LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
May 07/2019
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations For today
The one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully
Second Letter to the Corinthians 09/1a.5-15:”Now it is not necessary for me to write to you about the ministry to the saints, So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you, and arrange in advance for this bountiful gift that you have promised, so that it may be ready as a voluntary gift and not as an extortion. The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written, ‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures for ever.’He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on May 06-07/19
May 07th/2008 Hezbollah’s Bloody Invasion Of Beirut & Mount Lebanon
Aoun Meets Berri and Hariri in Baabda over Budget Protests
Berri Warns Delay in Budget Has Negative Repercussions
Govt. 'Keen' on BDL Independence as Hariri, Salameh 'Agree on Ending Strike'
BDL Strike Threatens to Spark Fuel Crisis
Lebanese Central Bank Employees Go on Strike
Report: Underway Efforts to End Strike of BDL Employees
Hariri Threatens Legal Measures Against Striking Public Employees
Gas Station Owners Threaten Strike if Demands Not Met
Finance Minister: We Insist on Raising Tax on Interest
Lebanon Stock Trading Suspended over Central Bank Strike
Beirut Stock Exchange Suspends Trading Until Further Notice
Jumblat Says Khalil's Austerity Measures 'Better than Suici
Budget Discussions Resume in Parallel with BDL Protests
Israel Resumes Military Road Expansion, Conducts Flights over Nabatieh
Berri Warns Delay in Budget Has Negative Repercussions
Hezbollah’s Rocket Gift to Lebanese FM Sparks Controversy, Condemnation
Lebanon’s Speaker Seeks Hezbollah-PSP Reconciliation
Foreign domestic workers in Lebanon protest abuses

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 06-07/19
US to Deploy Carrier Strike Group to Middle East in ‘Clear Message’ to Iran
Pompeo: US sees activity indicating possible ‘escalation’ from Iran
Iran dismisses US naval deployment as old news
Palestinians Say Ceasefire Reached with Israel on Gaza
Jadwa Investment: Revenues in Saudi Capital Rise Faster than Expenditures
Iraq: Political Forces in Nineveh Trade Corruption Accusations
ICC Won’t Refer Jordan to UN over Failure to Arrest Bashir in 2017
Egypt: Life Sentences for 53 Defendants in ‘Nahda Events’
Fighting kills 26 in Syria’s northwest: monitor
Turkey election body orders Istanbul vote re-run
41 Dead as Russian Plane Bursts into Flames on Landing

Litles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on May 06-07/19
May 07th/2008 Hezbollah’s Bloody Invasion Of Beirut & Mount Lebanon/Elias Bejjani/May 07/2019
The First and Forgotten Armenian Genocide of 1019 AD/Raymond Ibrahim/American Thinker/May 06/2019
The Increasingly Narrow, Parochial Prism of Journalism/Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/May 06/2019
Zarif’s Dialogue: Civilization and Agreement/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed//Asharq Al Awsat/May 06/2019
Clash of Civilizations' Has No Place in US Foreign Policy/Hal Brands/Bloomberg/May 06/2019
If Major Powers are Worried, then What About us/Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/May 06/2019
More Druze risk prison to reject military service in Israel/Ahmad Melhem/Al-Monitor/May 06/2019
Intel: How the Navy is downplaying Iran hawks' messaging on its latest deployment/Al-Monitor Staff /May 06/2019

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News published on May 06-07/19
May 07th/2008 Hezbollah’s Bloody Invasion Of Beirut & Mount Lebanon
Elias Bejjani/May 07/2019
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/74558/elias-bejjani-may-07th-2008-hezbollahs-bloody-invasion-of-beirut-mount-lebanon/
On May 07th, 2008 Hezbollah Armed Terrorist Iranian militia proxy invaded the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and some regions in Mount Lebanon at the backdrop of a government resolution regarding the its illegal telecommunication network The Terrorist Hezbollah, backed by its pro Syrian and pro Iranian March 08 armed terrorists, broke in some Lebanese deputies’ houses, assassinated innocent citizens on the streets, burned and looted some media institutions belonging to Future Movement, and stopped by force the Future TV News Channel from broadcasting after spreading its armed men inside its studios.
Dozens of innocent civilians were killed and injured on the streets and in their houses in this criminal invasion.
The Invasion also targeted some areas of mount Lebanon few days after that of Beirut.
Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah appointed Iranian leader shamelessly called the invasion a day of glory.
Sadly the Lebanese army watched the Hezbollah criminal invasion without taking any deterrent procedure while totally abandoned its obligations and national duties.
The Army’s Chief at the time of the invasion, Michael Suleiman was rewarded for his pro Hezbollah role and afterwards by the help and full support of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah was elected illegally as Lebanon’s president.
It remains that Hezbollah is not Lebanese by any means, or under any constitutional or patriotic criteria. Hezbollah is a mere Iranian Occupation tool.
This Shiite Iranian armed Militia is an Iranian Army and has been occupying Lebanon since 2005 after the Syrian Army was forced to withdraw as a result of a huge public demonstration known as the 14th Of March Demo and Revolution.
While remembering the bloody and criminal invasion, the Lebanese in both Lebanon and Diaspora, citizens, officials and politicians are all ought to never ever succumb to Hezbollah’s occupation and at the same time are urgently required to call for the implementation of the two UN resolutions 1559 and 1701.
On this day, our prayers go to the souls of the innocent Lebanese victims that were killed by Hezbollah on the May, 2008 invasion in both Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

Aoun Meets Berri and Hariri in Baabda over Budget Protests
Naharnet/May 06/2019/President Michel Aoun, Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Saad Hariri held a meeting Monday evening at the Baabda Palace, amid a growing crisis related to proposed austerity measures. Information obtained by TV networks said discussions were supposed to tackle "an agreement on the state budget, addressing protests and strikes, and finding a formula whose responsibility would be shouldered by the three parties." An open-ended strike by the employees of the central bank has sparked fears of cash and fuel shortage crises in the country. The Beirut Stock Exchange has also suspended trading, saying the clearance and settlement of transactions cannot be done on time "during the period of open strike."Central bank employees say they are protesting a decision to slash their benefits as part of a new austerity package being studied by Cabinet ahead of this year's budget. Other public sector employees have resorted to similar measures against possible austerity measures in recent weeks. Cabinet met on Monday to discuss the package. Lebanon has vowed to slash public spending to unlock $11 billion worth of aid pledged by international donors during an April 2018 conference in Paris. Last month, Prime Minister Saad Hariri vowed to introduce "the most austere budget in Lebanon's history" to combat the country's bulging fiscal deficit, sparking fears among public sector employees that their salaries may be cut.
Lebanon is one of the world's most indebted countries, with public debt estimated at 141 percent of GDP in 2018, according to credit ratings agency Moody's.

Berri Warns Delay in Budget Has Negative Repercussions
Naharnet/May 06/2019/In light of wide labor strikes protesting the government's reported plans to introduce salary cuts as part of austerity measures, Speaker Nabih Berri warned about any further delay in approving the country’s 2019 state budget, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday. The daily said that Berri stressed the need for “government momentum to approve the budget and prevent negative repercussions.” The Speaker was referring to the strikes that disrupted basic facilities especially in the port of Beirut and the Central Bank of Lebanon, where employees declared an open-ended strike resulting in major damage to the country in general. On the successive Cabinet sessions to discuss an austere budget, Berri called for speedy discussions, “the priority remains for approving a budget as soon as possible. If they fail to approve it soon i know well where the country will be heading,” he warned.

Govt. 'Keen' on BDL Independence as Hariri, Salameh 'Agree on Ending Strike'
Naharnet/May 06/2019/The contacts between Prime Minister Saad Hariri and Banque du Liban Governor Riad Salameh are "positive," after all ambiguities on which BDL employees based their strike were clarified, a media report said. "The two sides agreed to end the central bank's strike tomorrow," NBN television reported, citing information it has obtained. Speaking after a cabinet session at the Grand Serail, Information Minister Jamal al-Jarrah said "the government is keen on Banque du Liban's independence and is not seeking to interfere in its decisions and policies."
"The leaks are baseless and the strikes we've witnessed were based on false information," Jarrah added. The minister also noted that the government's financial and economic approach requires "the participation of everyone in the solutions," adding that the government will approve a host of "structural reforms."
The Cabinet meanwhile postponed discussing Article 60 of the draft state budget which calls for finance ministry supervision over the budgets of public institutions, as Industry Minister Wael Abu Faour said the discussions are expected to be finalized this week in not more than two or three sessions.
The BDL strike has sparked fears of cash and fuel shortage crises in the country. The Beirut Stock Exchange has also suspended trading, saying the clearance and settlement of transactions cannot be done on time "during the period of open strike."Central bank employees say they are protesting a decision to slash their benefits as part of a new austerity package being studied by Cabinet ahead of this year's budget. Other public sector employees have resorted to similar measures against possible austerity measures in recent weeks. Cabinet met on Monday to discuss the package. Lebanon has vowed to slash public spending to unlock $11 billion worth of aid pledged by international donors during an April 2018 conference in Paris. Last month, Prime Minister Saad Hariri vowed to introduce "the most austere budget in Lebanon's history" to combat the country's bulging fiscal deficit, sparking fears among public sector employees that their salaries may be cut. Lebanon is one of the world's most indebted countries, with public debt estimated at 141 percent of GDP in 2018, according to credit ratings agency Moody's.

