The Israeli military struck two Hamas observation points in the Gaza Strip, a security source said Sunday, after the army reported balloons carrying an “explosive device” were sent toward Israel. No injuries occurred from the strikes late Saturday east of Al-Bureij in the central Gaza Strip and east of Rafah in the south of the blockaded enclave run by Islamist movement Hamas, according to a Hamas security source. The strikes occurred after a “cluster of balloons carrying an explosive device was launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israeli territory,” the Israeli army said in a statement. “No injuries or damage were reported,” it said. Late Wednesday, Israeli aircraft targeted several militant sites in Gaza after an “explosive balloon” launched from the Palestinian enclave damaged a house in Israel. Palestinians in Gaza have for months been sporadically launching balloons with incendiary and explosive devices at southern Israel in parallel with weekly protests and clashes taking place at the fence. At least 251 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since March 2018, the majority shot during weekly border protests and others hit by tank fire or air strikes in response to violence from Gaza. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period. Israel and Hamas have fought three wars since 2008.

4 European Countries Ask Iran to Amend its Regional Stances
Khalil Fuleihan/Asharq Al-Awsat/March 03/19
Four European countries have asked Iran to amend its positions in four countries: Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and strengthen its relations with them in accordance with the Vienna Convention. Tehran must “reconcile with the international community rather than collide with it”, said European diplomatic reports sent to Beirut. France, Britain, Germany and Italy, also known as E4, hold regular meetings between their representatives and Iranian representatives to discuss unacceptable actions in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. A European source said that some of the issues addressed at the meetings are met with understanding, while others do not, because they deal with Iran’s activities and attempt to make it abandon its financial and military support of political forces, which it supports with the pretext of helping them in liberation efforts. The E4 asserted that such an argument is unacceptable and constitutes a violation of the sovereignty of these countries. However, the group's sources confirmed to Asharq Al-Awsat that Iran's objections to these demands will not deter it from continuing to persuade it to "normalize its relations with the West". The normalization will put an end to the negative effects that could result from the sharp conflict between US President Donald Trump and Iran. The continuation of the conflict could threaten the security of a number of countries where Tehran enjoys political influence and a strong military force that does not comply with the orders of the executive power of the state. This force is allegedly used to liberate occupied territory. "At the same time as Trump is stepping up his attack on Iran, France is leading the European Quartet to calm the situation, recognizing that such escalation carries a lot of risk," the sources added. The member states of the E4 are committed to the policy of French President Emmanuel Macron, which has two goals: non-proliferation by keeping Iran within the nuclear agreement and preventing it from obtaining an atomic bomb, and protecting national security. The group regretted the US decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal, saying it will continue to support it.
The European countries have identified three issues that Iran must recognize in order to "normalize relations with the West." First, it must recognize the danger of Shiite military forces it has formed, which compete with state structures and threaten many Arab countries in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Second, the group rejects Iran's national program for the production of ballistic missiles and the Iranian national program for its development, deployment and construction of such missiles in countries where it has military forces. The third is to “give up its threats to the existence and security of Israel.”A senior Lebanese official assessed the role played by the E4 as "good, but it would be difficult to pass as long as Trump insists on his position to withdraw from the nuclear agreement.""The European countries should coordinate with the US President to reach a solution that does not show that he is backtracking on his stance,” he added. Moreover, he said the three steps set by the E4 could be a draft for this solution “after adding paragraphs that reassure Iran.”

Iran Warns U.S. Allies of 'Humiliated Citizens' Uprising
U.S. allies in the Middle East risk an uprising by their "humiliated citizens" if they continue to rely on Washington, a top Iranian security official warned Sunday in comments carried by state media. "(U.S. President) Trump and even his underlings ridicule and humiliate Saudi Arabia and the (United Arab) Emirates day and night, saying that you're nothing without us and cannot last a day without America's support," said Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. Back in October, Trump said that Saudi Arabia's 83-year-old King Salman "might not be there for two weeks" without U.S. military support. The comments were mostly shrugged off by Riyadh. "Our prediction about America's allies in the region is that if they continue the policy of relying on Islam's enemies, they will face the uprising of their humiliated citizens," said Shamkhani, whose comments were published by the official IRNA news agency. Iran's relations with its Gulf neighbors have soured in recent years and tensions escalated last month when the Islamic Republic accused Riyadh and Abu Dhabi of being complicit in a suicide bombing that killed 27 Iranian troops. The Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards blasted the "traitorous governments of Saudi Arabia and (the) Emirates" and said Iran will no longer tolerate their "hidden support for anti-Islam thugs and Takfiri (Sunni extremist) groups."The February 13 bombing targeted a busload of Guards in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan and was claimed by Jaish al-Adl, a Pakistan-based extremist group blacklisted by Iran as terrorists.

Iran: Europe’s Behavior Will Influence Expediency Council’s Decision on FATF
London - Adil Al Salmi/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council (EDC) did not take a decision about anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing bills approved by parliament but rejected by the Guardian Council. This was the fourth time the Council has discussed the bills but failed either to accept or reject them. Its next meeting will be after the Iranian New Year on March 21 and not before April. President Hassan Rouhani and Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani were absent from the EDC meeting. The meeting was the first held after the resignation of the Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, which was rejected by the President and later Zarif withdrew the resignation and returned to his post. The talk about compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards has become controversial in Iran. Iranian circles fear the influence of FATF on the activities of al-Quds Force, the foreign arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and Iranian-sponsored groups in the Middle East. The government denies any effect of the laws on the activities of IRGC, as Foreign Minister Zarif told the parliament that Iran's compliance will leave any excuse for the US, which was seen by conservative circles as an attempt to appease the United States. Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei said that behavior of European countries will influence the body’s final decision about ratifying FATF-related bills.
“In the new [Iranian calendar] year, we will put these two bills on the agenda and meanwhile FATF’s behavior will also be monitored; since it [FATF] has, on one hand, appreciated Iran’s measures and on the other, it has displayed some ambiguities. The more constructive FATF behavior, the more influential it will be in the council’s decision,” Rezaei announced Saturday at a press conference. “Behavior of Europeans will affect the council’s decision since we are not satisfied with their performance on JCPOA,” he added. Rezaie went on to say that Iran’s conditions differ from other countries regarding the joining to the Task Force, adding, “maybe if we were not under sanctions, we would review FATF in another way.”Rezaei criticized Rouhani and described his remarks on the Expediency Council as "unfriendly and illegal" and said the legal issue "is not about a person or 30 people," noting that members of the government are less than members of the Expediency Council. On Tuesday, Rouhani stated, “we can’t let a group of 10-20 people take control of country.” Head of the Expediency Council Sadiq Larijani, responded to Rouhani calling it "fallacy" and "wrong." He also accused the Iranian president of misleading the decisions of constitutional organs. Larijani also responded to Rouhani's claims about the Iranian leader's approval of the government's plan to join the FATF. "The Leader did not say he was OK, but said he had no opinion," he said. Iranian television said the security, legal and judicial security committees renewed their opposition to the Palermo agreement.
State-owned ISNA news agency quoted council member Ghulam Reza Musbahi as saying that all the signatories and opponents of the agreement presented their positions during the meeting, hinting that results had been reached and will be announced after the New Year holiday. "The council has now decided not to vote on Palermo and not to discuss the CFT until it makes a clear decision in the future," said Chairman of National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iranian Parliament Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh. Donya-e-Eqtesad newspaper reported that the downward trend in dollar prices has stalled, pointing to the dollar's return to volatility. The dollar exceeded 136 thousand riyals, and reached about 138, after witnessing a decline for two days, according to the newspaper. Earlier, FATF said Iran has until June to fix its anti-money laundering and terrorism financing rules or face increased international scrutiny of its banks. US assistant Treasury Secretary for terrorist financing, Marshall Billingslea, who chaired the FATF meeting, said Iran had until June before countermeasures would automatically kick in, according to Reuters. France, Britain and Germany have tied Iran’s compliance and removal from the FATF blacklist to a new channel for non-dollar trade with Iran designed to avert US sanctions. Iran’s central bank welcomed the deadline extension granted by the FATF and called in a statement for the “remaining bills to be approved as soon as possible”, IRNA reported. Foreign businesses say Iran’s compliance with FATF rules is key if it wants to attract investors, especially after the United States re-imposed sanctions on Iran last year.

Syrian Parliament Speaker in Jordan for Arab Conference
Amman - Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/Syrian parliament Speaker Hammouda Sabbagh arrived in Amman on Saturday to take part in the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union conference that will kick off on Sunday. He was welcomed upon his arrival by his Jordanian counterpart Atef al-Tarawneh. This marks the first time that Syria attends the conference since the eruption of its crisis in 2011. This year’s meeting will be held under the theme of “Jerusalem: the eternal capital of the Palestinian state.” The parliament speakers of each of Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have all arrived in Jordan for the conference. Syria was suspended from the Arab League in wake of its crisis and the regime’s violent crackdown on peaceful protesters. Debate has been ongoing in recent months on whether to restore its membership.

US Envoy to the Middle East Rejects UN Report Against Israel, Blames Hamas
Ramallah - Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/US Envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt strongly rejected the UN Human Rights Council's report on the Gaza conflict, calling it a "testament to bias against Israel," on Friday. Greenblatt also accused Hamas of endangering Palestinian lives by inciting and perpetrating violent demonstrations. “This COI [Commission Of Inquiry] report is another manifestation of the UNHRC's clear bias against Israel. Which remains the only country that the Council dedicates an entire standing agenda item to targeting. When the HRC [Human Rights Council] speak the truth?” the US envoy wrote on his Twitter account. In another post, Greenblatt wrote that Hamas behaved with reckless irresponsibility and disregard for human life when it incited “VIOLENT protests, breaches & attacks at the Gaza fence-line.”He asserted that Hamas is directly responsible for the miserable situation of the people of Gaza. On Thursday, the UN Human Rights Council published a report accusing the Israeli army of deliberately targeting civilians, including children, after they conducted a study of 325 victims, eyewitnesses and other sources, and collected more than 8,000 documents. “The committee has a reasonable basis to believe that during the marches on the border fence with the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights law,” the report indicated. “The violations included committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and should be investigated immediately by Israel.”The UN committee investigated the deaths of 189 Palestinians from the beginning of the round of violent incidents and disturbances on the fence from the end of March until the end of 2018. The report stated that in what appeared to be a "war crime," Israeli soldiers deliberately fired at journalists, when possible, as Hamas led demonstrators towards the Gaza Strip border. Palestinians welcomed the report saying that it was about time to put Israel on trial in the International Criminal Court. Palestinian factions and parties issued a statement calling to put the report into immediate implementation in preparation for the prosecution of occupation leaders on the ongoing crimes against Palestinians people. They called for the dispatch of an international competent committee to the occupied Palestinian territories to identify violations by the Israeli state, and provide international protection until the end of the occupation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the accusations in the report issued by the United Nations. “Israel rejects outright the report of the UN Human Rights Council, which sets new records of hypocrisy and lies, out of obsessive hatred of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East,” he reiterated. Netanyahu added that Hamas fires rockets at Israelis, bombs and carries out “terrorist activities during the violent demonstrations on the fence.”

Bouteflika Vows Not to Serve Full Term if Re-Elected as Protests Grow
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/March 03/19
Algeria's President Abdelaziz Bouteflika pledged Sunday not to serve a full term if re-elected at April polls after huge protests against his bid to extend his 20 years in power. The ailing leader vowed in an 11th-hour letter read out on state television to organize a "national conference" that would set a date for early polls which he would not contest. The announcement came after hundreds of students staged new protests Sunday in the Algerian capital and other cities against a fifth term ahead of a midnight deadline for candidates to register for the 18 April vote. The latest demonstrations came after tens of thousands of people took to streets of the capital Friday in the biggest challenge in years to Bouteflika's rule. The veteran leader uses a wheelchair and has rarely been seen in public since a 2013 stroke. Chanting "Bouteflika go away", the students rallied Sunday near the main city centre campus of the University of Algiers, cordoned off by police, AFP journalists said. Hundreds more demonstrated at campuses across Algiers, including at the Faculty of Law near the headquarters of the Constitutional Council. Police fired water cannon to prevent protesters from reaching the Council, where candidates must register for the presidential race, security sources said. Rallies inside and outside campuses in the northeastern city of Annaba also drew hundreds chanting "anti-Bouteflika" slogans, a local journalist said on condition of anonymity. The TSA news website reported other protests in Algeria's second and third cities, Oran and Constantine. Bouteflika's announcement in February that he would seek another five-year term despite his failing health has unleashed pent-up frustrations in the North African country. The 82-year-old flew to Switzerland on February 24 for what his office described as "routine medical checks." The presidency has not detailed when he will return from the Geneva hospital, which was calm when AFP visited on Sunday.
Protesters to be 'disappointed'
On Saturday, Bouteflika sacked his campaign manager Abdelmalek Sellal, a former premier who successfully oversaw the president's past three re-election bids, state media said, without giving a reason. Sellal was removed on the eve of the election registration deadline and replaced by Transport Minister Abdelghani Zaalene. Six other candidates have already registered, including prominent retired general Ali Ghediri, who was the first to announce he would run for president and promising change. Businessman Rachid Nekkaz, who has cultivated a mass following among young people, said he would follow suit, but former premier Ali Benflis, a key contender in 2004 and 2014 polls, pulled out of this year's race. An editorial Sunday in El-Moudjahid newspaper, a mouthpiece of the government, said protesters would be "disappointed" in their campaign to force Bouteflika to pull out of the election. The sacking of Sellal came after more than a week of demonstrations by Algerians, including lawyers and students, in Algiers, where protests have officially been banned since 2001, and other cities.
Tear gas and stones
On Friday, clashes erupted between police and protesters in Algiers as tens of thousands of people took to the streets. Riot police used tear gas and batons to keep some protesters from marching on the Government Palace which houses the prime minister's office. According to a police toll, 56 police officers and seven demonstrators were hurt and 45 alleged stone-throwers were arrested in Algiers. Bouteflika has been in power for two decades, gaining respect from many for his role in ending a civil war in the 1990s that officials say killed nearly 200,000 people. Officials have warned that the protests risk dragging Algeria into instability, comparing the rallies to those that sparked Syria's war. Protesters have been mobilized by calls on social media which have resonated with young Algerians, many of whom struggle to find jobs in a country where half the population is under 30. In France, Algeria's former colonial power, several thousand people on Sunday joined anti-Bouteflika rallies in Paris, Marseilles and other cities. "Out out," shouted crowds in the Place de la Republique, central Paris, where protesters waved placards and some wrapped themselves in Algerian flags.