BDL Strike Threatens to Spark Fuel Crisis
Naharnet/May 06/2019/The Syndicate of Gas Station Owners in Lebanon warned Monday of a fuel shortage crisis in connection with the open-ended strike declared by the central bank's employees over proposed cuts to their benefits. A statement issued by the syndicate said fuel distribution companies have asked station owners to "pay in cash and in US dollar due to the strike of Banque du Liban's employees and the suspension of the check clearing operations between banks."The syndicate also noted that owners are not being able to change their cash from the Lebanese lira to the US dollar due to the ongoing strike and a dollar shortage in the market that has been running for several weeks. And urging distribution companies to accept checks "because they will be cashed sooner or later," the syndicate warned that the country will be plunged into a "real fuel supply crisis" should the distributors continue their "intransigence."The syndicate also warned that it may stage a general strike and halt the sale of fuel to customers. Central bank employees say they are protesting a decision to slash their benefits as part of a new austerity package being studied by Cabinet ahead of this year's budget. Other public sector employees have resorted to similar measures against possible austerity measures in recent weeks. Cabinet met on Monday to discuss the package. Lebanon has vowed to slash public spending to unlock $11 billion worth of aid pledged by international donors during an April 2018 conference in Paris. Last month, Prime Minister Saad Hariri vowed to introduce "the most austere budget in Lebanon's history" to combat the country's bulging fiscal deficit, sparking fears among public sector employees that their salaries may be cut. Lebanon is one of the world's most indebted countries, with public debt estimated at 141 percent of GDP in 2018, according to credit ratings agency Moody's.

Lebanese Central Bank Employees Go on Strike
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/Employees of Lebanon’s Central Bank went on strike on Monday over state budget proposals that would cut their benefits. They announced that they will determine their next move at a meeting on Tuesday. Head of their syndicate Abbas Awada told al-Jadeed television that "a positive decision" may be taken to "facilitate matters" but added that if the government approved the budget in its existing form "we will proceed in an open strike". The Beirut stock exchange said it suspended trading on Monday until further notice because clearance and settlement processes could not be carried out on time during the strike. Awada said there had been negative effects and pressure "on the market, on the governor of the central bank, and on all Lebanese", so "we might have a little positivity to relieve the matter". He said Central Bank governor Riad Salameh opposed the strike action and had asked for it to be lifted. The draft budget has proposed annulling performance-linked bonuses paid in some state-run institutions, including the Central Bank. In some cases, these have amounted to several months extra salary a year. Lebanon is saddled with one of the heaviest public debt burdens in the world and Prime Minister Saad Hariri's government has vowed to enact long-delayed reforms to put state finances on a sustainable path. Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil told Reuters last week the draft budget projects a deficit of less than 9 percent of GDP compared to 11.2 percent in 2019. The budget, seen as a critical test of Lebanon's will to reform, is based on an economic growth forecast of 1.5 percent in 2019, which could rise to around 2 percent as the economy picks up, he said. Lebanon's public debt is some 150 percent of GDP. State finances are strained by a bloated public sector, high debt servicing costs and hefty subsidies spent on the power sector. Serious steps toward reform could unlock $11 billion in financing pledged at a donor conference last year to help Lebanon build infrastructure to boost economic grow

Report: Underway Efforts to End Strike of BDL Employees
Naharnet/May 06/2019/Intensive contacts are underway to end an open ended strike launched by the syndicate of Banque du Liban employees in a bid to “avoid the repercussions of the strike on the overall banking transactions,” al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday. According to sources quoted by the daily, President Michel Aoun has “encouraged the ongoing efforts in this direction to ensure the resumption of normal movement in the exchange market, the clearing room,where transactions are settled between banks, to prevent a reduction in the circulation volume of Lebanese and foreign currencies in the market,” they said. The sources pointed out that Aoun's financial and monetary meetings last week with the Governor of BDL, Riad Salameh, and the President of the Association of Banks, Joseph Tarabay, has dealt with “various aspects of cooperation between the banks, the BDL and official institutions.” The President has reportedly informed concerned parties that BDL’s independence won’t be touched. Said remarks came in light reports about attempts to control the budget of BDL through Article 60 included in the 2019 draft budget. Said article suggests “subjugating” the private budgets in some public institutions and independent bodies to the Ministry of Finance, without mentioning any exception in relation to BDL. The syndicate of Banque du Liban employees on Saturday announced an open-ended strike in protest at the government’s possible plans to reduce their salaries and benefits as part of austerity measures to cut the budget deficit. During its series of budget session to discuss an austere 2019 state budget, the Cabinet on Friday discussed several articles including ones related to reduction in salaries for BDL employees.

Hariri Threatens Legal Measures Against Striking Public Employees
Kataeb.org/ Monday 06th May 2019/Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday issued a memo calling on public employees to end their strike, threatening to take legal measures against those who are hindering the functioning of the state institutions. Employees in several public administrations, notably the Central Bank, Beirut Port and the National Social Security Fund, have been on a strike since last week in protest against the government's plan to cut their salaries as part of its 2019 austerity draft budget. In his memo, Hariri called for the implementation of regulations that avoid public institutions from being “paralyzed or crippled,” stressing that the laws bans an employee from striking at work or inciting a strike as stipulated by Article 15 of the Personnel Law. According to Article 14 of the same law, Hariri added, the employee should work based on the public interest only and must abide by the laws and regulations in force without any transgression, violation or negligence.

Gas Station Owners Threaten Strike if Demands Not Met
Kataeb.org/ Monday 06th May 2019/Gas station owners threatened on Monday to shut down their pumps if the government fails to solve the crisis ensuing from the open strike staged by the Central Bank, warning of a general strike if their demands are not met. Sami Brax, head of the Union of Gasoline Station Owners, issued a statement demanding the distribution companies to ease their payment conditions amid the crisis resulting from the Central Bank strike, saying that gas stations owners are required to pay in U.S. dollar whereas the selling is compelled to sell oil in Lebanese lira. "As the currency exchange transactions have totally stopped, gas station owners have become unable to convert their Lebanese pound earnings into U.S. dollars," Brax said in his statement. "The owners who decide to pay in Lebanese pound instead of U.S. dollar are faced by some companies that are setting an exchange rate ranging between LBP 1518 and LBP1525 per one dollar," he added. Brax called on the distribution companies to keep on accepting checks, warning that obstinacy will lead to a fuel crisis in the country.

Finance Minister: We Insist on Raising Tax on Interest
Kataeb.org/ Monday 06th May 2019/Lebanon's government insists on bringing the tax on banks' interest rates from 7 percent up to 10 percent, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil announced on Monday. This hike is key to the 2019 budget's balance, adding that it represents a fundamental part of the organization of the blueprint that is still being examined by the government.

Lebanon Stock Trading Suspended over Central Bank Strike
Associated Press/Naharnet/May 06/2019/The Beirut Stock Exchange suspended trading on Monday due to the open strike declared by the employees of Lebanon's central bank. Hundreds of Lebanese public employees are on strike amid concerns that their salaries and benefits might be cut as the government discusses an austerity budget. A statement posted on the stock market's website Monday said the clearance and settlement of transactions cannot be done on time "during the period of open strike.""In order to protect the interest of all investors, the Beirut Stock Exchange declares the suspension of trading in its markets till further notice," it said.

Beirut Stock Exchange Suspends Trading Until Further Notice
Kataeb.org/ Monday 06th May 2019/Beirut stock exchange on Monday announced that it will suspend trading until further notice, saying that it would be hard to carry on its work properly amid the ongoing strike staged by the Central Bank employees. "Due to the open strike declared by the employees of Banque Du Liban, and in reference to the confirmation letter received by the Beirut Stock Exchange from Midclear stating that the latter cannot carry out the clearance and settlement process of transactions executed at the Beirut Stock Exchange, on time, during the period of open strike, and in order to protect the interest of all investors, the Beirut Stock Exchange declares the suspension of trading in its markets till further notice," read a statement posted on the official website of Beirut Stock Exchange.

Jumblat Says Khalil's Austerity Measures 'Better than Suicide'
Naharnet/May 06/2019/Progressive Socialist Party leader ex-MP Walid Jumblat noted Monday that the austerity measures proposed by Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil remain "better than suicide." "The PSP reminds of its historic stance that calls for a progressive tax system after approving a unified wage system, in addition to fining seaside property violators, reevaluating Measure No. 3, approving a unified wage scale and resolving the electricity disaster," Jumblat tweeted. "It is better to approve these measures today to avoid the unknown," he warned. The PSP leader added: "Since the 1990s, the PSP has had numerous stances calling for a reevaluation of priorities, but they fell on deaf ears.""And unfortunately the demand of reform and fighting corruption came late by some parties due to narrow political calculations. That's why I see that implementing the austerity policy proposed by Minister Khalil, no matter how severe, remains better than suicide," Jumblat went on to say.