Protests Erupt in Algeria as Bouteflika Seeks to Submit Presidency Bid
Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019 /Fresh protests erupted in the Algerian capital Sunday against President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid to submit his candidacy for a fifth term in office. The deadline to register in the April elections ends at midnight. He need not do so in person, the state news agency APS said. There are no legal requirements for candidates to be physically present to submit their bid to the constitutional council, but in 2014 Bouteflika registered in person. The 82-year-old, who uses a wheelchair and has rarely been seen in public since a 2013 stroke, has remained invisible and silent on the demonstrations since they broke out last month. He was at the weekend still in Switzerland for unspecified medical checks, according to Swiss media. Hundreds of students gathered inside a university campus near the Constitutional Council where presidential candidates file their papers, chanting: “No to a fifth term!”Witnesses also reported protests in other higher education faculties in Algiers and cities such as Oran in the west of the North African country, a major producer of oil and natural gas.Bouteflika's announcement in February that he would seek another term despite his failing health has unleashed the angry protests. On Saturday, he sacked his veteran campaign manager Abdelmalek Sellal, a former prime minister who successfully oversaw Bouteflika's past three re-election bids, state media said, without giving a reason. Sellal was removed ahead of a deadline of midnight (2300 GMT) Sunday for contenders to register for the presidential race, and replaced as campaign manager by Transport Minister Abdelghani Zaalene.
In the run-up to the deadline six candidates had registered, including prominent retired general Ali Ghediri, while businessman Rachid Nekkaz, who has cultivated a mass following among young people, said he would follow suit on Sunday afternoon.
An analyst who declined to be identified said Sellal's sacking could be a tactic to calm the growing protest movement against Bouteflika's bid for a fifth term, reported AFP. An editorial Sunday in El-Mouhajid newspaper, a mouthpiece of the government, suggested that Bouteflika would not pull out of the race under pressure from the street, saying protesters will be "disappointed". The sacking came after days of protests that have seen Algerians, including lawyers and students, take to the streets of several cities, including Algiers where protests have been banned since 2001.
The first rally against Bouteflika's bid for re-election drew tens of thousands on February 22 with protesters chanting mostly "No fifth mandate". The scale of the protests has surprised many in Algeria and represents the biggest challenge in years to the authorities. On Friday tens of thousands of Algerians were back on the streets in the capital, second city Oran and other towns across the North African country. During the protests in Algiers clashes erupted between police and protesters when some of them tried to march on the Government Palace which houses the prime minister's office.
Riot police fired tear gas at the protesters, used batons to keep them at bay and also threw at them stones which the demonstrators had initially hurled at the offices, AFP reporters said. According to a police toll, 56 police officers and seven demonstrators were hurt and 45 arrests made in Algiers. Bouteflika, who has been in power for two decades, gained respect from many for his role in ending a civil war in the 1990s which according to official figures killed nearly 200,000 people. Officials have warned that the protests risk dragging Algeria into instability, with the prime minister comparing the rallies to those that sparked Syria's war. Protesters have been mobilized by calls on social media which have resonated with young Algerians, many of whom struggle for employment in a country where half the population is under 30. Reporters at state radio have complained that their bosses have imposed a blackout on coverage of the protests, and last week journalists also took to the streets to protest against alleged censorship.

Debate in Iraq over Dismissing Judicial Cases against Sunni Officials
Baghdad – Hamza Mustafa/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/The Supreme Judicial Council and Federal Court in Iraq denied that arrangements have been made to dismiss judicial cases against prominent Sunni politicians.Local media had reported that figures, such as former Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, former Finance Minister Rafeh Issawi, former Nineveh province Governor Atheel al-Nujaifi and Anbar province elder Sheikh Ali al-Hatem al-Suleiman, have had their judicial cases dismissed as part of a political settlement. Official spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council Abdulsattar al-Bayrkdar denied the report, saying that any individual sought in judicial cases can resort to legal channels to appeal sentences. Moreover, he stressed that sentences are not politically motivated, but they have been issued according to criminal law and based on submitted evidence. Hashemi, Issawi and Suleiman have yet to comment on the reports. Nujaifi meanwhile, informed Asharq Al-Awsat that the case against him and Issawi was “administrative, not political.” “I am seeking to expose the evidence that has been concealed from the judiciary in my case,” he vowed. He also noted that the verdicts have been issued on “inaccurate” investigations, remarking that the cases have not been completed. “We are seeking a legal approach, not a political one,” he stressed. Furthermore, Nujaifi said that the cases against him are covered in an official pardon and do not require a special amnesty ruling. Sunni lawmaker from al-Anbar Mohammed al-Karbouli said that Iraq was on the verge of a new chapter and all politicians should have their judicial records erased, starting with Sadrist supporters. “We should start off with a real pardon, not a political one,” he stated. Nineveh MP Ahmed al-Jabouri defended Hashemi and Issawi, saying that they were isolated from the political scene through “unconvincing” means. He added that Issawi could return to the political scene after all charges are dropped against him. This can take place after he stands before the judiciary, which will dismiss cases against him. Meanwhile, the Fateh alliance rejected compromises “over the blood shed by Iraqis.”MP Abdulamir al-Debbi said the “just” judiciary will have the final say in these issues. “No political party or bloc can issue a pardon for any individual who is wanted by the judiciary,” he stressed. Hashemi is wanted on charges of supporting terrorism. He is also charged for crimes committed by his security personnel. He was sentenced in absentia and forced to leave Iraq in 2009. Issawi was sentenced in absentia to seven years in prison for supporting terrorism. The two officials have denied the charges, saying they were ready to appear before the Iraqi judiciary on condition that the trial be moved from Baghdad to Erbil. Nujaifi has been held partially responsible for the fall of Mosul in the hands of ISIS in 2014.

Envelopes Containing Anthrax Delivered to Major Tunisian Figures
Tunis - Al-Monji al-Souaidani/Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/The Tunisian counter-terrorism agencies have revealed in their preliminary investigations that the envelopes delivered to politicians, journalists and syndicate members contained the Anthrax toxin. This was the first terrorist plot of its kind in the country, they added. Twenty public figures were targeted in this horrifying terrorist plot, including 10 prominent politicians, seven journalists and activists in syndicates and human rights, they continued. Moreover, they said that the terrorist groups have shifted their tactics after security measures against them have limited their activity. For years, they have relied on armed attacks, but they are now forced to resort to poisoning their victims, said the security agencies. President of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) Noureddine Taboubi and assistant secretaries Bu Ali Mubaraki, and Sami al-Tahiri were among the targets, revealed “high-ranking” Tunisian media sources. Sufian al-Sulaiti, a spokesman for the counter-terrorism apparatus, affirmed that the agencies will listen in the upcoming period to the testimonies of 15 of the targeted figures. Furthermore, several terrorist group experts said that toxic substance letters is a method that has been adopted by several terrorist organizations in the past. They urged the need to amend strategies and derive lessons from foreign experiences, such as attacks in Afghanistan, in order to confront terrorism in Tunisia.

Canada Proceeds With Extradition Case Against Huawei CFO
Asharq Al-Awsat/Sunday, 3 March, 2019/The Canadian government approved extradition proceedings against the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, prompting a furious reaction from China. Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei’s founder, was detained in Vancouver last December and is under house arrest, Reuters reported. In late January the US Justice Department charged Meng and Huawei with conspiring to violate Washington sanctions on Iran. Meng is due to appear in a Vancouver court at 10 am Pacific time (1800 GMT) on March 6, when a date will be set for her extradition hearing. “Today, department of Justice Canada officials issued an authority to proceed, formally commencing an extradition process in the case of Ms. Meng Wanzhou,” the government said in a statement. China denounced the decision and repeated previous demands for Meng’s release. US President Donald Trump told Reuters in December he would intervene if it served national security interests

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on March 03-04/2019
Assad takes victory lap in Tehran amid power struggle among Iran’s elite
Thomas Seibert/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
The 1-day-trip to Tehran was a public demonstration by the Syrian leader that he will stick to his partnership with Tehran.
ISTANBUL - A visit to Tehran by Syrian President Bashar Assad highlighted both the growing confidence of the Syrian leader and an escalating power struggle among his Iranian hosts.
On his first public visit to Iran since 2010, Assad met with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; President Hassan Rohani; Major-General Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s al-Quds Force, an overseas arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC); and other officials in Tehran on February 25.
Assad has made only two other known trips abroad — both to Russia, his other major international backer — since the start of Syria’s war in 2011.
Notably absent from Assad’s talks in Tehran was Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who announced his resignation shortly afterward, in what observers said was a sign of the waning influence of Iranian moderates and ascendency of hardliners. Rohani did not accept the resignation and Soleimani said Zarif had not been snubbed intentionally. The message was clear all the same. “Zarif’s pro-West diplomacy failed terribly, whereas Qassem Soleimani’s has been triumphant,” Joshua Landis, a Middle East expert at the University of Oklahoma, said via e-mail.
After coming close to defeat in his war against insurgents, Assad has regained the upper hand since 2015 with the help of Russian air power and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces, retaking all main cities from rebels and militants backed variously by Western powers and Gulf Arabs.
Iran, squeezed by US sanctions that increase economic hardship for many citizens, has spent billions of dollars to support Assad. Based on reports about funerals in Iran, Ali Alfoneh, of the Gulf States Institute in Washington and a columnist for The Arab Weekly, said at least 561 Iranians had died in combat in Syria. “This trip is particularly important for Iran at a time when it is under severe economic pressure and facing political changes,” Landis wrote. “Khamenei and Soleimani want to highlight their victory in Syria.”
Soleimani has been a key figure in organising Iran’s role in the Syrian conflict, where regular Iranian Army units, IRGC members and pro-Iranian militias have been fighting on Assad’s side. Tehran also built up military assets in Syria that could threaten Israel, triggering several Israeli air strikes.
Soleimani has appeared on front lines across Syria, where his presence infuriated Sunni-led insurgents who oppose what they view as Shia Iran’s expansion in the region.
Syrian and Iranian state television showed Assad and Khamenei smiling and embracing. Syrian television said the two leaders agreed “to continue cooperation at all levels for the interests of the two friendly nations.” Khamenei was quoted as saying the two countries’ military victories in Syria had dealt “a harsh blow” to US plans in the region.
Like other regional powers, Iran, which forms an alliance with Russia and Turkey in the so-called Astana process, is trying to work out how to further its own interests given the upcoming US withdrawal from Syria. Tehran is eager to create a “Shia Crescent” from Iran via Iraq and Syria to its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said Khamenei told Assad that “the buffer zone that Americans are after in Syria is among dangerous plots that should be rejected” and that the US plan to maintain a presence in Syria near the Iraqi border “is another sample of their designs.”
Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre, said during a panel discussion that Iran is expected to stay in Syria for the foreseeable future. “The Iranians will stay, somehow, in Syria,” he said, pointing to Iran’s view of its own security interest in the region. “Syria is considered to be Iran’s strategic depth.”However, Fathollah-Nejad predicted that Iran’s rhetoric about its engagement in Syria would be scaled back because of growing opposition at home against “Iran’s Syria adventures.” In a sign of that dissatisfaction, Iranian authorities banned a reformist newspaper, Ghanoon, because it called Assad an “uninvited guest.”For Assad, the 1-day-trip to Tehran was not only a thank-you visit, it was a public demonstration by the Syrian leader that he will stick to his partnership with Tehran even as his efforts to end his isolation among Arab countries gather pace. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have reopened their embassies in Damascus and several Arab League members are calling for Syria’s suspension from the bloc to be lifted.
As Assad cements his ties to Iran and Russia, pressure could increase on Turkey, allied with Tehran and Moscow in the Astana process, to rebuild relations with the Syrian leader as well. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of the most outspoken foes of Assad on the international stage, has said there have been contacts between Turkish and Syrian intelligence services but insists he will not talk to Assad himself.
Landis pointed out that Turkish priorities in Syria could lead to a change in Erdogan’s position. “If Turkey wants to get the US out of north Syria, it will have to coordinate with Assad in order to up the pressure on [US] President [Donald] Trump,” he wrote. “This will put pressure on Erdogan to climb down from his blanket opposition to the government in Damascus.”
*Thomas Seibert is an Arab Weekly contributor in Istanbul.