Budget Discussions Resume in Parallel with BDL Protests
Naharnet/May 06/2019/The Cabinet convened at the Grand Serail on Monday to resume austere budget discussions marred by labor street protests and open-ended strike announced by state employees of the Banque du Liban that is threatening to paralyze the country’s banking sector. The meeting chaired by Prime Minister Saad Hariri kicked off after a statement issued by the Premier “banning strikes or inviting for one,” in state departments. Employees of Banque du Liban meanwhile held a sit-in in protest at possible government measure to cut their salaries as part of austerity measures. They issued a statement urging the government to withdraw Article 61 from the budget in order to end their strike which almost paralyzed the banking sector. “There is a tendency to suspend the strike if the government withdraws Article 61 from the state budget draft,” they stressed, vowing to continue with the strike until the demand is met. BDL employees were not the only ones rejecting austerity measures aiming to cut salaries of employees or reduce their benefits. In parallel, the employees at the state-run National Social Security Fund also demonstrated outside their headquarters in Corniche al-Mazraa protesting any probable cuts to their salaries too. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil said one of the measures to maintain budget balance is to increase the interest rate on cash deposits. “We insist on increasing the banks' interest rate on bank deposits from 7% to 10% as a key measure to maintain the budget's balance," he noted before joining the ministers.

Israel Resumes Military Road Expansion, Conducts Flights over Nabatieh
Naharnet/May 06/2019/The Israeli forces have resumed the construction and expansion of the military road leading to Hunin military site by lifting earth mounds with bulldozers, the state-run National News Agency reported on Monday. NNA added that two trucks worked on transporting earth to the opposite side of the town of Merkaba - Marjayoun. Earlier on Monday, Israel conducted intensive overflights above the southern area of Nabatieh, Iqlim Al-Toufah, and Sidon, said the agency.

Berri Warns Delay in Budget Has Negative Repercussions
Naharnet/May 06/2019/In light of wide labor strikes protesting the government's reported plans to introduce salary cuts as part of austerity measures, Speaker Nabih Berri warned about any further delay in approving the country’s 2019 state budget, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Monday. The daily said that Berri stressed the need for “government momentum to approve the budget and prevent negative repercussions.” The Speaker was referring to the strikes that disrupted basic facilities especially in the port of Beirut and the Central Bank of Lebanon, where employees declared an open-ended strike resulting in major damage to the country in general. On the successive Cabinet sessions to discuss an austere budget, Berri called for speedy discussions, “the priority remains for approving a budget as soon as possible. If they fail to approve it soon i know well where the country will be heading,” he warned.

Hezbollah’s Rocket Gift to Lebanese FM Sparks Controversy, Condemnation
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/A photo of Lebanese Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil carrying a rocket presented to him by Hezbollah officials during his visit to the city of Jbeil north of Beirut sparked wide controversy and condemnations in the country. The rocket, a remnant of the party’s battle with Al-Nusra Front in the Arsal border region in 2017, was offered to Bassil during a visit to the town of Ras Osta in the Jbeil district. The rocket was carrying the flags of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), which is headed by Bassil, and Hezbollah, along with a phrase that read: “Greetings of appreciation and love to His Excellency the Resistant Minister Jebran Bassil.”The image has been met with condemnation, especially by the opponents of the party and Bassil. “To our honorable guest, who is crowned with a rocket that disregards the history of Jbeil and its culture,” wrote Strong Republic MP bloc, Ziad Hawat, on his Twitter account. “Wait! Wait! The gift of Byblos to Lebanon and the Lebanese is sanctity, patriotism, chivalry and coexistence. What we have seen is a distortion of history and a coup against it,” he added. Former MP Fares Souaid criticized Bassil’s tour to the district of Jbeil, saying on Twitter that Hezbollah’s gift to the minister in the presence of deputies from Jbeil and Keserouan was a “stupid” attempt to give the impression that the Jbeil-Keserouan residents support Hezbollah. On Monday, Bassil tweeted a photo of the rocket, which he has since used as a vase in which he placed orange flowers, the color of his FPM party.

Lebanon’s Speaker Seeks Hezbollah-PSP Reconciliation
Beirut - Caroline Akoum/Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri has been exerting efforts to bridge the gap between his two allies, Hezbollah and the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP), after their ties reached a stage of rivalry. Hezbollah and its allies have lately escalated their campaign against PSP leader Walid Jumblat after the Druze leader expressed doubts that the disputed Shebaa Farms area on the border with Israel is Lebanese territory, and also rejected that a cement factory in the town of Ain Dara in Aley becomes functional again. On Sunday, Berri succeeded to hold a coordination meeting at his residence in Ain el-Tineh between representatives from his Amal Movement, Hezbollah and the PSP. However, the results seem to have not satisfied the speaker, whose sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that there has been “no thaw” in the relations between Hezbollah and the PSP. “There is a standstill,” the sources said. "There was a frank discussion and an agreement to continue the talks in a positive spirit," Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, who is an Amal official, said following the meeting. In response to a question on the Shebaa Farms, Khalil asserted that the area “is Lebanese.” This was clearly emphasized by different Lebanese parties during all-party talks in 2006, he said. The sources said that during Sunday’s meeting, both sides clarified their viewpoints on controversial issues, including the Shebaa Farms and the factory in Ain Dara. The meeting was attended by Industry Minister Wael Abou Faour and former Minister Ghazi Aridi from the PSP, and Hezbollah’s Hussein Khalil and Wafiq Safa. Amal’s representatives were the finance minister and Ahmed Baalbaki.

Foreign domestic workers in Lebanon protest abuses
AFP, Beirut/Monday, 6 May 2019/Hundreds of foreign domestic workers demonstrated in the Lebanese capital to demand the scrapping of a sponsorship system that they complain leaves them open to abuse from employers. Lebanon hosts more than 250,000 registered domestic workers, the vast majority of them women, from countries including Ethiopia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. They are excluded from the labor law, and instead obtain legal residency through their employers’ sponsorship under the so-called “kafala” system. The protesters marching in Beirut held up placards reading “No to slavery and yes to justice” and “Stop kafala.”“We want the cancellation of this system. There are employees imprisoned in houses and they need to have days off,” Dozossissane, a 29-year-old Ethiopian, told AFP. Lebanon’s labor ministry introduced a standard contract for domestic workers in 2009, but the forms are often written in Arabic, a language many cannot read. Activists regularly accuse the authorities of failing to take claims of abuse seriously, with maids, and nannies left at the mercy of employers. Amnesty International last month urged Lebanon to end what it called the “inherently abusive” migration sponsorship system and change the labor law to offer domestic workers more protection. A report from the rights group that surveyed 32 domestic workers revealed “alarming patterns of abuse,” including physical punishments, humiliating treatment and food deprivation.

Latest LCCC English Miscellaneous Reports & News published on May 06-07/19
US to Deploy Carrier Strike Group to Middle East in ‘Clear Message’ to Iran
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/The United States is deploying a naval strike group to the Middle East in “response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” from Iran, declared National Security Adviser John Bolton Sunday. “The United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the US Central Command region to send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force,” he added.Bolton did not provide any further details. The move has been ordered “as a deterrence to what has been seen as potential preparations by Iranian forces and its proxies that may indicate possible attacks on US forces in the region,” said a US official on condition of anonymity. He added that the Washington was not expecting any imminent Iranian attack. Though Bolton cited no specific Iranian activities that have raised new concerns, Iran has recently warned it would block the Strait of Hormuz if it was barred from using the strategic waterway. About a fifth of the oil consumed globally passes through the strait. “The United States is not seeking war with the Iranian regime, but we are fully prepared to respond to any attack, whether by proxy, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps or regular Iranian forces,” he said in a statement. A defense official tells The Associated Press that the Pentagon approved the deployments of the USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group of ships and combat aircraft. It marked the latest in a series of moves by President Donald Trump’s administration aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Iran in recent months. Washington has said it will stop waivers for countries buying Iranian oil, in an attempt to reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero. It has also blacklisted Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, taking the unprecedented step of designating it as a foreign terrorist organization, which Iran has cast as an American provocation. The Trump administration’s efforts to impose political and economic isolation on Tehran began last year when it unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal it and other world powers negotiated with Iran in 2015. The threat late last month from the IRGC to close the Strait of Hormuz followed a US announcement that it would end exemptions granted last year to eight buyers of Iranian oil and demanding they stop purchases by May 1 or face sanctions. A senior Trump administration official said at the time that any aggressive move by Iran in the strait would be unjustified and unacceptable. Iran has made threats to block the waterway in the past, without acting on them.