Despite Assad’s welcome, Iran can be of little help to Damascus
Gareth Smyth/The Arab Weekly/March 03/19
While Syria cannot expect early readmission to the Arab League, some argue this may be a matter of timing and conditions.
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s visit to Iran was hardly a shock. His profuse thanks, relayed to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reflect Tehran’s considerable assistance in deflecting challenges to his rule during an 8-year war.
Russian air power has been more decisive since 2015 and cost more lives but Iran’s commitment of ground forces involved high sacrifice. The 1,000 losses Tehran admitted to in 2016 probably included recruits from Pakistan and Afghanistan but its casualty list contained a high proportion of officers.
Iran spoke at first of protecting Shia shrines, especially Sayida Zaynab, the mausoleum of Imam Hussein’s sister, near Damascus but its deployment, alongside Lebanese ally Hezbollah, mushroomed by 2013 as Syria’s Ba’ath regime faced serious danger.
In Tehran, Khamenei called Assad “the hero of the Arab world” and reiterated “support for the resistance movement… [of which Iran was] proud from the bottom of its heart.”
After this, Tehran may be of limited help. Several proposals announced during Assad’s visit were previously agreed when Iranian First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri visited Syria in January with a political and business delegation.
Iranian President Hassan Rohani promised assistance with reconstruction and repatriation of the displaced but many of the 1.5 million refugees in Lebanon appear well-settled and may not be tempted by an uncertain future in Syria.
Some analysts exaggerated Iran’s financial contribution to Syria during the conflict, linking it to popular Iranian resentment over funds sent abroad. The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies claimed a $10 billion-15 billion annual figure. In fact, Tehran opened a credit line of $4.6 billion, for oil as well as military assistance. Its economy, facing stringent US sanctions, is in recession.
“Iran does not have the means to seriously help with Syria’s reconstruction,” said Mehrzad Boroujerdi, professor of political science at Syracuse University. “[In late February] Iranian officials announced they will build 200,000 homes in Syria but in the larger scheme of things this is relatively little.”
Damascus-Tehran relations are unusual. Syria was an important ally in Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq but bilateral trade never grew beyond the $542 million achieved in 2010-11. Attempts to foster cultural relations remained limited beyond Iranian religious tourists.
With pleasantries in Tehran completed, Assad’s international focus will be elsewhere. The United Nations puts reconstruction costs at $250 billion and Syrian government estimates are at $400 billion.
European leaders oppose investment without political change. While US President Donald Trump’s “America First” rhetoric and decision to withdraw US troops from Syria illustrate his unpredictability, the United States looks to be an unlikely monetary benefactor.
“Knowing that Iran can’t give them much, I expect Assad to play the rival’s card to get funds elsewhere,” said Boroujerdi. “If he manages to get money from the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] states it may come on the condition that work is not subcontracted to the Iranians. Turkey will eye major construction projects with its robust construction industry, which is also the financial backbone of the AKP [Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party].”
While Syria cannot expect early readmission to the Arab League, some argue this may be a matter of timing and conditions. Oman never severed diplomatic relations. The United Arab Emirates in December announced the reopening of its Damascus Embassy and resumption of flights, while Kuwait said it awaited Arab League approval.
Not long ago, Saudi Arabia engaged pragmatically with Syria. With Iran playing a more limited role, Saudi Arabia and Syria shaped Lebanon’s new order after the 1975-90 war. In 2000, a Saudi consortium announced the first significant foreign investment — $100 million — of Assad’s presidential tenure. Politically, Riyadh looked to both Assad and his father, Hafez, to restrain Hezbollah, while Damascus never allowed “resistance” in the Israeli-occupied Golan.
Saudi-Syria ties survived the 2005 Beirut assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which led to Syria’s troop withdrawal from Lebanon. It was only in August 2011, as Syria’s “Arab spring” faced increasing force, that Riyadh withdrew its ambassador, began supporting the armed opposition and, in February 2012, broke off diplomatic relations.
Seven years on, the Saudis are under no immediate pressure to restore relations. The Syrian war still simmers even though it is probably past its height. Khamenei warned Assad of US “plots…[including] a buffer zone” apparently along the Turkish border. Ankara prefers its own security strip to restoring Assad’s rule there. January brought reports of clashes in Sahel al-Ghab, near Hama, between Russian and Iran-backed factions. Another complication is Israeli concern over Iranian and Hezbollah military activities, which has led to its air strikes since 2013.
The tricky, but crucial, question for Arab leaders is whether and how to court Assad to balance Iran’s influence. Anwar Gargash, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs, said at a recent Washington briefing it was a “disaster” that “in the last seven years there has been absolutely zero Arab influence in Syria.”