Pompeo: US sees activity indicating possible ‘escalation’ from Iran
Reuters, Rovaniemi, Finland/Monday, 6 May 2019/US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Monday the United States has seen activity from Iran that indicated a possible “escalation,” one day after the United States said it would send a carrier strike group to the Middle East to counter a “credible threat by Iranian regime forces.”“We have continued to see activity that leads us to believe that there’s escalation that may be taking place, and so we’re taking all the appropriate actions, both from a security perspective as well as our ability to make sure the president has a wide range of options in the event that something should actually take place,” Pompeo told reporters.
‘Credible threat’
Meanwhile, the US defense chief Patrick Shanahan said Monday that the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the Middle East came in response to a “credible threat” by Iran. The acting defense secretary tweeted that he approved the movement Sunday of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group as “a prudent repositioning of assets in response to indications of a credible threat by Iranian regime forces.”“We call on the Iranian regime to cease all provocation. We will hold the Iranian regime accountable for any attack on US forces or our interests,” he said. US officials have not specified the nature of the alleged threat from Iran, which has come under mounting pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration. (With AFP inputs)

Iran dismisses US naval deployment as old news
AFP, Tehran/Monday, 6 May 2019/Iran on Monday dismissed as old news a US announcement it is sending a naval strike group to the Middle East in order to deliver the Islamic republic a message, Tasnim news agency reported. US National Security Advisor John Bolton said on Sunday that the United States was deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force as a “clear and unmistakable message” that it will retaliate against any attack on its interests or its allies’ by Iran. “Bolton’s statement is a clumsy use of an out-of-date event for psychological warfare,” Iran’s supreme national security council spokesman Keyvan Khosravi said, quoted by Tasnim. According to the spokesman, Iranian armed forces had observed the carrier entering the Mediterranean Sea 21 days ago. Bolton “lacks military and security understanding and his remarks are mostly meant to draw attention to himself,” Khosravi added.

Palestinians Say Ceasefire Reached with Israel on Gaza
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/Palestinian leaders in the Gaza Strip agreed a ceasefire with Israel on Monday to end the deadliest fighting between the two sides since a 2014 war, officials with knowledge of the deal said. There was no official ceasefire announcement from either side, but the intense fighting over the past two days appeared to come to a sudden halt in the early morning hours and residents on both sides went back to their daily routines. In Gaza, Hamas' Al-Aqsa radio station had a short item saying a ceasefire had been reached. However, neither the strip's Hamas rulers nor the smaller Islamic Jihad group issued any formal announcement. The Israeli military lifted protective restrictions on residents in southern Israel. In announcing its decision, the Israeli military said that as of 7 a.m., "all protective restrictions in the home front will be lifted." Schools and roads had been closed, and residents had been encouraged to remain indoors and near bomb shelters as intense rocket fire pounded the area, threatening to devolve into all-out war. Egypt brokered the agreement to cease hostilities from 4:30 am, a Hamas official and another from Islamic Jihad said on condition of anonymity.  An Egyptian official, who refused to be identified, also confirmed the deal. The escalation began Saturday with massive rocket fire from Gaza, drawing waves of Israeli retaliatory strikes, and continued throughout Sunday. At least 23 Palestinians, including at least nine militants, were killed, according to Palestinian medical officials. Four civilians in Israel were killed, at least three of them Israeli citizens. They were the first Israeli fatalities from rocket attacks since the 50-day war in 2014.

Jadwa Investment: Revenues in Saudi Capital Rise Faster than Expenditures
Riyadh - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/Saudi Arabia’s revenues rose more rapidly than expenditures, which led to a budget surplus of SAR28 billion ($7.4 billion) in Q1 2019, according to an economic report released on Sunday. It said this marks the first quarterly surplus since at least 2016. Jadwa Investment said in its report on the Saudi budget that despite this, the Kingdom’s total budget deficit is expected to amount to SAR31 billion ($34.9 billion), or 4.2 percent of its GDP, by the end of 2019. Jadwa excluded any surplus in the remaining three quarters of this year. It pointed out that the Saudi government’s total revenues in Q1 2019 amounted to about SAR245 billion ($65.3 billion), up 48 percent or SAR79 billion ($21 billion) year-on-year (yoy). Both oil and non-oil revenues recorded significant increases, and the government's oil revenues rose by 48 percent to SAR169 billion ($45 billion). This boost came as a result of the government receiving SAR124 billion ($33 billion) in dividends from Aramco in March. Non-oil revenues rose 46 percent yoy, with 77 percent of annual gains from taxes on goods and services, almost doubling yoy to SAR41 billion ($10.9 billion).
Jadwa believes that the vast majority of this category’s revenues came from the increase in foreign labor fees. Total government expenditure rose by 8 percent yoy in Q1 2019 to SAR217 billion ($57.8 billion), the report added. The largest article in current expenses (employees’ bonuses) rose by 8 percent compared to the same period last year to account for SAR121.8 billion ($32.48 billion). Jadwa said this increase is somehow surprising, especially given the expectation that this category will fall by 4 percent yoy to SAR456 billion ($121.6 billion) in 2019. As a result of this increase in Q1, it is necessary to achieve an annual decline of an average of 7 percent in the remaining three quarters of 2019 until the total target of SAR456 billion ($121.6 billion) is met. On the other hand, capital spending rose 12 percent yoy to SAR29 billion ($7.7 billion) in Q1 2019. Jadwa said the total government public debt amounted to SAR560 billion ($149.3 billion) at the end of 2018 but rose to SAR611 billion ($162.9 billion) by the end of Q1 2019. Since then, there have been a number of domestic sukuk issuance totaling SAR11.6 billion ($3 billion), raising total public debt to SAR622 billion ($165.8 billion) in May 2019.

Iraq: Political Forces in Nineveh Trade Corruption Accusations
Baghdad - Fadhel al-Nashmi/Monday, 6 May, 2019/Political forces in Nineveh continued to exchange corruption and bribery accusations, despite being close to agreeing on a new governor for the governorate to replace Noufal Akkoub. Akkoub was dismissed by parliament on charges of corruption after the deadly Mosul ferry sinking that killed dozens of people in March. Nineveh MP Mansour al-Mareed, of al-Ataa coalition led by Faleh al-Fayyad, accused Axis Coalition MP Falah Hassan Zeidan of corruption. Mareed issued a statement saying that he has been trying to remove the Nineveh governor and provincial council for over a year now, but Zeidan and others have stood against him. He accused Zeidan of pressuring the provincial council into choosing his candidate for governor. Zeidan issued a statement to refute Mareed’s claims, accusing him of bribing corrupt figures to become Nineveh governor. He noted that Mareed paid corrupt figures over a year and a half ago to help him become governor, adding that some witnesses are prepared to testify before a parliamentary committee. He insisted that Mareed is not fit to be a deputy or a governor.
The political conflict in Mosul over the governor's position is strange and unprecedented in the history of Nineveh and other Iraqi provinces that boast a large number of Sunni and Shiite figures. A source informed of the Nineveh dispute revealed that the battle over the governor post began directly after Akkoub’s dismissal. He told Asharq al-Awsat that the odd thing about the current dispute is that each party includes a wide range of Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish figures. For the first time, Sunni figures from outside Nineveh, such as Speaker Mohammed al-Halbusi, are involved in the elections of the governor. The source said that according to semi-confirmed reports, one of the blocs offered $250,000 and a brand new GMC car to each member of the province in exchange for voting for its candidate. Nineveh provincial council member Abdul Rahman al-Wakka noted that political forces will compete fiercely over the governor post.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, he said that Nineveh's biggest problem today is the war between political forces within the federal parliament over the post, knowing that many of these forces have no representation in the province. He remarked that Nineveh and its council have become victims of these disputes. Rather than focusing on reconstructing the province, the issue became a battle over the governor post, more than a year after ISIS was expelled from the city. Moreover, he noted that council member Hossam al-Abbar is the favored to be elected governor. Former Nineveh MP Abdul Rahman al-Lweizi agreed that Abbar is the most likely candidate. He explained that Abbar could be accepted by Halbusi, because he is seeking a candidate who is affiliated to one of his allies in Nineveh. His candidacy also pleases head of the Popular Mobilization Forces Faleh al-Fayyad, by bringing in a figure from the Islamic party and al-Ataa coalition.

ICC Won’t Refer Jordan to UN over Failure to Arrest Bashir in 2017
Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/The International Criminal Court said Monday that it will not refer Jordan to the UN Security Council for its failure to arrest Sudanese war crimes suspect Omar al-Bashir in 2017. In a split ruling, the five-judge panel found that Jordan should have arrested Bashir, but its failure to do so was not grounds for referral. The ruling reverses an earlier decision by the ICC. Bashir was ousted from power by the military on April 11 after months of popular anti-government protests. Bashir, who seized power in Sudan in a military coup in 1989, is wanted by the ICC for war crimes committed during the Darfur conflict. Sudan’s general prosecutor said Sunday that he was questioned for the first time over suspected money laundering and financing terrorism.

Egypt: Life Sentences for 53 Defendants in ‘Nahda Events’
Cairo - Asharq Al-Awsat/Monday, 6 May, 2019/An Egyptian court on Sunday handed life sentences to 53 people for participating in the “Muslim Brotherhood” gathering at al-Nahda Square in Giza in 2013. Two others were given a one-year prison sentence, while 10 were acquitted of the charges during a retrial. The total number of defendants in the case is 379, including 189 detainees. The court also ordered the accused to pay EGP 2 million to Orman Park, EGP 10 million for Giza province, and EGP 25 million to the Engineering Faculty at Cairo University for damages. The prosecution accused the defendants of organizing a gathering in Nahda Square, putting the lives of citizens at stake, resisting police forces responsible for dispersing the rally, premeditated murder and carrying unlicensed weapons and ammunition. Last month, the Court of Cassation rejected 66 appeals in the same case, upholding the verdicts. The court also acquitted 115 defendants and terminated the criminal prosecution of two defendants after they died. All defendants were fined EGP39 million for the damages they caused at the zoo, al-Orman, Giza Governorate, and Engineering Faculty at Cairo University. On August 14, 2013, the Egyptian security services broke up two protests- the Rabaa sit-in in Cairo, and the Nahda protest in neighboring Giza - following the toppling of the regime of former president Mohamed Morsi, who is considered a terrorist by the authorities. In addition, the Criminal Court of Cairo decided to adjourn Morsi’s retrial, along with a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders and top officials in the lawsuit known as the "illegal crossing of eastern borders."The trial was postponed to Saturday after a number of detained defendants failed to appear in court.

Fighting kills 26 in Syria’s northwest: monitor
AFP, Beirut/Monday, 6 May 2019/Clashes between Syrian regime forces and militants Monday killed more than 26 fighters in the country’s northwest, which has seen an escalation in shelling and air strikes, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Eleven pro-government fighters were among those killed in fierce fighting in the northern countryside of Hama province, the war monitor said. Fifteen militants, including members of al-Qaeda’s former Syrian branch, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and its ally the Turkistan Islamic Party, were also killed, the monitor said. The fighting came as regime forces advanced on two villages and a strategic hilltop in the region, it said. State news agency SANA said Syrian troops launched “intensive operations,” targeting supply lines and areas where armed groups operate in northern Hama and neighboring Idlib. The region held by HTS has faced intensifying bombardment in the past month, prompting a new wave of displacement. On Monday, four civilians were killed in shelling and air strikes on Idlib and neighboring areas by the Syrian government and its ally Russia said the Observatory. An AFP photographer in Idlib saw several houses completely destroyed by recent attacks. One man who lost his wife, his daughter-in-law, and his two grandchildren during shelling overnight prepared a pickup truck to relocate surviving members of his family. “I don’t know where I’m going,” he told AFP. More than 140,000 civilians have been forced to flee attacks since February, Refugees International said on Monday. “It is difficult to overstate the urgency of this looming humanitarian disaster if nothing is done to protect these people,” the non-governmental organization said in a statement. Escalated attacks have hit schools and medical facilities, according to the UN.

Turkey election body orders Istanbul vote re-run
Agencies/Monday, 6 May 2019/Turkey’s top election body ordered a re-run of the Istanbul mayoral vote on Monday following the shock defeat of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party, the state news agency reported. The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) won in the capital Ankara and Istanbul for the first time in 25 years in the March 31 local elections, in a major setback for Erdogan, who served as Istanbul’s mayor in the 1990s. Erdogan’s ruling AKP and its nationalist MHP allies have since called for the vote in Istanbul to be re-run, citing what they say are irregularities that affected the outcome. The parties have also filed appeals to annul results in two Istanbul districts, Buyukcekmece and Maltepe, over the same claims.

41 Dead as Russian Plane Bursts into Flames on Landing
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/May 06/2019/A Russian passenger plane erupted in a huge ball of fire and black smoke after making an emergency landing at Moscow's busiest airport, killing 41 people including at least two children.Dramatic footage that went viral on social media showed Aeroflot's Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft crash-landing and then speeding along the runway at Sheremetyevo international airport on Sunday, flames pouring from its fuselage. Passengers could be seen leaping onto an inflatable slide at the front and running from the blazing plane as huge black columns of smoke billowed into the sky. Investigators said 41 people had died. "There were 78 people including crew members on board the plane," which was bound for the northwestern city of Murmansk, Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement. "According to the updated info which the investigation has as of now, 37 people survived." Eleven people were injured, Dmitry Matveyev, the Moscow region's health minister said earlier in the day.
'Horror before our eyes'
Witness Alyona Osokina said she was inside the terminal when she suddenly saw a plane on fire rushing along the runway. "The blaze was devouring the plane," she told Rain TV. Osokina said that fire engines had arrived quickly but could not immediately put out the blaze. "This horror and tragedy happened before our eyes," she said, adding that those who managed to flee the plane then walked towards the airport. "I believe they were in a state of deep shock."The jet -- carrying 73 passengers and five crew members -- left Sheremetyevo at 6:02 pm (1502 GMT), and the crew issued a distress signal shortly afterwards, officials said. "After the take-off, the crew reported an anomaly and decided to come back to the departure airport. At 6:30 pm, the aircraft made an emergency landing," the airport said in a statement. Aeroflot, Russia's flagship carrier, said the plane had to return to the airport "due to a technical reason" and its engines caught fire upon landing. Previous reports had said the fire broke out in mid-air. The jet reportedly managed to land on its second attempt, hitting the ground with its landing gear first and then its nose. Flight tracking site Flightradar24 showed the jet looping once in the air before landing. The plane's fuel tanks were full and a much bigger death toll could have been a real possibility, aviation experts said. Investigators said they were looking into various lines of inquiry and it was premature to draw any conclusions about the cause of the accident. Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his condolences to the victims' loved ones and said the investigation "should be as thorough as possible", according to the Kremlin. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered a special committee to investigate the disaster. The Murmansk region -- where many of the casualties are believed to be from -- will go into a three-day period of mourning beginning Monday. Some flights have been diverted to other Moscow airports or Nizhny Novgorod, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) east of the Russian capital. Numerous Aeroflot flights are expected to be affected in the coming days.
- Blow to aviation industry -
The country's aviation safety record has been chequered and the latest disaster is seen as a huge blow to its already struggling aviation industry. The Sukhoi Superjet-100 was the first civilian aircraft developed in the country's post-Soviet era. At the time of its launch, in 2011, it was a source of national pride and seen as one of Putin's pet projects. But numerous technical problems with the plane have been reported in recent years and Russia has struggled to convince foreign carriers to purchase it. The government offered subsidies to encourage Russian airlines to buy the Superjet and Aeroflot has became its main operator. In September 2018, it announced a record order of 100 Superjet-100s.

Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on May 06-07/19
The First and Forgotten Armenian Genocide of 1019 AD
Raymond Ibrahim/American Thinker/May 06/2019
Last April 24 was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Millions of Armenians around the world remembered how the Islamic Ottoman Empire killed—often cruelly and out of religious hatred—some 1.5 million of their ancestors during World War I.
Ironically, most people, including most Armenians, are unaware that the first genocide of Christian Armenians at the hands of Muslim Turks did not occur in the twentieth century; rather it began in 1019—exactly one-thousand years ago this year—when Turks first began to pour into and transform a then much larger Armenia into what it is today, the eastern portion of modern day Turkey.
Thus, in 1019, “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of infidels called Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword,” writes Matthew of Edessa (d.1144), a chief source for this period. Three decades later the raids were virtually nonstop. In 1049, the founder of the Turkic Seljuk Empire himself, Sultan Tughril Bey (r. 1037–1063), reached the unwalled city of Arzden, west of Lake Van, and “put the whole town to the sword, causing severe slaughter, as many as one hundred and fifty thousand persons.”
After thoroughly plundering the city—which reportedly contained eight hundred churches—he ordered it set ablaze and turned into a desert. Arzden was “filled with bodies” and none “could count the number of those who perished in the flames.” The invaders “burned priests whom they seized in the churches and massacred those whom they found outside. They put great chunks of pork in the hands of the undead to insult us”—Muslims deem the pig unclean—“and made them objects of mockery to all who saw them.”
Eight hundred oxen and forty camels were required to cart out the vast plunder, mostly taken from Arzden’s churches. “How to relate here, with a voice stifled by tears, the death of nobles and clergy whose bodies, left without graves, became the prey of carrion beasts, the exodus of women … led with their children into Persian slavery and condemned to an eternal servitude! That was the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” laments Matthew, “So, lend an ear to this melancholy recital.”
Other contemporaries confirm the devastation visited upon Arzden. “Like famished dogs,” writes Aristakes (d.1080) an eye witness, “bands of infidels hurled themselves on our city, surrounded it and pushed inside, massacring the men and mowing everything down like reapers in the fields, making the city a desert. Without mercy, they incinerated those who had hidden themselves in houses and churches.”
Similarly, during the Turkic siege of Sebastia (modern-day Sivas) in 1060, six hundred churches were destroyed and “many [more] maidens, brides, and distinguished ladies were led into captivity to Persia.” Another raid on Armenian territory saw “many and innumerable people who were burned [to death].” The atrocities are too many for Matthew to recount, and he frequently ends in resignation:
Who is able to relate the happenings and ruinous events which befell the Armenians, for everything was covered with blood. . . . Because of the great number of corpses, the land stank, and all of Persia was filled with innumerable captives; thus this whole nation of beasts became drunk with blood. All human beings of Christian faith were in tears and in sorrowful affliction, because God our creator had turned away His benevolent face from us.
Nor was there much doubt concerning what fueled the Turks’ animus: “This nation of infidels comes against us because of our Christian faith and they are intent on destroying the ordinances of the worshippers of the cross and on exterminating the Christian faithful,” one David, head of an Armenian region, explained to his countrymen. Therefore, “it is fitting and right for all the faithful to go forth with their swords and to die for the Christian faith.” Many were of the same mind; records tell of monks and priests, fathers, wives, and children, all shabbily armed but zealous to protect their way of life, coming out to face the invaders—to little avail.
Anecdotes of faith-driven courage also permeate the chronicles. During the first Turkic siege of Manzikert in 1054, when a massive catapult pummeled and caused its walls to quake, a Catholic Frank holed up in with the Orthodox Armenians volunteered to sacrifice himself: “I will go forth and burn down that catapult, and today my blood shall be shed for all the Christians, for I have neither wife nor children to weep over me.” The Frank succeeded and returned to gratitude and honors. Adding insult to injury, the defenders catapulted a pig into the Muslim camp while shouting, “O sultan [Tughril], take that pig for your wife, and we will give you Manzikert as a dowry!” “Filled with anger, Tughril had all Christian prisoners in his camp ritually decapitated.”
Between 1064 and 1065, Tughril’s successor, Sultan Muhammad bin Dawud Chaghri—known to posterity as Alp Arslan, a Turkish honorific meaning “Heroic Lion”—“going forth full of rage and with a formidable army,” laid siege to Ani, the fortified capital of Armenia, then a great and populous city. The thunderous bombardment of Muhammad’s siege engines caused the entire city to quake, and Matthew describes countless terror-stricken families huddled together and weeping.
Once inside, the Islamic Turks—reportedly armed with two knives in each hand and an extra in their mouths—“began to mercilessly slaughter the inhabitants of the entire city . . . and piling up their bodies one on top of the other. . . . Beautiful and respectable ladies of high birth were led into captivity into Persia. Innumerable and countless boys with bright faces and pretty girls were carried off together with their mothers.”
The most savage treatment was always reserved for those visibly proclaiming their Christianity: clergy and monks “were burned to death, while others were flayed alive from head to toe.” Every monastery and church—before this, Ani was known as “the City of 1001 Churches”—was pillaged, desecrated, and set aflame. A zealous jihadi climbed atop the city’s main cathedral “and pulled down the very heavy cross which was on the dome, throwing it to the ground,” before entering and defiling the church. Made of pure silver and the “size of a man”—and now symbolic of Islam’s might over Christianity—the broken crucifix was sent as a trophy to adorn a mosque in modern-day Azerbaijan.
Not only do several Christian sources document the sack of Armenia’s capital—one contemporary succinctly notes that Muhammad “rendered Ani a desert by massacres and fire”—but so do Muslim sources, often in apocalyptic terms: “I wanted to enter the city and see it with my own eyes,” one Arab explained. “I tried to find a street without having to walk over the corpses. But that was impossible.”
Such is an idea of what Muslim Turks did to Christian Armenians—not during the Armenian Genocide of a century ago but exactly one thousand years ago, starting in 1019, when the Turkic invasion and subsequent colonization of Armenia began.
Even so, and as an example of surreal denial, Turkey’s foreign minister, capturing popular Turkish sentiment, recently announced that “We [Turks] are proud of our history because our history has never had any genocides. And no colonialism exists in our history.”
Note: The first and other Turkic invasions of Armenia are documented in Raymond Ibrahim’s recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. American Thinker reviews of the book can be read here and here.

The Increasingly Narrow, Parochial Prism of Journalism
Douglas Murray/Gatestone Institute/May 06/2019
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14176/narrow-parochial-journalism
What is strangest -- and most defamatory -- is to call people "far-right", or insinuate that they are linked to the far-right because they are saddened by the fire at Notre Dame.
For those who know the journalism business... the degradation exemplified by Tharoor, Taylor and Noack is no surprise. It is the consequence of a shrinking industry with shrinking budgets which cannot afford foreign reporters and finds itself instead paying low-grade hacks to sit in America and write about people in Europe who are tweeting about a massacre in Sri Lanka.
Apart from demonstrating quite a remarkable freedom with facts and ignorance of libel laws, these "journalists" also do something else. They see the world, and the terrible actions of some terrible people in it, only through their own narrow and deeply parochial vision.
What is strangest -- and most defamatory -- is to call people "far-right", or insinuate that they are linked to the far-right because they are saddened by the fire at Notre Dame.
Last month, immediately after fire had almost destroyed the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the Washington Post ran a piece with the headline, "The Notre Dame fire ignites the West's far-right." The author, Ishaan Tharoor, used his piece to expand on that untimely and inaccurate claim. He wrote:
"A strange — though not altogether surprising — thing happened in the shadow of Monday's tragedy. As many around the world watched an iconic cathedral in Paris go up in flames, others immediately set about trying to spark new fires. On both sides of the Atlantic, denizens of the far right took to social media to grind their culture-warring axes, locating in the calamity a parable for the political moment — or, at least, their understanding of it."
Tharoor then went on to list the various people he wanted to grab at to make this prefabricated argument.
He attacked Fox News host Tucker Carlson for having commented, regarding the Notre Dame fire, that it was in "some ways a metaphor for the decline of Christianity in Europe." You might agree with that or you might not, but it is not at all clear why Carlson saying this should be included in a piece claiming that the "far-right" have been ignited by the fire at Notre Dame. Unless you are willing to pretend that Carlson is "far-right". Sure enough, this is what Tharoor does, or (perhaps distantly aware of the law) tries to do. He writes:
"Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a popular anchor accused by critics of openly embracing white nationalism in his broadcasts, said the Notre Dame fire was in 'some ways a metaphor for the decline of Christianity in Europe.'"
So Tharoor introduces Carlson by referencing the most defamatory and untrue statement he can think of? Because some "critics" have said it?
Ordinarily this sort of thing would not be considered journalism. After all, if we all did it, it would become a race to the bottom. Once I have appointed myself a critic of Mr Tharoor's, for instance, I might decide to smear him with precisely the sort of ordure he seeks to smear over others. I might decide to make a disingenuous claim that Mr Tharoor is, for instance, a white nationalist. Then, whenever anyone else writes about him -- if they ever do -- they will be able to say, if they were as dishonest and lazy as their subject, "Ishaan Tharoor, an unpopular writer whom critics accuse of being a white nationalist..." and so on. I would not do it: honesty and decency ought to matter in journalism. But there is no reason why someone else might not do it, if these are the standards in the trade that are now acceptable.
Tharoor was less subtle with his next attempted smear. He introduced Mark Steyn in an even more peculiar way. Where the Washington Post's writer could have said, "New York Times Best-selling author Mark Steyn" or "syndicated journalist Mark Steyn" or any number of other things, Tharoor skipped all that and went straight for "far-right commentator Mark Steyn". Ben Shapiro got some of the same treatment for writing how terrible it was to watch the destruction of part of the "Judeo-Christian heritage". Raising the interesting question of whether it was wrong to identify Notre Dame via the Christian faith, or just wrong to lament its burning.
After listing various other people, Tharoor then performed this move:
"Others groused over the decades of supposed neglect looming over the site. 'Civilization only ever hangs by a thread,' right-wing British commentator Douglas Murray wrote. 'Today one of those threads seems to have frayed, perhaps snapped.'"
I did indeed write that, in the hours when it looked as if the whole of Notre Dame, structure, edifice, towers, the lot were all going to come down in one great heap of scalding rubble. I make no apology for lamenting this loss, or very near-loss as it turns out. But what a strange and vindictive way to write about the expression of such a sentiment. Those of us who noted that for years Notre Dame had been trying to raise funds for its restoration, and that restoration work was badly overdue, were not making it up. All this had long been covered in the French media. How can anyone writing about people who are lamenting decades of neglect at one of the great buildings of the world be described as "grousing", rather than say "regretting"?
What is strangest -- and most defamatory -- is to call people "far-right", or insinuate that they are linked to the far-right because they are saddened by the fire at Notre Dame.
It might be possible to think this article was just the dishonest and dishonourable smear-job attempted by one jobbing hack. Yet a week later, and the Washington Post was back at a similar trick. In the aftermath of the appalling Easter Sunday attacks on Christians and tourists in Sri Lanka, the Washington Post ran a story, "Christianity under attack? Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West." According to the authors of that piece -- Adam Taylor and Rick Noack -- those attacks "which targeted a religious minority in a predominantly Buddhist country, also resonated abroad – especially in Europe." On this occasion, the Post's journalists noted that Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party in France had sent out a tweet saying that those killed in the Easter attack had been "targeted for their faith". As they had been. This fact does not become a non-fact because Marine Le Pen has said it. Elsewhere, the authors chose to smear former Reagan administration aide Frank Gaffney for saying on his radio show of the murder of Christians, "All too often, their losses go unremarked." Once again, that comment is either markedly true or at the very least debatable. But making such a comment does not make somebody "far-right".
Anyone looking at such coverage from outside journalism might marvel at it. For those who know the journalism business, however, the degradation exemplified by Tharoor, Taylor and Noack is no surprise. It is the consequence of a shrinking industry with shrinking budgets which cannot afford foreign reporters and finds itself instead paying low-grade hacks to sit in America and write about people in Europe who are tweeting about a massacre in Sri Lanka. Apart from demonstrating quite a remarkable freedom with facts and ignorance of libel laws, these "journalists" also do something else. They see the world, and the terrible actions of some terrible people in it, through a prism that is not only remarkably shallow, but strikingly narrow and parochial.
*Douglas Murray, British author, commentator and public affairs analyst, is based in London, England. His latest book, an international best-seller, is "The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam."
© 2019 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Zarif’s Dialogue: Civilization and Agreement
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed//Asharq Al Awsat/May 06/2019
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was in New York, led a media attack, and I found in his speech to the audience of the Asia Society something worth the debate that I began Saturday. It was about what he called the Saudi-Emirati-Israeli plot to start a war with Iran.
Zarif: “This is the first time, to my knowledge — and I’ve dealt with the UN for the last 40 years — this is the first time this happens at the UN that a permanent member of the Security Council (the US) is openly calling on other countries to violate a Security Council resolution (the Iran nuclear deal) and threatening them with punishment if they didn’t (comply).”
– It is true that the US has resorted to sanctioning any party dealing with Iran commercially, but it has not acted like Tehran, which punishes its enemies with murder and destruction, as we see in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Zarif: “I don’t want to repeat and bring you back to history. We had an empire ruling the world for much longer than the US has existed, and it ends. Empires end. We need to know whether we want to establish a modus operandi that would last longer than our empire.”
– Zarif and other Iranian officials often boast about the history of Persia and its ancient empire. It is ironic that the current regime has no connection, neither civilizational nor cultural, with that empire. Moreover, the great ancient civilizations — Arabic, Islamic, Pharaonic, Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Chinese, Mayan, Persian etc. — should not be used as an excuse to attack states’ borders and sovereignty and to expand, as the ayatollahs in Tehran want. When Zarif reminds the Americans that they (Iranians) were a great civilization like them, he needs to realize that Iran today is one of the poor countries of the world, and that his regime is the one that brought poverty and destruction.
Zarif: “I negotiated that (nuclear) agreement, and I know that neither Iran nor the United States will ever get a better agreement. It’s not an agreement that I like … and it’s not an agreement that (former US) Secretary (of State John) Kerry likes, but it was the best agreement we could both reach with five other people in the room … We had competing interests — not just competing interests between Iran and the United States, but even competing interests between the United States and its own European allies, competing interests between the United States and Russia and China.”
– Tehran received money and gifts, and even got visas for the sons of the Iranian elite to stay in America. In return, the regime’s gifts to the world have been Hezbollah, Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, the Houthis and the Fatimids, all of which are groups that devastated the region and threatened peace more than the world had seen before the agreement.
Zarif: “Sanctions certainly impact our economy. Sanctions target ordinary people … They came out in huge numbers to the streets when we signed the deal.”
– It is true that the Iranian people came out on the streets happy with the nuclear agreement, but there was anger when they found out that the regime was spending the money received from the deal on more weapons, recruitment, fighting, and supporting armed organizations outside the country. They returned to the streets to protest against the regime.
Zarif: “Sanctions will hurt, no doubt about that. But will sanctions change policy? They won’t. Never have, never will.”
– Although they have just started, the sanctions have affected Iran’s activities in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, to the extent that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had to address his followers on TV, urging them to get rid of servants, reduce their expenses and be patient because the party will reduce payments to them. We expect the sanctions to have more effect in a year and a half. The aim is to force Tehran to negotiate and compromise in order to end religious extremism, wars and chaos created by it regionally and globally over the past 40 years.