Winning the Nuclear Game against Two Giants
Tobin Harshaw/Bloomberg/March, 03/19
Last month I discussed nuclear game theory with Vipin Narang, a professor of political science at MIT and author of “Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era.” If we agreed on one thing, it was that nuclear war is not a game. “It’s really about a strategic logic,” Narang explained, “how your adversary behaves based on your moves and how you react to their reaction to your moves.”
President Donald Trump met with Kim Jong Un in Vietnam last week. As I expected, I did not see much strategic logic when the self-proclaimed “best negotiator in the world” sat down with the monomaniacal leader of a starving police state. I don’t consider North Korea a viable nuclear threat to the US or its allies. Kim may be unhinged, but he doesn’t seem the suicidal type.
The real problems are the other two great military powers, China and Russia. The former is formidable, but is (at least for now) unlikely to foment even the tiniest military imbroglio. Russia is the wildcard. As we saw in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin likes to conduct war by other means: propaganda, destabilizing politics, arming separatist groups and sending in the so-called little green men to give himself a fig leaf of plausible deniability. Putin is not unhinged, but he is an expansionist, with dreams of restoring not so much the Soviet Union but rather the Eurasian empire the czars strove for but never quite accomplished.
We started our discussion with North Korea and the Asia-Pacific. So let’s switch to Europe, and the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. Was that a mistake, as opposed to trying to fix it?
ussia was violating it for at least five years,” replied Narang. “But the way we first went about it – by threatening to immediately begin unilateral withdraw rather than consulting allies and formulating a unified front against Russia – probably wasn't ideal in terms of alliance management and getting NATO buy-in. I don't think it would have been better to quietly violate the treaty ourselves, by threatening to develop and deploy ground-launch systems that violated the treaty, or to say: ‘Look, this treaty is falling apart because the other side is violating it and we're going to legally withdraw.’”
“The reality is that the US does not really need intermediate-range ground-launch systems in Europe to deter Russia. And we've managed in East Asia without them. We have air-launch and sea-launch systems. It may be that you want to give yourself the option for ground-launch system, but they're potentially very vulnerable. Deploying systems in Guam would require the development of new longer-range ground-launch systems. And you obviously can’t deploy them in Taiwan without giving the Chinese an aneurysm. So your ground options in East Asia are limited.”
I asked Narang if there is a chance to work a new deal on intermediate-range missiles into talks on renewing New START before it expires?
He replied: “I'm not going to die on a hill for INF, but I will for New START. It is good for American security and global security. I worry that if you start linking INF to a New START extension, the Russians might just say that they’re not going to play this game, that the INF systems are too valuable to them for their European strategy. So, given Russian violations and no willingness for them to come back into compliance, I'd rather let INF go at this point than try to link the two and have Russia destroy the whole thing. New START is that important.”
Last month you gave me a really good rundown of Kim Jong Un's strategic thinking. What is Putin’s?
“He has apparently rediscovered his mojo. All the systems that Russia is developing and deploying pose a real threat to Europe. There are reasonable concerns that his appetite may be more expansive than just Crimea and Ukraine. It may include Russian-speaking populations in the Baltics. A lot of these systems are designed to support potentially offensive military or coercive actions against those states. Russia believes that it is in a position of strength, and is exploiting divisions within the Western alliance and within Europe itself, to pursue its political aims.
“From the US nuclear side, my concern has been that, for example, the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is looking for technical solutions to a political problem. What we need is a better political strategy, and I think that includes a stronger conventional deterrent and cohesive alliance management. Nuclear weapons only come into the picture in Russian thinking if it starts losing the conventional war and you're pressing up against Russia. But the broader issue is how you got to that point in the first place, and it is not going be solved by simply developing a new low-yield nuclear weapon.”
This is Russia’s supposed “escalate to de-escalate” strategy, right? Using low-yield nukes to buy time for a conventional war.
“I call it escalate to win, or escalate to survive,” said Narang. “Basically, if they're losing a conventional war and NATO forces are threatening to push into the Russian homeland, I can see Putin saying, ‘OK, now I need to use battlefield nuclear weapons on NATO forces.’ I don't think it's going to be his first move. I think it's very deep into a conflict before nuclear weapons become salient, because of the escalation potential; Russia is not going to risk a strategic nuclear war unless its homeland is being threatened. The world comes to a screeching halt the second a nuclear weapon is used.
“The key is signaling to the Russians that NATO has no intention of invading the Russian homeland, but that we also are not going to stand by while it tries to incorporate independent states into Russian territory.”
Would Putin believe that NATO promise?
“I think right now he sees division in Europe. He's smelling blood in the water. And that's on us. Alliance cohesion has fallen apart, and that is the real problem in deterring Russia. If he sees divisions in the alliance, a question about whether the US will come to the defense of Eastern European states, it may embolden him to take the shot,” said Narang.
That goes to Trump saying that Americans aren't going to die for Montenegro after it was added to NATO.
“Exactly. That’s a real problem with extended deterrence. Making extended deterrence credible is very difficult,” replied Narang.
Are the British and French nuclear arsenals helpful in any way, or are they just symbolic? Are they possibly dangerous?
“I don't think they're dangerous. I love the British and French! The British and the US have a very tight coupling of their nuclear force postures. Whereas the French are completely independent; they have not historically coordinated patrols with the US the way the UK has, and all of their capabilities are indigenously produced. The French love their nuclear weapons. It is a point of national pride.”
Do you think the allies, and this is not just the Europeans, feel that America's stepping back from the world is just a Trump blip, or do they think it marks a turning point for future administrations as well?
“We go through cycles like this. The US during the George W. Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, then came the Iraq war. There were a lot of threats to the integrity of the trans-Atlantic alliance. It's fair to say that Trump's incarnation of it is something that Europeans have not seen for a long time.”

Churchill From a Different Perspective
Shashi Tharoor/Bloomberg/March, 03/19
The recent flap over Winston Churchill — with Labour politician John McDonnell calling Britain’s most revered prime minister a “villain” and prompting a rebuke from the latter’s grandson — will astonish many Indians. That’s not because the label itself is a misnomer, but because McDonnell was exercised by the death of one Welsh miner in 1910. In fact, Churchill has the blood of millions on his hands whom the British prefer to forget.
“History,” Churchill himself said, “will judge me kindly, because I intend to write it myself.” He did, penning a multi-volume history of World War II, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his self-serving fictions. As the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies remarked of the man many Britons credit with winning the war, "His real tyrant is the glittering phrase, so attractive to his mind that awkward facts have to give way.”
Awkward facts, alas, there are aplenty. As McDonnell correctly noted, Churchill as Home Secretary in 1910 sent battalions of police from London and ordered them to attack striking miners in Tonypandy in South Wales; one was killed and nearly 600 strikers and policemen were injured. It’s unlikely this troubled his conscience much. He later assumed operational command of the police during a siege of armed Latvian anarchists in Stepney, where he decided to allow them to be burned to death in a house where they were trapped.
Shortly afterward, during the fight for Irish independence between 1918-23, Churchill was one of the few British officials in favor of bombing Irish protesters from the air, suggesting using “machine gun fire bombs” to scatter them. As Secretary of State for the Colonies, he followed through on that threat in Iraq. He ordered large-scale bombing of Mesopotamia in 1921, with an entire village wiped out in 45 minutes. When some British officials objected to his proposal for “the use of gas against natives,” he found their objections “unreasonable.” In fact he argued that poison gas was more humane than outright extermination: “The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum.”
This underscores the fundamental contrast in views of Churchill. In Britain and much of the West, he’s seen as the savior of “Democracy, Freedom, and all that is good in Western Civilization,” as one enthusiastic correspondent put it. In fact, his record is far more mixed even there. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, Churchill was an open admirer of Mussolini, declaring that the Italian Fascist movement had “rendered a service to the whole world.” Traveling to Rome in 1927 to express his admiration for the Fascist Duce, Churchill announced that he “could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been, by Signor Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing and by his calm detached poise in spite of so many burdens and dangers.”
What Churchill was above all, though, was a committed imperialist — one determined to preserve the British Empire not just by defeating the Nazis but much else besides. At the start of his career, as a young cavalry officer on the northwest frontier of India, he declared the Pashtuns needed to recognize “the superiority of [the British] race” and that those who resisted would “be killed without quarter.” He wrote happily about how he and his comrades “systematically, village by village, destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.”

What Parliament’s Breakaway Group Means for Brexit Britain
Matt Singh/Bloomberg/March, 03/19
This week, British politics saw its first split in the center since the early 1980s, as 11 rebel pro-EU lawmakers to quit the two major parties to form The Independent Group. (A nine Labour MP quit on Friday, though disagrees with the group on Brexit so has not joined them.) Although the breakaway is not entirely motivated by opposition to Brexit -- the ex-Labour lawmakers in particular cited antisemitism in their former party, among other issues -- all of them support a second referendum on the U.K.’s departure of the EU.
The immediate consequences for Brexit in terms of parliamentary arithmetic are probably limited. Party discipline had broken down so much on this issue that changes of allegiance are unlikely to have much direct effect. Their impact is far likelier to come from the prospect of this group becoming a true party, contesting elections and changing public opinion toward the mainstream parties.
There are two obvious ways the independents might gain leverage as a party. First, and most obviously, would be to win seats in a general election. However the U.K.’s electoral map is notoriously unforgiving in this respect. The district-based voting system rewards the geographic concentration of supporters, and penalizes evenly spread votes when popular vote shares are low. So, for example, in 2015, the pro-Brexit U.K. Independence Party polled 13 per cent of the popular vote, but won only one seat in the 650-seat lower house.
It is too early to say how much support the Independent Group might attract if it forms a party or what that support might look like. But we do know that support for and opposition to Brexit are relatively evenly spread out. Polls have so far found potential levels of support for a new party at similar levels to what UKIP had, but preliminary analysis by Number Cruncher Politics suggests that it would need national support of around 20 per cent in order to achieve local pluralities in many of its target districts.
Its best chances are likely to be in constituencies with the highest Remain votes, where the existing vote is already divided between the other parties, reducing the share a new party would likely need to win. These tend to be urban and suburban areas with high proportions of college graduates and a younger-than-average age profile. Many will be in London, where 60 per cent voted against Brexit.
As things stand, the 11 breakaway lawmakers would face an uphill battle simply to hold their own seats at a new election, which may also reduce the probability of a fresh election, as the group seems unlikely to vote for one. Were the party to form a pact with the centrist, pro-EU Liberal Democrats, the combined level of support needed to gain new seats would be similar, but it would be more achievable given that the Lib Dems took 7.6 per cent of the mainland popular vote in 2017.
The second and likelier lever for projecting power is to exert influence on the major parties’ central positions through the threat of taking votes -- or lawmakers -- from them. This was precisely the way that UKIP was able to push David Cameron into holding an EU referendum, as the party was perceived at the time to be taking more support from Cameron’s Tories than from Labour.
Though that assumption turned out to be incorrect (in fact, UKIP’s support came fairly evenly from both), such psephological details rarely trump an interesting narrative, and there is every chance that a party formed from the Independent Group would be able to exert a similar influence on the opposite side of that issue. This would likely be to force the large parties into supporting a second referendum, or if they fail to stop Brexit, towards a much closer relationship with the EU than is currently envisaged, such as a permanent customs union or membership of the single market.
There remain many unanswered questions. How many other lawmakers will join, and from which parties? Assuming Brexit happens, will the new movement adopt a policy to rejoin the EU? And, crucially given they now comprise former Conservatives too, what will the domestic policies be?
If a party is formed quickly, it may face an immediate test. A special election is pending, on an as yet undecided spring date, in Newport, South Wales, a district lastdaniel won by Labour with just over half the vote. As the referendum result in that district was close to the national average, it is not the type of place where an anti-Brexit candidate is expected to be competitive, but a respectable showing would still be viewed as an important hurdle.
This has the potential to have a long-lasting impact on British politics – or to become a historical footnote. Their move and the initial public response suggests there is plenty of support for centrism among British voters; the question for the next election will be whether any party can convincingly capture it.