Clash of Civilizations' Has No Place in US Foreign Policy
Hal Brands/Bloomberg/May 06/2019
It isn’t often that high-ranking US diplomats publicly invoke the ideas of ivory-tower academics. But earlier last week, the director of policy planning at the State Department, Kiron Skinner, used a controversial concept created by Harvard professor Samuel Huntington to describe America’s unfolding rivalry with China. Speaking at a Washington think tank, Skinner said that China’s rise constitutes a generational challenge that will require a generational response. She also argued that the rivalry represents a great “clash of civilizations,” the term Huntington, who died in 2008, coined in predicting what would take place after the end of the Cold War.
The Trump administration is undoubtedly right that competition with China will be a decades-long affair. Yet the Clash of Civilizations model won’t help the US win that competition, because it actually supports Beijing’s strategy better than America’s.
Huntington introduced the clash thesis in a famous Foreign Affairs essay written in 1993. He argued that, with the collapse of communism, ideological rivalries would no longer drive global affairs. Rather, conflict would occur between groups defined by culture, religion and identity. Among the clashing groups would be a Western civilization in Europe and North America, and a “Sinic” civilization made up of China and many of its Asian neighbors.
The clash thesis gained popularity amid bloody struggles between Muslim and Christian communities in the former Yugoslavia, and particularly after the eruption of the war on terror after 9/11. The US government always rejected Huntington’s framing, though: the George W. Bush administration argued that the war on terror was a product of a clash within a civilization — between the tolerant and intolerant parts of the Muslim world — rather than a clash between the Muslim world and the West.
Today, there are profound cultural differences between the US and China, in addition to myriad economic and geopolitical strains. But critics of the Trump administration will hear talk of a civilizational conflict as an echo of the idea, promoted by the controversial former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, that the world has reached a confrontation pitting the Christian West against the rest. And even leaving that loaded issue aside, the concept is ideologically and geopolitically counterproductive.
For one thing, “clash” rhetoric sacrifices the moral high ground in the US-China competition. America has long claimed that democratic values and human rights are not distinctly Western ideas. Instead, they are universal ideas that people everywhere deserve to enjoy — and that no government has a right to deny its people.
This argument, although sometimes selectively applied, represents a fundamental foreign policy strength because it allows the US to identify itself with the aspirations of people around the world — even in countries that are controlled by hostile regimes. Moreover, US officials have used the idea that human rights and democratic values are universal as an ideological bludgeon against authoritarian governments, as it did to great effect against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The Chinese government, by contrast, has embraced the concept of civilizational difference as a means of autocratic self-protection. Beijing has long rejected the idea that it should liberalize its political system — or simply stop throwing dissidents in jail — on grounds that “Western” concepts of democracy and individual rights are incompatible with the traditions of China’s unique civilization.
The US should not be supporting this idea, even implicitly; it should not be affirming the civilizational wall the Chinese regime has sought to build between its citizens and the democratic world.
The clash thesis is also geopolitically dangerous, because here, too, it plays into China’s hands. The Chinese government has long argued that the world should, in fact, be divided along civilizational lines: That Asians have more in common with each other than they do with the US, and that Washington should therefore leave Asia to the Asians — meaning that it should allow China to dominate that part of the world. This argument provides an intellectual underpinning for everything Beijing is doing to push the US out of the Western Pacific: Undermining US alliances, building up its military and weaving webs of economic dependence around its neighbors.
The idea of drawing sharp boundaries between East and West is thus critical to China’s strategy — and it is lethal to America’s. To counter China, the US will need to rally a coalition that cuts across civilizations. This includes, but is not limited to, the democracies of the Western Hemisphere and Europe and an array of Asian countries that are troubled by China’s rise.
Holding together a diverse balancing coalition against an ambitious China will be hard enough. American diplomats shouldn’t make that task any more challenging than it has to be.

If Major Powers are Worried, then What About us?
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/May 06/2019
It is not surprising that the Parisians grumble. Grumbling is a constant part of their mood. It is Saturday, the time to enjoy the holiday. But the weather is not favorable. The sun rises quickly, but then gives way to clouds and rain. Citizens and tourists hide under their umbrellas.
For months now, Saturday has had another flavor. The “yellow jackets” continue their protest despite a decline in their appeal. The dialogue launched by Emmanuel Macron has also proven to be difficult in convincing the French people. There are those who believe that France likes arguments but does not like change.
Mr. President is not at his best. Opinion polls are targeting both his term and image. At the Elysee Palace, he can see that there are those who have started to miss his predecessors, although their terms at the helm of the Republic were not at all successful.
The debate in the French media reveals that many citizens feel that their country is in trouble. Some believe that the world has raced ahead of it. The hopes placed in the young president now collide with the walls of reality. There are those who believe that a large part of the French population feel that their country is stagnant or even going backward, and that the French role in the world is waning.
It is difficult for France to be a true partner of the White House master, who likes to do things on his own. His method does not leave a prominent role for the European ally. The European boat itself is boiling under the flames of the British divorce, the rise of populist voices, increased hostility towards immigrants and the realization that integration policies are increasingly failing.
There are those who believe that Britain’s exit from the European ship will provide France with an unprecedented opportunity to lead, especially since the German Chancellor is ready to leave office. But experts are quick to recall that France does not have an economy capable of protecting a major role. They draw attention to the extent of China’s involvement in Africa, the continent of which France was the primary player in vast regions.
The crisis of what role to play is seriously being discussed in France. The Europe will remain a priority. But Europe’s ability to garner a distinct position in the club it is supposed to share with the US, China and Russia seems limited by the weakness of the European spirit.
Sometimes passengers escape from the weight of time by making occasional conversations with their colleagues in airplanes or hotels. I like this type of dialogue among strangers, especially since its sole aim is to fight off boredom and waiting. A Japanese tourist at the sports club asked me why I had come to Paris and I replied that it was a work date. He smiled and said that the city deserved more than that. It deserves frequent visits to check out its great cultural wealth. We agreed to continue our conversation later.
In the hotel lobby, my profession prompted me to ask him about his country. He praised the achievements made by Japan in the decades that followed the war through the will of its people, who emerged from the bitter defeat. I thought I had found an optimistic man and I was happy, because most of our interlocutors transmit quite a bit of anxiety. But the speaker soon joined the worriers club.
I asked him about his concerns. He replied: “How can you be reassured when you have a neighbor like Kim Jong-un, who finds extraordinary pleasure in building a nuclear arsenal and personally oversees the production of new generations of missiles?”
The tourist did not hesitate to reveal that his real concern was the emergence of a gigantic neighbor, whose true intentions could not be predicted. He said that China’s rise is unprecedented in our time and will have great repercussions on the balance of world powers in the economy and security and then in politics.
He said the Japanese are following with some concern how China has replaced them as the world’s second-largest economy, how it is seeking to claim the first position and deny America the key to its strength and prestige. He argued that China today has an amazing surplus of power, which will translate into a tendency to dominate, not only its immediate surroundings, but also the world.
He noted that China’s economic attack in Asia, Africa and Europe is also accompanied by an increase in military spending, which also threatens to shift the balance of military power. He said that he was concerned about the absence of mechanisms capable of containing the rise of such a force. America is no longer able to assume the role of the policeman in the world, although it is the only option available to us to maintain a balance against the Chinese awakening.
The tourist went to inspect the cultural wealth of Paris and I thought of the terrible Middle East. I thought of the battle-ready armies bordering our maps, of mobile militias in theaters of conflict… of past wars and hatreds… of unemployment, poverty and millions of refugees.
Would the Middle East be suffering had Iran found an Iranian Deng dreaming of turning it into an economic power without betting on interfering in the maps of others? Would the Middle East be suffering had Turkey kept its dreams within its borders and not engaged in a project to change the region’s features? Wouldn’t it have been better for the entire region if Iran and Turkey were engaged in a transformation and reform project aimed at joining the battle for progress?
The Middle East will not change unless the policy of bridges prevails over the policy of walls. The Chinese lesson deserves a thorough meditation.

More Druze risk prison to reject military service in Israel
Ahmad Melhem/Al-Monitor/May 06/2019
ARTICLE SUMMARY
A campaign launched years ago continues to have an impact as more Arab Druze in Israel are refusing to join the army despite the risk of imprisonment.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Kamal Zeidan is one of an apparently growing number of Druze youth in Israel rejecting forced service in the country's military. The 18-year-old served brief sentences twice in April for refusing conscription, and he fully expects to be summoned for a third court appearance soon.
Zeidan is a member of the Druze ethno-religious minority in Beit Jann, a town in Galilee in northern Israel. When his first conscription notice arrived April 8, he headed to Tel Aviv a week later to give notice that he was refusing to enlist. He cited "national reasons," as he considers himself a Palestinian Arab. He was ordered to spend five days in Atlit military prison before being released April 19. When he refused a second time, the military court of the conscription office affiliated with the Israeli army in Tel Aviv then sentenced him April 28 to seven more days.
Zeidan’s father, activist lawyer Yamen Zeidan, told Al-Monitor his son was put in solitary confinement during his first stint in prison because he refused to salute a prison officer, stating, "I am not a soldier, and I will not be one. I ask you to treat me like a detainee, not a soldier.”
For Muslim and Christian Arabs in Israel, enlisting is optional. But Druze men must serve unless they are exempted for certain reasons — for example, if they suffer proven psychological harm from serving, have medical issues or feel service would violate their religious dedication.
Those who resist are often sentenced to progressively longer terms to pressure them. But if they don't change their minds after a year, their cases are referred for military prosecution and they can be sentenced to three years in prison — which is the same duration as conscription.
The obligation to serve stems from a 1956 law that several Druze leaders agreed to in exchange for Israeli authorities recognizing the independence of the Druze religious authority from the Islamic one and granting Druze some privileges and jobs.
“Refusing to enlist is not new,” Yamen Zeidan said, adding, “It began [on] day one of the implementation of the 1956 law. Kamal is not the first or the last to refuse to enlist. There are thousands of others.” He said the number of resisters is growing but isn't publicized because those who resist are reluctant to speak about their experiences to the media. He said that was the case with 15 Druze men his son met in Atlit prison.
The elder Zeidan said the rise in refusals stems from a growing national awareness. Many young Druze also believe Israel undermined equality principles after the Knesset in July passed the National State Law, which defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
There are about 120,000 Druze in Israel.
Yamen Zeidan went through a bitter experience, losing two of his brothers who served in the army. As a result, he was exempted from military service, but he worked from 2002 to 2005 as a jailer for the Israeli Prison Service. He met many detainees. It was then he became more aware of his political and national identity and decided to study law. After becoming a lawyer, he dedicated his time to defending Palestinian detainees, in cooperation with the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, and fighting compulsory military service in the Israeli army.
Druze are supporting their young men through the “Refuse, Your People Will Protect You" campaign, which began in 2014. Coordinator Maisan Hamdan told Al-Monitor, “The movement considers conscription imposed on young Druze a Palestinian cause, and the fight should be a comprehensive Palestinian one.”She said one of the reasons behind Druze conscription is that Palestinian history was hidden from them and not taught in their schools. Young Druze were also assigned during their military service to all areas of contact with Palestinians — at borders, prisons and checkpoints — which created a negative image of Druze among Palestinians. "Besides, [information about] Druze participation in the Palestinian struggle against Israel after 1948 was also blacked out.”
Hamdan noted, "The movement supports those refusing conscription and raises awareness. It tries to break the [negative] image about Druze among Palestinian youths.”
She said the movement “focuses on several media campaigns, including documenting stories and experiences of those refusing conscription, to counter the Israeli narrative that claims whoever opposes conscription can't move forward in life."
Hamdan said an activity called "By the Way" — done in association with the abovementioned “Refuse, Your People Will Protect You” campaign — includes several events such as organizing sit-ins and protests like the one called for on May 3 in front of the Atlit prison. It is also publishing long-obscured historical documents about the Druze national role. "By the Way" was launched in Israel by a group of young men and women in 2014 who staged a sit-in in front of Atlit prison to protest compulsory conscription.
On May 3, a number of Palestinians protested in front of the Atlit prison near the city of Haifa, heeding the call of “Refuse, Your People Will Protect You” campaign, to show their support for Kamal Zaidan.
Hamdan explained that the movement is forming a support group that includes professionals in the fields of rights and social justice to accompany youths, starting with their refusal of conscription until they receive exemption, or during their trials in military courts in case of imprisonment.
*Ahmad Melhem is a Palestinian journalist and photographer based in Ramallah for Al-Watan News. He writes for a number of Arabic outlets.

Intel: How the Navy is downplaying Iran hawks' messaging on its latest deployment
Al-Monitor Staff /May 06/2019
REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueUS national security adviser John Bolton talks to reporters at the White House in Washington, US, May 1, 2019.
A day after US national security adviser John Bolton trumpeted the deployment of a US carrier group as a “clear and unmistakable message” to Iran, the US Navy’s top admiral lowered the temperature a notch this morning in a speech near Washington. Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson indicated the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln group to the Middle East had been planned “for some time now” and described the move as an example of “dynamic force employment,” the Pentagon's model of sending out troops and other assets at seemingly irregular intervals to keep US adversaries off balance.
Why it matters: CNN reported today that the Department of Defense had asked the White House to send out a statement about its deployment “primarily as a warning based on intelligence about threats to US personnel” as Iran weighs retaliation for Trump's “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign. Bolton responded with a statement saying the deployment was in response to a “number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.” But in remarks at the SeaAirSpace maritime exhibition in Maryland this morning, Richardson said the carrier group was on a “scheduled deployment.” He followed up in a Twitter exchange with a Foreign Policy reporter with a link to a Pentagon news story touting the carrier group's participation in an ongoing multilateral maritime warfare exercise in the Mediterranean Sea that makes no mention of Iran.
The difference in tone suggests the Defense Department may be wary of inflaming tensions with Iran.
“The US routinely deploys carriers to the Gulf as a show of force intended to deter Iran,” Becca Wasser, a RAND Corporation policy analyst, tweeted Sunday in response to Bolton's statement. The White House, she wrote, appeared to be “piggybacking” on the planned operation “to make a point.”
What’s next: The Washington Post reports this morning that the deployment of the carrier group to the Middle East will be “expedited” following Bolton's statement. The Pentagon first issued a statement on the USS Abraham Lincoln’s deployment in early April. Bolton mentioned that “a bomber task force” will deploy to the Arabian peninsula as part of the move, but did not specify which group or where. The Pentagon has also sent a powerful US-made air defense battery to Israel last month to ward off Iranian missiles.
Know more: The military moves come as Iran’s top diplomat appeared to offer an olive branch to the US last week. Check out Laura Rozen’s reporting on Iran’s latest efforts to engineer a prisoner swap between the rival countries.