Report: "11 Christians Killed Every Day for Their Faith"
ريموند إبراهيم/ معهد جاتسون: 11 مسيحياً يقتلون كل يوم بسبب إيمانهم
Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/March 03/19
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/72698/raymond-ibrahim-gatestone-institute-report-11-christians-killed-every-day-for-their-faith-%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%85%D9%88%D9%86%D8%AF-%D8%A5%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%87%D9%8A%D9%85-%D9%85%D8%B9%D9%87/
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13813/christians-persecuted-killed
One of the most noteworthy trends concerns the "shocking reality of persecution against women.... In many places, they experience a 'double persecution' — one for being a Christian and one for being a woman."
Another trend that should send an alarm is that, "For the first time since the start of the World Watch List, India has entered the top 10" -- meaning Christians there are now experiencing "extreme persecution."
Last year, Christians were persecuted more than ever before in the modern era — and this year is expected to be worse: "4,136 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons," according to Open Doors USA. Additionally, "2,625 Christians were detained without trial, arrested, sentenced and imprisoned" in 2018. (Image source: iStock)
Last year, Christians were persecuted more than ever before in the modern era — and this year is expected to be worse: "4,136 Christians were killed for faith-related reasons," according to Open Doors USA in its recently published World Watch List 2019 (WWL) of the top 50 nations where Christians are persecuted. "On average, that's 11 Christians killed every day for their faith." Additionally, "2,625 Christians were detained without trial, arrested, sentenced and imprisoned" in 2018, and "1,266 churches or Christian buildings were attacked."
Whereas 215 million Christians faced persecution in 2018, 245 million will suffer in 2019, according to Open Doors — a 14% increase, that represents 30 million more people abused for their faith. This means that "1 in 9 Christians experience high levels of persecution worldwide" (note: all quotations in this article are from the WWL 2019).
One of the most noteworthy trends concerns the "shocking reality of persecution against women."
"In many places, they experience a 'double persecution' — one for being a Christian and one for being a woman. Even in the most restricted circumstances, gender-specific persecution is a key means of destroying the minority Christian community."
Last year's WWL provided more specific numbers: "At least six women every day are raped, sexually harassed or forced into marriage to a Muslim man under the threat of death for their Christian faith..."
Another trend, one that should send an alarm, is that, "For the first time since the start of the World Watch List, India has entered the top 10" -- meaning Christians there are now experiencing "extreme persecution":
"Christians have been targeted by Hindu nationalist extremists more each year. Since the current ruling party took power in 2014, attacks have increased, and Hindu radicals believe they can attack Christians with no consequences. The view of the nationalists is that to be Indian is to be Hindu, so any other faith — including Christianity — is viewed as non-Indian. Additionally, in some regions of the country, converts to Christianity from Hinduism experience extreme persecution, discrimination and violence."
The most obvious trend remains unchanged:
"Islamic oppression continues to impact millions of Christians. In seven out of the top 10 World Watch List countries, the primary cause of persecution is Islamic oppression. This means, for millions of Christians — particularly those who grew up Muslim or were born into Muslim families — openly following Jesus can have painful consequences. They can be treated as second-class citizens, discriminated against for jobs or even violently attacked."
Not only is that responsible for the persecution Christians face in seven of the ten worst nations; 38 of the 50 nations making the list are Muslim-majority.
Among the worst persecutors are those that rule according to Sharia. In Afghanistan (ranked #2), "Christianity is not permitted to exist" because it "is an Islamic state by constitution, which means government officials, ethnic group leaders, religious officials and citizens are hostile toward adherents of any other religion." Similarly, in Somalia, (#3), "The Christian community is small and under constant threat of attack. Sharia law and Islam are enshrined in the country's constitution, and the persecution of Christians almost always involves violence." In Iran (#9), "society is governed by Islamic law, which means the rights and professional possibilities for Christians are heavily restricted."
While the forms persecution and actors behind them vary, many seem connected to Islam. For example, "Under Pakistan's notorious blasphemy laws, Christians continue to live in daily fear they will be accused of blasphemy — which can carry a penalty of death." In Libya (#4), Yemen (#8), Syria (#11), Iraq (#13) war has given rise to Islamic militancy and general lawlessness, both of which prey on Christian minorities.
In Muslim nations where Christians make up a minority, a significant quantity of churches might be needed to meet their numbers — the visibility of which may offend Muslim sensibilities. Thus in Egypt (#16), where Christians number at least 10% of the population (possibly even double that):
"Severe restrictions on building or securing places for worship prevent Christians from congregating, in addition to hostility and violence toward believers who do gather. In recent years, Islamic extremist groups have targeted Christians and churches in numerous violent and deadly acts of persecution."
"The spread of radical Islam across sub-Saharan Africa" is another growing and troubling trend. For example,
"Nigeria's score for violence [99.9%] has stayed as high as possible, primarily due to the increased attacks on Christian communities by militant Fulani herdsmen. These attacks claimed the lives of hundreds of believers during the reporting period, and villages and churches burned to the ground. Additionally, in parts of northern Nigeria, Christians are treated as second-class citizens."
Some WWL's findings are surprising. Although Orthodox Christians are the majority of its population, the Russian Federation is #41, and the "source of persecution" is, again, "Islamic oppression": "Christians in parts of Russia dominated by Islam report the highest level of persecution."
Despite the role of religion, North Korea (#1) remains the worst nation, where "never-ending pressure and violence" is directed against Christians:
"The primary driver of persecution in North Korea is the state. For three generations, everything in the country has focused on idolizing the Kim family. Christians are seen as hostiles to be eradicated."
As difficult as it is for Christians identified by the Kim regime, there may be some eventual relief for them and those in other communist nations (such as China, #27): cults of personalities might last so long, but in the Arab and Muslim world, where, sadly, there seems to be little or no education to respect religious differences, the weight of the dominant religion continues to permeate all of society.
*Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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Cyprus Gas Discovery Could Be an East Mediterranean Game-Changer
Simon Henderson/The Washington Institute/March 03/19
The latest success will encourage more exploration in the area, but probably more regional rivalry as well.
ExxonMobil has just announced the discovery of Glafcos, an offshore field located deep underwater more than 100 miles southwest of Cyprus and estimated to hold between 5 and 8 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas. A more precise figure will emerge after further appraisal drilling by the company, which is working in a 60/40 partnership with state-owned Qatar Petroleum.
The discovery will likely prompt further work on the Calypso field to the east, discovered by ENI (Italy) and Total (France) a year ago and estimated to contain 6 to 8 tcf. The first discovery in Cyprus waters was Aphrodite, found in 2011 by Houston-based Noble Energy. That field partially overlaps Israel’s exclusive economic zone, but its estimated 4.5 tcf have yet to be exploited.
The total figure for Cyprus gas reserves is now as high as 20 tcf, a figure that could change the island’s fortunes despite not being particularly large in regional terms. Israel has twice as much gas, and Egypt even more, along with an established infrastructure for exporting it as liquefied natural gas (LNG) using special tankers. All of these players are dwarfed by Russia (1,230 tcf), Iran (1,170 tcf), and Qatar (880 tcf).
Cyprus and Israel’s main challenge in exploiting this gas potential has been the cost of discovery (around $100 million per hole drilled) and the political and logistical complexity of reaching markets. Most of Israel’s domestic electricity production is now fueled by its own gas, but finding an export route has been difficult, with talks continuing on arrangements to send some of it to Egypt.
Cyprus has an even greater need to find export options given its very small domestic market. The most obvious route is via pipeline to an Egyptian LNG plant with spare capacity. A more expensive alternative would be a floating LNG plant anchored above the field, from which tankers could be loaded to take the gas anywhere in the world.
Meanwhile, Turkey continues to contest the boundaries of the exclusive economic zone surrounding Cyprus. Glafcos does not lie in an area claimed by Ankara—but the Turks do claim it belongs to Egypt. Even if the two governments work that particular disagreement out, Ankara will no doubt demand that any revenues from the field benefit all Cyprus residents, including those in the Turkish-occupied northern part of the island. The Cypriot government readily acknowledges responsibility for most citizens, but it has balked at the large number of immigrants who have arrived since Turkish forces invaded in 1974. The fact that ExxonMobil is partnering with Qatar, a regional ally of Turkey, adds another wrinkle to these issues.
Going forward, international energy exploration companies will probably be more incentivized to focus on the East Mediterranean. There is already interest in blocks off Lebanon’s coast, where some drilling will start this summer. Yet Israel will likely find itself largely sidelined, in part because such companies still hesitate to imperil their relations with Arab countries, but also because Israeli legal and political barriers have delayed Noble Energy’s efforts to exploit its existing discoveries.
Finally, the Glafcos discovery should boost the recently established East Mediterranean Gas Forum, a Cairo-based multilateral organization nicknamed “Club Med” and encompassing Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. Further discoveries could increase the feasibility of proposals for an undersea pipeline to transport their gas to Europe. Coupled with greater efforts to export LNG, such a development could create an energy hub that transforms the regional economy.
*Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow and director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute.