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

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Bible Quotations For today
Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother
Mark 03/31-35//04/01-09: “Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.’And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’ Again he began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 14-15/2020
Dr. Walid Phares: We call for the Implementation of the UNSCR 1559
Lebanese Ministry of Public Health: Eight new infections raise total to 886
Coronavirus Cases In Lebanon Rise to 886 amid Renewed Lockdown
Lebanese Minister of Public Health, Dr. Hamad Hassan to preside over Supreme Health Council meeting tomorrow
Lebanon Observes Total Lockdown, Minister to ‘Assess’ Efficacy Sunday
US: Security Council must enforce Hezbollah disarmament, strengthen UNIFIL/Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem/May 14/2020
Officials Charged in Lebanon’s ‘Tainted Fuel’ Case
Lebanon to Prevent Smuggling by Tightening Border Control with Syria
UNIFIL head chairs special Tripartite meeting in Naqoura
President Aoun calls on Lebanese to pray in response to Pope Francis and Sheikh al-Azhar’s invitation
Diab during Cabinet session: Negotiations with IMF starting point for government's financial plan
Berri tackles overall situation with Bukhari, meets Arslan and Kumar
Army: Lebanese side demanded inclusion of occupied area B1 in UN resolutions during tripartite meeting
Geagea: Defense Council Decision on Illegal Crossings Very Disappointing
Lebanon: Private Schools in Tough Spot Amid Worsening Economic Crisis
Lebanon charges 12 people including officials over tainted fuel
Prosecutor orders arrest of BDL’s director of monetary operations
Int’l Support Group Calls for Engaging Lebanese People in Reform Plan Talks
Trilateral Move in East Syria to Block 'Tehran-Beirut' Road
Hezbollah, ally embroiled in Lebanon’s ‘defective fuel’ scandal as electricity fails/Lauren Holtmeier, Al Arabiya English/Thursday 14 May 2020
Indicators of Fear Over Lebanon’s Fate/Hanna Saleh/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 14-15/2020
U.S. envoy threatens to trigger return of U.N. sanctions on Iran
US weighs measures in response to Iran fuel shipment to Venezuela: Reports
Iran building new tunnel at Imam Ali base in east Syria: Satellite images
Iran sentences young Christian woman to 10 lashes, three months in prison
Iran building new weapons storage at military base in eastern Syria, satellite images show
Washington Seeks Extending Iran Arms Embargo
Iraq Launches New Anti-ISIS Operation in Kirkuk
Likud rebellion delays Knesset swearing-in
Hamas, Jihad Refuse to Attend Palestinian Leadership Meeting
Pompeo Considers Netanyahu-Gantz Unity Government an 'Opportunity for Peace’
Russia Rejects WHO Recommendations over Syria Cross‑border Aid Mechanism
Tunisian Lawmakers Warn Saied of Withdrawing Confidence

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on May 14-15/2020
The Taliban Is Still the Main Driver of Violence in Afghanistan/government daily.Thomas Joscelyn/The Dispatch/FDD/May 14/2020
Jonathan Schanzer: Iranian Missiles "Likely to Be the Cause of the Middle East's Next War"/Gary C. Gambill/Middle East Forum/May 14/2020
The Death of Polemic in the Arab Levant/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
What Covid-19’s Second Wave Could Look Like/Max Nisen/Bloomberg/May 14/2020
Iran’s Regime Shamelessly Blames Child Laborers for Role in Virus Spread/Noor Pahlavi/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
Turkish 'Justice': Free Mobsters, Keep Dissidents Locked Up/Burak Bekdil/The Gatestone Institute/May 14/2020
What Is Behind the Leadership Tensions Inside Syria?/Michael Young/Carnegie MEC/May 14/2020
New Nuclear Threats to the U.S.: Better to Deter Them or Play Dead?/Peter Huessy/2020 Gatestone Institute/May 14, 2020
Judge Sullivan: A Prosecutor in Robes/Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/May 14/ 2020
China's Coronavirus: How the EU is Betraying Europe/Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute/May 14, 2020
Simply Reprehensible”: COVID-19 Occasions More Abuse of Christians under Islam/Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/May 14/2020
Will Mustafa al-Kadhimi Save Iraq?/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on May 14-15/2020
Dr. Walid Phares: We call for the Implementation of the UNSCR 1559
Face Book/May 14/2020
Dr. Walid Phares told the "Jabal Lubnan" site in Lebanon that Hezbollah can fantasize about any ideology it wants, but the Lebanese people wants that organization to pull out from all the areas between the "Administrative Beirut and the northern border of the country with Syria." This is a first step on the way to implement UNSCR 1559, full disarming.

Lebanese Ministry of Public Health: Eight new infections raise total to 886
NNA/May 14/2020
The Ministry of Public Health announced this Thursday eight new coronavirus infections, 6 of them detected among locals and 2 among the Lebanese returnees, bringing the total of cases to 886.

Coronavirus Cases Rise to 886 amid Renewed Lockdown

Naharnet/May 14/2020
After reversing an earlier decision easing confinement measures over a spike in coronavirus, eight new cases were recorded on Thursday including two Lebanese expats repatriated recently. The Health Ministry said Thursday’s cases raise the tally to 886 and include six residents and two expats.
The government reinstated a four-day lockdown starting Wednesday evening and until dawn on Monday, reversing measures that were gradually implemented since last month that phased out restrictions imposed since mid-March. The public health crisis comes at a particularly turbulent period for Lebanon. The country is facing an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, putting pressure on a population that is seeing its savings erode. Late last month, the country began a phased-out plan to relax a national lockdown that allowed small businesses to reopen, and shortened a nighttime curfew.
But after a few days of single-digit cases detected, there was a spike in reported infections since last week, including among Lebanese returning home during repatriation programs who did not observe quarantine measures.

Lebanese Minister of Public Health, Dr. Hamad Hassan to preside over Supreme Health Council meeting tomorrow
NNA/May 14/2020
Minister of Public Health, Dr. Hamad Hassan, is to preside over a meeting of the Supreme Health Council, at 10.00 am tomorrow ( Friday), at the Ministry, in the context of raising preparedness to confront COVID-19, a statement by the Ministry’s press office said on Thursday.

Lebanon Observes Total Lockdown, Minister to ‘Assess’ Efficacy Sunday
Associated Press/Naharnet/May 14/2020
The government’s reinstated nationwide lockdown began on Thursday following a spike in reported coronavirus cases in Lebanon, as the health minister said the efficiency of the measure will be accessed on Sunday when the four-day lockdown ends.
The government called on the public to stay home for four days starting Wednesday evening and until dawn on Monday, reversing measures that were gradually implemented since last month that phased out restrictions imposed since mid-March.
The new shutdown is a rare reversal and comes as many countries have started easing restrictions despite grave concerns of a setback as they seek to balance economic and health care needs. After a few days of single-digit cases detected, there was a spike in reported infections in Lebanon since last week, including among Lebanese returning home during repatriation programs who did not observe quarantine measures.
Health Minister Hamad Hassan said the efficacy of the lockdown will be assessed on Sunday. “An assessment will be based on the four-day closure, and I will report to the ministerial committee. It will be up to the Cabinet to decide on the subsequent stages,” said Hassan on Thursday. Lebanon, a country of just over 5 million, has so far been able to contain the virus, recording less than 900 infections, including 120 repatriated Lebanese, and 26 deaths after imposing early lockdown measures and strictly implementing restriction on movement. But over the last few days, government and health officials criticized carelessness and lax implementation of social distancing and other restrictions among the public.

US: Security Council must enforce Hezbollah disarmament, strengthen UNIFIL
Tovah Lazaroff/Jerusalem/May 14/2020
Both Israel and the US want to see the peacekeeping mission's powers strengthened to properly monitor Hezbollah activity against the Jewish state.
The UN Security Council must ensure that armed groups in Lebanon such as Hezbollah are disarmed and that the role of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is strengthened so that it can properly investigate the paramilitary group’s violations, US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft said on Wednesday.
The US is “deeply concerned about the continued operation of armed militias operating outside of government control, as well as Iran’s and Syria’s transfers of weaponry to Hezbollah and other non-state actors in Lebanon,” Craft said.
She spoke at a closed door session of the UNSC on the implementation of its 2004 Resolution 1559, which called for armed groups in Lebanon to be disarmed and disbanded and for Lebanese sovereignty to be upheld.
“We urge every council member to treat the arms embargo with the appropriate seriousness,” she said. The UNSC heard a report authored by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the inability to enforce the resolution. The meeting following a similar debate held a week earlier on the 2006 Resolution 1701, which set the cease fire terms that ended the Second Lebanon War, including the monitoring role of UNIFIL. The interim forces' mandate is renewed annually in August. Both Israel and the US want to see UNIFIL’s powers strengthened to properly monitor Hezbollah activity against the Jewish state. At the meeting, Craft bemoaned the lack of enforcement of the UN resolutions. “Once again, the report states – and I quote – 'There has been no tangible progress towards the disbanding and disarming of Lebanese and non-Lebanese militias,' and that, 'no specific steps have been taken to tackle this critical issue' since the adoption of UNSCR 1559 in 2004,” Craft said. She took issue with claims that Hezbollah was a legitimate entity within Lebanon. “Do legitimate political parties maintain weapons stored beyond the control of the political systems in which they participate? Of course not,” Craft said.
She also called on the Security Council to ensure that UNIFIL could operate unimpeded. In the aftermath of the meeting, the Security Council presidency – held this month by Estonia – put out a statement reaffirming Lebanon’s sovereign and territorial integrity.
The statement did not mention either Hezbollah or Israel by name, but alluded to Hezbollah when it spoke of armed groups, and Israel when it mentioned air violations. In his report to the UNSC last week, Guterres spoke of Israeli flyovers in Lebanon as violations of Resolution 1701.
The UNSC presidency statement said that member states “recalled the importance of fully implementing UNSCR 1559, which requires the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon so that there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than those of the Lebanese state, and they recalled that the violations of the Lebanese sovereignty, by air and land, should immediately stop.”

Officials Charged in Lebanon’s ‘Tainted Fuel’ Case
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
A Lebanese prosecutor has pressed charges against 12 people, including government officials, over a delivery of tainted fuel, a case that made headlines in March after Lebanon refused to receive a shipment from a subsidiary of Algerian state company Sonatrach to be used in the electricity sector. Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Ghada Aoun on Wednesday charged 12 people over the case, the National News Agency (NNA) reported. They included the general manager of the Lebanese Electricity Company Kamal Hayek, for negligence of duty. The Ministry of Energy and Water's chief of oil installations, Sarkis Hlaiss, and director of oil Aurore Feghaly were charged for bribes and negligence of duty, it said. Aoun last month ordered shut the offices of ZR Energy, which acted as intermediary to bring the fuel into Lebanon after the delivery was found to be "non-compliant" with Lebanese standards, contrary to official reports.
Arrest warrants have already been issued for Feghaly and the Sonatrach representative in Tarek Fawal, as well as for laboratory workers alleged to have tested fuel samples and provided false reports. More arrest warrants were issued in absentia for Hlaiss as well as ZR Energy head Teddy Rahme, general manager Ibrahim al-Zouk and another of the company's employees. On May 6, the judiciary questioned former energy ministers Nada Boustani and Mohammed Fneish. In statement by its Lebanese subsidiary, Sonatrach said the media had targeted it with a "malicious and systematic campaign" of defamation.
The company, which said it had been providing fuel to the Lebanese electricity sector since 2005 through a signed contract renewed by Lebanon’s government every three years, stressed it was "not responsible... for any violation, crime, offense or any alleged transgression that could have occurred to any fuel shipment". In Algeria, a presidential spokesman said an investigation had been ordered into the matter, but that the "Algeria as a state was not involved in such acts". He said it was first and foremost a Lebanese case.

Lebanon to Prevent Smuggling by Tightening Border Control with Syria
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
Lebanon decided Wednesday to increase the monitoring of its border with Syria to clamp down on smuggling and to prosecute violators and smugglers. Following a meeting held Wednesday at the Presidential Palace under President Michel Aoun, the Higher Defense Council said Lebanon would exert all efforts in coordination with concerned agencies to control the border to prevent the smuggling of goods, in addition to the closure of all illegitimate crossings. “The Council also decided to devise a comprehensive plan to establish military, security and customs control centers,” Lebanon’s state-run news agency said.
A report broadcast by a local television channel last week said the amount of smuggled fuel to Syria is estimated at $400 million per year. On Monday, a Lebanese customs force was attacked as it seized two diesel trucks heading to an area bordering Syria in northern Lebanon.
Informed sources told Asharq Al-Awsat Wednesday that the smuggling is mainly taking place in the North, stretching from villages in northeast Lebanon’s Hermel area to the northwest. “It is very difficult to control this area, which overlaps with Syrian territories,” the source said. He said the roads used by the smugglers are known. “Lebanon cannot fully control the border without a political decision,” the source said, adding that the northern border area requires the presence of a large number of soldiers and monitoring equipment. During Wednesday’s meeting, Aoun discussed the repercussions of smuggling to Syria on Lebanon’s public finances. He called for strict measures against violators, said a statement read by Secretary General of the Higher Defense Council Major General Mahmoud al-Asmar. Prime Minister Hassan Diab also discussed during the meeting the financial and economic repercussions of smuggling, especially on the state treasury, and the logistical obstacles that prevent control on land borders.

UNIFIL head chairs special Tripartite meeting in Naqoura
NNA/May 14/2020
UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Stefano Del Col today chaired a special Tripartite meeting – the first since the COVID-19 outbreak – at a UN position in Ras Al Naqoura.
In a press release by UNIFIL, it said: "Discussions focused on the situation along the Blue Line, air and ground violations as well as other issues within the scope of UNIFIL’s mandate under UN Security Council resolution 1701.
Reiterating UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ recent appeal for global ceasefire in support of the bigger battle against COVID-19, Major General Del Col called on the parties to leverage the UN chief’s message to reaffirm commitment to respecting the cessation of hostilities and ensuring stability along the Blue Line.“As we all fight the COVID-19 pandemic as a priority, we must not lose sight of the imperative to maintain calm and stability along the Blue Line,” he said. “As recent incidents along the Blue Line demonstrate, misunderstandings leading to unwanted escalation in tensions can still occur even during a time when our attention is elsewhere.”He also emphasized the importance of fully utilizing UNIFIL’s liaison and coordination mechanisms to avoid misunderstandings and reduce the potential for escalation of tension: “Most importantly, these mechanisms must be availed of in a timely manner,” he said.
In particular, the UNIFIL head highlighted the relevance of the Tripartite forum as a necessary confidence-building mechanism that has enabled to de-escalate tensions and maintain the prevailing calm along the Blue Line.
Despite the COVID-19 crisis, he said, UNIFIL’s activities continue at normal levels. “UNIFIL has been, and continues to be, proactive in taking all necessary precautionary measures and strengthening its preparedness efforts in response to the pandemic, as well as in ensuring that our operational capacity to implement our mandated activities is not affected,” he added. Tripartite meetings have been held regularly under the auspices of UNIFIL since the end of the 2006 war in south Lebanon as an essential conflict management and confidence building mechanism."

President Aoun calls on Lebanese to pray in response to Pope Francis and Sheikh al-Azhar’s invitation

NNA/May 14/2020
The President of the Republic, Gen. Michel Aoun, considered that the invitation of the "Supreme Committee for Human Fraternity" to dedicate this day May 14, For prayer, fasting, supplication and charity work, each in its place, according to his religion or belief, so that God protects humanity from the danger of the Corona Pandemic. This initiative is stemming from the heart and conscience, and embraced by care of the Holy Pope Francis and His Eminence the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb. This initiative falls in the core of the goals of the initiative launched by President Aoun and approved by the United Nations General Assembly to establish the "Academy of Humanity for meeting and Dialogue" in Lebanon to contribute to building a human civilization based on acceptance of the others whatever their affiliation and belief are, and on the mutual enrichment by being different, and on the right of diversity as a guarantee. The President of the Republic called on the Lebanese on this day, while the public mobilization have been extended, to participate in the prayer, because it is the shield of believers and non-believer in their longing for the absolute.
The president stressed that the Lebanese who have different affiliations, would have their homeland become a message, as described by the great pope, John Paul II, who after a few days will be celebrating his first centenary anniversary of his birth, and coincides with the centenary anniversary of the creation of Greater Lebanon. The President of the Republic said: “During these difficult and unprecedented circumstances that our country is passing through, let the voices of minarets embrace with the ringing of church bells for the sake of Lebanon and the world, and all the voices who tamper with our national unity, which is the shield of our past, our present and our future, will be silenced, after the wounds of the division and the separation projects almost eliminated our country. Let this day be a new start for all of us, to reject the causes of hatred and inconsistency, and the escape from the logic, rationality and the wisdom , so each one puts his differences aside to restore our internal immunity, which enriches our national unity and establishes our peace that protects our homeland, which we sacrificed the most valuable blood of our young people to protect it.” -----Presidency Press Office

Diab during Cabinet session: Negotiations with IMF starting point for government's financial plan

NNA/May 14/2020
A cabinet session was held today at the Grand Serail under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Hassan Diab. PM first said that the government has embarked on negotiations with the International Monetary Fund yesterday. Such negotiations are the starting point for the government's plan to redress the country's financial situation. God willing, these negotiations will yield satisfactory results for Lebanon in order to alleviate the burden on Lebanese people living in very difficult conditions today. Certainly, we need to keep pace with these negotiations internally, and we hope the process won't take much time. The government is keen on ensuring that the commitment with the IMF program does not put additional pressure on the Lebanese people. Thus, negotiations will be clear-cut, and we will follow up and study all the procedures very carefully.
He then welcomed the invitation of the International Support Group for Lebanon to provide assistance to Lebanon to overcome the current economic, monetary and financial crisis and address the economic, social, security and humanitarian challenges, as well as the repercussions of the Coronavirus pandemic on the country; and the Group's appeal to the international community, including international organizations and financial institutions, to support Lebanon's endeavors address the current crisis.
The Head of the government then highlighted the importance of following the current investigations regarding speculation against the Lebanese pound, which is causing the USD exchange rate to rise and its repercussions on the Lebanese people's livelihoods. The government will certainly not interfere in these investigations in any way. However, the Lebanese people have the right to know the reason for the rise in the price of the dollar, who is manipulating the national currency, who is responsible for this, as well as the background to what is happening. The Lebanese people are definitely awaiting the results of these investigations and we want to complete them to disclose all relevant documentation and all the names of those involved in this case.
PM also noted that the investigations into the adulterated fuel file must reach
decisive results and lead to the arrest of everyone involved in the looting of public funds. He added that the Lebanese will not remain silent in the face of any attempt to straddle the investigations into the files of rising dollar exchange rate and adulterated fuel.
He then added: "Undoubtedly, we are keen on ensuring the transparency of the investigations, and we will not interfere in the probe. But, at the same time, everyone involved should be arrested. No double standard policy shall apply. No one is cock of the walk. We have confidence in the judiciary, and we will be backing all measures that protect the Lebanese and give every accused person the right to defend themselves to prove their innocence. Certainly, we will not tolerate any kind of non-conformity or intentionally malicious behavior."
As for the Coronavirus file, it appears that we are facing again a major challenge, due to the negligence of some people and lack of commitment to precautionary measures and procedures. We will not allow the achievement we have made in containing the epidemic go to waste.
Therefore, if we find out during the new 4-day closure period that epidemic hotspots are a risk of proliferation, we will further extend the closure period. During the closure, the Ministry of Health will conduct spot tests to determine the magnitude of the risk.
In this framework, the Cabinet decided the following:
" The first decision: within the framework of the exceptional and temporary measures required by the state of general mobilization to face the Coronavirus and all related social and economic issues, all illegally inbound or outbound materials and all vehicles used for this purpose shall be confiscated by the Army and the Internal Security Forces. " Secondly, the Cabinet has approved the request of the Ministry of Energy and Water to negotiate understandings with interested companies, based on the Memorandum of Understanding prepared by the Ministry with some amendments, and attached to this decision, which is an integral part of it, and submit a report that includes the result to the Cabinet in order for the plan to be implemented starting at Al-Zahrani. ---Grand Serail Press Office

Berri tackles overall situation with Bukhari, meets Arslan and Kumar
NNA/May 14/2020
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, received this Thursday at his Ain El Tineh residence, the Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Bukhari, with whom he discussed the general situation and the latest political developments in Lebanon and the broad region.
Discussions also reportedly touched on the bilateral relations between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Speaker Berri received this afternoon the World Bank Regional Director of the Mashreq Department, Saroj Kumar Jha, with the current economic and monetary situation featuring high on their talks. This afternoon, Berri welcomed Lebanese Democratic Party leader, MP Talal Arslan, who said that the visit comes amid the extraordinary circumstances endured by Lebanon whether at the socio-economic level and the coronoavirus pandemic. On emerging, MP Arslan said that talks touched on issues related to the Lebanese government’s economic paper, deeming Speaker Berri as a main guarantor for dialogue among the Lebanese, and for getting out of the current crisis that the country is passing through.

Army: Lebanese side demanded inclusion of occupied area B1 in UN resolutions during tripartite meeting
NNA/May 14/2020
The Lebanese army indicated in a communiqué that it had asked for the inclusion of the occupied area B1 in the upcoming international resolutions, during a tripartite meeting at the UN position in Ras Naqoura on Thursday. "An extraordinary tripartite meeting took place before noon today in Ras Naqoura, chaired by UNIFIL Commander Major General Stefano Del Col, in the presence of a delegation of the Lebanese army officers headed by the Lebanese government's commissioner before the UN forces, Brigadier General Hassib Abdo," the communiqué read. "The meeting touched on the latest events that took place along the Blue Line; the Lebanese side reiterated commitment to resolution 1701 and all its provisions," it added. "[The Lebanese side] also highlighted the necessity of the Israeli enemy's withdrawal from the occupied lands adjacent to the northern Blue Line, Shebaa Farms, Kfarshouba Heights, the northern part of Ghajar town, and the occupied area B1. It also stressed on the necessity to include the occupied area B1 in the coming UN reports and resolutions similarly to all of the aforementioned regions under occupation," the communiqué said.

Pope Francis sends USD 200,000 to Lebanon in support for scholarships
NNA /May 14/2020
The Press Office of the Holy See issued Thursday a communiqué announcing that Pope Francis had decided to offer USD 200,000 to Lebanon in support for 400 scholarships.
The communiqué read the following: "His Holiness Pope Francis with fatherly concern has continued to follow in recent months the situation of beloved Lebanon, referred to by Saint John Paul II as the 'Message Country', the place where Benedict XVI promulgated the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, and that has always been an example of the coexistence and fraternity that the Document on Human Fraternity wished to offer to the whole world.
The Land of the Cedars, in this centenary year of 'Greater Lebanon', is experiencing a severe crisis that is causing suffering and poverty, and that risks 'robbing of hope' especially younger generations who see their present as arduous and their future as uncertain. In this context, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that the sons and daughters of the Lebanese people have access to education which, especially in smaller areas, has always been guaranteed by ecclesiastical institutions.
As a tangible sign of his closeness, the Holy Father, through the Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, has decided to send to the Apostolic Nunciature the sum of USD 200,000 to support 400 scholarships, in the hope of achieving a gesture of solidarity and with the desire that all involved at national and international levels will responsibly pursue the search for the common good, overcoming every division and partisan interest. This intervention is in addition to the contribution that the Emergency Fund of the CEC (Congregation for the Eastern Churches) has made in recent days to deal with the emergency linked to the Covid-19 pandemic. May the Mother of God, who watches over Lebanon from Harissa Mountain, protect the Lebanese people, together with the saints of the beloved Land of the Cedars."

Geagea: Defense Council Decision on Illegal Crossings Very Disappointing
Naharnet/May 14/2020
Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea described as “disappointing” the Higher Defense Council’s decision to “curb” smuggling through Lebanon’s illegal border crossings, saying they should have been ordered closed “entirely.”“The Higher Defense Council’s decision on Wednesday was very disappointing. We have heard words like this before and it led to no practical result on the ground,” said Geagea. “A strict and decisive political decision in the government is required for the Lebanese army, internal security forces and all security apparatuses concerned, to entirely close illegal crossings and smuggling between Lebanon and Syria,” he added. Lebanon is losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually as a result, noted Geagea. “What resulted in the meeting of the Higher Defense Council yesterday means "no decision" and more procrastination. In practice it means continuation of losing hundreds of millions of dollars annually due to smuggling operations taking place at a time when Lebanon is begging from abroad for a handful of dollars,” said Geagea. On Wednesday, the Defense Council decided to "intensify monitoring and prosecution and toughen penalties against smugglers and their partners" in a bid to control illicit trafficking across the porous and poorly demarcated border with Syria. It also decided to "devise a comprehensive plan for setting up military, security and customs monitoring posts."

Lebanon: Private Schools in Tough Spot Amid Worsening Economic Crisis
Beirut- Sanaa Al-Jacksharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
About 750,000 students and 60,000 teachers in private schools face an unknown fate amid a worsening economic crisis, which has been further exacerbated by forced disruption measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
While parents complain that private schools expect them to pay the tuition in full at the risk of not registering their children for the next academic year, the administrations of most schools stressed their inability to maintain work unless the state takes initiatives in this regard. In remarks to Asharq Al-Awsat, Education Minister Tarek al-Majzoub said: “The economic situation in Lebanon coincided with the coronavirus crisis, which has greatly affected the educational sector.”He emphasized that parents were facing a dire financial situation, while teachers and administrators should not be left to bear additional burdens.
“It is our duty to work to secure their salaries. Therefore, we held several meetings with all educational partners in order to reach solutions, and a joint statement was signed to ensure the sustainability of education,” he revealed. He continued: “We are working on several tracks to develop public education in Lebanon because we believe in the public sector and value its efficiency. The doors of public schools are open to everyone. We are working on an educational emergency plan that will see the light soon.”On the other hand, Secretary-General of Catholic Schools, Father Boutros Azar, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the economic crisis was not something new. “We have been warning about it since 2012… and we have demanded fair salaries. Today, some parents are unable to pay the tuition fees, while others, who are more privileged, abstain from paying. We have reached a dead end and we cannot continue,” Azar warned, saying that four Catholic schools have closed so far.

Lebanon charges 12 people including officials over tainted fuel
AFP/Thursday 14 May 2020
A Lebanese prosecutor on Wednesday pressed charges against 12 people including government officials over a delivery of suspect fuel through an Algerian oil company, state media said. The “tainted fuel” case made headlines in March when Lebanon refused to receive a fuel shipment from a subsidiary of Algerian state company Sonatrach to be used in Lebanon’s electricity sector. The delivery was found to be “non-compliant” with Lebanese standards, contrary to official reports. Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Ghada Aoun on Wednesday charged 12 people over the case, the National News Agency reported.
They included the general manager of the Lebanese Electricity Company Kamal Hayek, for negligence of duty. The Ministry of Energy and Water’s chief of oil installations, Sarkis Hlaiss, and director of oil, Aurore Feghaly were charged for bribes and negligence of duty, it said.
Aoun last month ordered shut the offices of ZR Energy, which acted as intermediary to bring it into Lebanon. Arrest warrants have already been issued for Feghaly and the Sonatrach representative Tarek Fawal, as well as for laboratory workers alleged to have tested fuel samples and provided false reports.
More arrest warrants were issued in absentia for Hlaiss as well as ZR Energy head Teddy Rahme, general manager Ibrahim al-Zouk and another of the company’s employees. On May 6, the judiciary questioned former energy ministers Nada Boustani, member of the president’s Free Patriotic Movement, and Hezbollah’s Mohammad Fneich. In statement by its Lebanese subsidiary, Sonatrach said the media had targeted it with a “malicious and systematic campaign” of defamation. The company, which said it had been providing fuel to the Lebanese electricity sector since 2005, said it was “not responsible... for any violation, crime, offense or any alleged transgression that could have occurred to any fuel shipment.”In Algeria, meanwhile, a presidential spokesman said an investigation had been ordered into the matter, but that “Algeria as a state was not involved in such acts.”
He said it was first and foremost a Lebanese case.

Prosecutor orders arrest of BDL’s director of monetary operations
Annahar Staff /May 15/2020
The arrest warrant of Mazen Hamdan was issued late Thursday night, with Ibrahim accusing him to “manipulating the lira exchange rate.”
BEIRUT: Lebanon's Financial Prosecutor Ali Ibrahim has ordered the arrest of the central bank’s director of monetary operations. The arrest warrant of Mazen Hamdan was issued late Thursday night, reports said, with Ibrahim accusing him of “manipulating the lira exchange rate.” Last week, Mahmoud Mrad, head of the Syndicate of Money Changers in Lebanon, was arrested along with several others “after an investigation into money changers selling in an illegal manner.”

Int’l Support Group Calls for Engaging Lebanese People in Reform Plan Talks
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
The International Support Group for Lebanon has urged the Lebanese Government to engage all relevant stakeholders, mainly the people, in consultations on its economic recovery plan. In a statement it said Wednesday that it takes due note of the Lebanese Government’s unanimous adoption of its Financial Recovery Plan as a constructive framework for future reforms as well as its decision to request an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program as a “first step in the right direction.”“The ISG also takes due note of the assessment by the World Bank that the plan recognizes the nature and depth of the crisis, the necessary structural reforms and adjustments needed to ensure a vibrant economy with sustainable growth and productive sectors, in a business climate and conditions favorable for private sector development and the prosperity of the Lebanese people,” said the statement. “Recognizing the importance of domestic political support necessary for successful conduct and rapid completion of negotiations with the IMF, the ISG encourages the Government of Lebanon to engage all relevant stakeholders, most importantly the Lebanese people in consultations on the contents of the plan and ways to expedite its implementation.” The statement also said that the Group encourages the Lebanese Government and parliament for joint action in creating the necessary conditions for timely implementation of the needed reforms and to ensure full transparency and accountability as called for by the people. It expressed support to Lebanon to help it overcome its economic, monetary, and fiscal crisis and to address economic, social, security, humanitarian challenges, as well as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic facing the country. It called upon the international community, including international organizations and financial institutions, to support Lebanon as it seeks to address its crisis. “The ISG notes with concern the worsening economic situation, the growing poverty and the hardships on the population. It encourages the Government to remain committed to protect the rapidly growing number of poor and vulnerable segments of the population and encourages the Government to quickly finalize all necessary measures to unlock additional external financial assistance to address the increasingly dire humanitarian needs of the population,” said the statement. The ISG also reaffirmed the need for internal stability and the right to peaceful protect to be protected.

Trilateral Move in East Syria to Block 'Tehran-Beirut' Road
London, Washington- Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
The US, Russia, and Israel are pushing to block a strategic road corridor between Tehran and Beirut, passing through Baghdad and Damascus and which is used by Iran to transport ammunitions and arms to its allies, particularly Hezbollah.
Sources with knowledge of the matter told the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that three powers, Israel, the International Coalition, and Russia, are operating as an indirect coalition that seeks to block the Tehran-Beirut international highway and remove the Iranians from the Syrian desert.
It said a delegation from Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) met with commanders of “Maghawir al-Thawra Forces” and “al-Nukhba Forces” operating in Al-Tanaf area in the Syrian desert to discuss coordinating advances of these forces into the desert, as well as carrying out military operations, backed by the International Coalition, against the Iranian forces and loyal militias in order to block the Tehran-Beirut international highway in Syria. During the meeting, participants agreed that “Maghawir al-Thawra” and “al-Nukhba” forces would advance at the beginning under the pretext of fighting ISIS.
The Observatory said the issue of launching military operations depends mainly on the results of Russia’s attempts to persuade Iran to pull out its forces and loyal militias from the desert and replace them with Russian-backed forces.
The alternative forces are supposed to comprise tribal factions and ex-fighters who have struck reconciliation deals with security services. According to the Britain-based watchdog, if Russia fails to persuade the Iranians to retreat from the desert, a military solution comes to the fore and a ground operation will be carried out. “There is a specialist network whose task is to collect information and geographic coordinates of Iranian targets and positions in “al-Shamiyyah” area. This network is affiliated directly to Israel and the International Coalition, while at the same time it has an indirect reporting line to Russia,” it said.
US forces conduct reconnaissance tours and pay intensive and daily visits to SDF positions on the banks of Euphrates River. In return, the Observatory wrote that the Iranians have formed a strong line of defense along the desert, from the Boukamal near the Iraqi-Syrian border to the south of Deir Ezzor city. “SOHR activists have reported seeing large military reinforcement being delivered to Iranian-backed militias, via Al-Bokamal crossing. A group of this reinforcement was transported in civilian buses to evade detection,” it said, adding that Iranian forces have boosted several positions in Al-Mayadeen desert, the Mahakan desert, Al-Quriyyah desert, Al-Wa’er desert and other positions in the western countryside of Deir Ezzor. On Tuesday, US special representative for Syria, James Jeffrey said the Trump administration's "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions had crippled Iran's economy, forcing the government to withdraw some of its forces and militias from Syria. Meanwhile, Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address Wednesday that Israel set to itself a target, part of which is related to the Syrian missile capabilities, adding that Hezbollah would not withdraw from Syria.

Hezbollah, ally embroiled in Lebanon’s ‘defective fuel’ scandal as electricity fails
Lauren Holtmeier, Al Arabiya English/Thursday 14 May 2020
Hezbollah and its Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) allies have become embroiled in a “defective fuel” scandal in Lebanon, despite the two parties initially promoting the case to try and deflect blame for their failure to bring 24/7 electricity to the country.
Lebanon’s defective fuel scandal began with allegations that bribes and gifts were accepted to unload inadequate fuel delivered by Algerian state-owned company Sonatrach, but has quickly turned into a political scandal as parties accuse each other for their involvement.
Central to the scandal are the FPM and Hezbollah, who have for decades controlled Lebanon’s Ministry of Energy and Water, which still fails to provide 24-hour power to citizens.
On March 25, a fuel shipment arrived in Lebanon from Sonatrach that was refused after it appeared the fuel did not meet the criteria stipulated in the contract.
Shortly after, an FPM-aligned lawyer filed a complaint with the Lebanese judiciary, launching an investigation. The lawyer, Wadih Akl, is a member of the FPM Political Bureau, according to his Twitter account. As of now, 12 people, including government officials from the energy ministry, have been charged.
The FPM, which says it exposed the case, has long controlled the energy ministry, and questions have been raised as to how those high up in the ministry were unaware of the gifts and bribes.
Hezbollah, whose minister signed the original contract for the fuel, is attempting to use oil companies as the scapegoat for institutional failures, according to several MPs and political sources who spoke to Al Arabiya English.
Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri said that Hezbollah was supporting Bassil’s latest attempts to place the blame for his failures on others. Late last month, Hariri said that it was Bassil who racked up $42 billion in losses for the state in the electricity sector during the FPM’s control of the ministry.
Read more: Coronavirus: The US will not fund Lebanon's Hezbollah-run hospitals, says official
The case dates back to a contract signed between Lebanon’s government and Sonatrach in 2005 to import fuel to generate electricity beginning in 2006, under then Energy Minister Mohamed Fneish, a Hezbollah minister.
Lebanon’s ramshackle electricity sector continues to drain the country’s annual budget deficit of an estimated $1.2-$1.8 billion, while still utilizing diesel fuel oil – which is more costly and environmentally harsh than other energy sources – for its power plants. In some areas, state-run power only provides a few hours of electricity today, and citizens are forced to rely on costly generators to make up the rest.
The contract, withheld from the public for years under a provision saying it was not to be released, recently was leaked and local outlet Lebanon 24 reported on the contract, which lays out specifications, the level at which fuel will be accepted and rejected, and the method of testing.
Sonatrach and ZR Energy
Despite the FPM’s attempts to take credit for the investigation into the scandal, a second company headed by Teddy Rahmeh – who is reportedly close with the FPM’s Bassil – has also been charged in connection with the scandal.
Rahmeh, who denies allegations he is close to Bassil, runs ZR Energy.
ZR Energy SAL Holding (ZR Energy) is 50 percent owned by ZR Group, founded by Teddy and Raymond Rahmeh in Lebanon in 2005, according to the country’s commercial registry.
Judge Ghada Aoun – who Wadih Akl has filed multiple cases to, including complaints over social media posts critical of FPM leader Gebran Bassil – has charged ZR Energy in connection with the scandal, and authorities raided the offices of ZR Group on May 2. ZR Energy won a contract in December 2019 to supply 150,000 tons of fuel on an emergency basis.
Teddy Rahmeh has failed to appear for questioning, despite the issuance of an arrest warrant in his name, while Ibrahim Zaouk, ZR Energy’s CEO, has likewise been issued with an arrest warrant.
Zaouk is also connected to a Dubai-based company, ZR Energy DMCC.
Despite the similar name, Lebanon’s ZR Group has issued an announcement noting that while its offices were raided in relation to ZR Energy, the Dubai-based firm is wholly separate from the group, noting that company is “fully owned by Mr. Ibrahim Zaouk.”
ZR Energy DMCC and ZR Energy issued statements, declaring that the former company has no contractual relationship with the Lebanese government concerning the provision of fuel oil.
In the statement, released on its website, ZR Energy DMCC says the company has supplied Sonatrach, in connection with “Sonatrach’s government-to-government agreement with the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water since 2018.” Sonatrach has been providing fuel since 2005 on a three-year renewable contract basis, with the next renewal set for December this year.
“ZR Energy DMCC takes no responsibility for the fuel cargo that was proven to be off specification upon discharge at the Lebanese ports,” the statement read.
Testing company Bureau Veritas “acted as an independent third party,” issuing a certificate of quality following the loading of fuel at the port of Augusta Italy, it added.
This process confirms “that throughout the time ZR Energy DMCC handled the cargo, it was on-specification,” the statement alleges.
Following the delivery of the flawed fuel, Sonatrach has backtracked, ZR Energy DMCC said.
“It is ZR Energy DMCC’s understanding that, as a gesture of good faith, Sonatrach has acknowledged the defective cargo and offered to replace the cargo at no cost to the Lebanese government,” ZR Energy’s statement said.
However, this offer only applies to the most recent shipment, a source told Al Arabiya English.
“Therefore, ZR Energy DMCC has taken steps to suspend its contractual relationship with the original seller of the cargo until further tests can prove that the quality of the cargo from source was to the specification required, and is considering all options, including launching legal proceedings against such original seller,” the statement on ZR Energy’s website said.
ZR Energy in Lebanon has not yet responded to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, Algeria said it would begin an investigation into the matter.
“The issue of Sonatrach’s involvement in financing a commercial deal with Lebanon is primarily a Lebanese problem,” said a spokesperson for the Algerian president according to Algerian media reports.
Fuel scandal becomes political
The case has now seen over 12 people, including government officials that work under the Energy Ministry, charged over the latest fuel shipment. Fneish and Nada Boustani, the FPM-appointed energy minister in the last government, both appeared for questioning. Boustani was also a longtime adviser in the ministry dating back to 2009, when FPM leader Gebran Bassil was the energy minister.
AFP reported that warrants had also been issued for general manager of the Lebanese Electricity Company Kamal Hayek for negligence of duty. The ministry’s chief of oil installations, Sarkis Hlaiss, and director of oil, Aurore Feghaly were charged for bribes and negligence of duty. Sonatrach’s Tarek Fawal was also issued an arrest warrant, as were lab workers who allegedly provided false reports on fuel samples.
For her part, Boustani, who now says she is a “Free Patriotic Movement Activist,” noted that it was the FPM who exposed the defective fuel case. She claimed that when she was at the ministry, she never received information or test results that said the imported fuel did not meet the necessary criteria.
Hlaiss was staunchly defended in a press conference by Sleiman Frangieh, the head of a former Christian militia. Although Frangieh and Bassil are both pro-Syria and pro-Hezbollah, the former is seen as a threat to Bassil’s ambition to succeed his father-in-law and Lebanese president, Michel Aoun.
Aoun beat Frangieh in the 2016 presidential elections after Hezbollah, the Lebanese Forces, Future Movement, and Amal Movement reached an agreement to elect Aoun, despite the constant political bickering between the political parties.
Frangieh lambasted Bassil and Aoun’s presidential term, holding them accountable for the decrepit situation Lebanon has reached.
Frangieh also said Hlaiss would appear in front of the judiciary, but not “Gebran Bassil’s” court, in reference to Ghada Aoun. Frangieh called the lawsuit “politically motivated.” It is unclear how much impact the latest developments will have on Frangieh’s relationship with Hezbollah.

Indicators of Fear Over Lebanon’s Fate

Hanna Saleh/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
The lid on corruption files has been blown wide open and numbers have been tumbling on heads. 350 million US dollars in bribes, on average, have been paid every year in the fuel import business, 3.5 billion USD in the last ten years. The Governor of the Central Bank revealed substantial inflation in the price imports and announced that since 2015, the volume of smuggling has reached 4 billion USD a year, adding up to around 20 billion USD in the last five years, all spent to support the Syrian regime.
Everybody is watching televised videos of the smuggling, across around 126 illegal ports, all under Hezbollah’s supervision. Among the commodities smuggled was fuel that was 85% subsidized by the Central Bank and equally subsidized wheat. Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper, Al-Akhbar, has “volunteered” to clarify that the wheat that was smuggled is only “soft wheat needed to produce tourist bread”!! It is being said that the Syrian regime is accumulating these strategic imports before the US implements the new sanctions against Syria as per the Caesar Law! The result is that the dollars left in the Central Bank are being drained while the pockets of government and cartel mobsters are pumped, with the “mini-state” providing a part of funding them.
Press conference after press conference has been held to absolve Hezbollah and throw the responsibility on the “other”. The government is the most prominent absentee in the scene, with no ability to practice its authority and no capacity to manage the crisis, only an infiltrated front. It appears unconcerned with the events that have deepened the collapse and worsened bankruptcy.
The government has launched a deceptive campaign concerning the success of the “official strategy” against coronavirus, while the Prime Minister and his cabinet repeatedly discuss global admiration of the Lebanese “experience” in “overcoming” the virus. Suddenly, this gave way to easing the lockdown and the issuing of a timetable for the gradual reopening of institutions and jobs. The people, who were in quarantine and whose money is confiscated in the banks, believed this and traffic started to return. What is hideous is that some state institutions also believed the lie. The second phase of repatriation resembled the early stages of the pandemic, when the airport was still open and the infection was allowed to spread, as crowded planes returned, one by one, with passengers crammed, amid reports that there were positive cases among them. Subsequently, the infection spread as a result of this repatriation that was not accompanied by a mandatory quarantine. Concomitantly, news about very few daily tests being done also spread while citizens were held responsible and the government reinstated strict lockdown measures on the evening of the 13th of this month until the morning of the 18th without an accompanying increase in testing.
What is funny, in this context, is that nobody questioned the relevant body for easing the lockdown. Whose opinion matters, and who makes the decisions? What are the relevant considerations? Are they politicians and economists or doctors and epidemiologists? In France, for example, the National Assembly announced an easing of the lockdown based on 32 indicators set by scientists and experts delineating the conditions for reinstating the lockdown. If we wanted to seriously compare how the world has dealt with the pandemic we would clearly see that there was a lack of vision based on the incompetence of amateurs who are unfortunately in decision-making positions, aggravating desperation and fear over the fate of citizens and the country.
On April 30, the government/ front issued the so-called “monetary recovery” plan. Those who drafted this plan were careful to meet all of the conditions usually set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), including floating the exchange rate, freezing salaries, which have already been substantially reduced, reducing pensions, freezing employment while unemployment rates exceed 50% of those who are in the age of employment, and all sorts of austerity measures to reduce the consumption bill to improve the balance-of-payment, etc.. The plan stipulated that the share of salaries and pensions will be reduced from 31% to around 10%. In other words, it stipulated to destroy the lives of the majority of Lebanese.
Let us stop and examine some aspects of this. The collapse and bankruptcy, and then the pandemic and the requirements of quarantine, reveal how the government is only nominally addressing these crises and the extent of the primitiveness of the measures that were taken to support those whom the government considered the most impoverished. Indeed, it ignored the majority of the Lebanese, who need protection. Before the pandemic, the IMF predicted that poverty levels would exceed 50%, yet it wanted to put the burden on the public without any horizon for what the situation in Lebanon would be like in five years. The plan that is being negotiated with the IMF indeed includes an audit of the financial losses that have been incurred for decades, and this is new and important. However, it lacks a real survey of what the state possesses but is not included in its revenues, and it also did not mention the volume of thievery and looting that has taken place over the last decades and is still ongoing through blatant deals and smuggling! There appears to be no serious endeavor to retrieve what belongs to the state and, by extension, to the Lebanese people.
One of the most prominent shortcomings of this “financial recovery” plan is that it entirely ignores what is most important, that many of the state’s faculties are subdued by a mini-state, and what mini-state is that? The Hezbollah mini-state classified as a terrorist organization by the countries that are most influential on the IMF’s decisions. The US alone has 17 votes, and with its allies like the United Kingdom and Germany, it garners more than 50 votes. How will things play out when Lebanon is requesting a 10 billion USD loan from the IMF while everyone watched convoys smuggle fuel, wheat, and dollars to Syria and it was revealed that some of the speculators on the Lebanese pound were Iranian money converters who were assigned to drain dollars from the Lebanese market for the Iranian mullahs!
With the new developments in the region, especially the crisis that the Shiite Crescent project has suffered, the changes taking place in Iraq, and the tactical withdrawals of Iran-led factions from Syria, Lebanon cannot be on a path toward recovery with the borders remaining unmonitored and sovereignty being repeatedly violated. In fact, taking back sovereignty is necessary to fight corruption and retrieve looted money. It is no longer possible to ignore the truth that the threat of the large collapse that looms over Lebanon and threatens its existence is primarily caused by political choices that were imposed on the country. When the October Revolution proposes a transition phase led by a government independent of sectarian and corrupt parties, it is actually highlighting that the problem is primarily political and that only a political solution would clear the way for economic solutions and actual rescue and recovery.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on May 14-15/2020
U.S. envoy threatens to trigger return of U.N. sanctions on Iran
Michelle Nichols, Humeyra Pamuk/Reuters/May 14/2020
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States publicly threatened on Wednesday to trigger a return of all United Nations sanctions on Iran if the U.N. Security Council does not extend an arms embargo on Tehran that is due to expire in October under the Iran nuclear deal.
U.S. special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, confirmed the strategy two weeks after a U.S. official, speaking on condition anonymity, said the United States had told Britain, France and Germany of its plan. Hook wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “one way or another” Washington would ensure the arms embargo remains. He said the United States has drafted a Security Council resolution and “will press ahead with diplomacy and build support.”A resolution needs nine yes votes and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, France or Britain to be adopted by the 15-member Security Council. Russia has already signaled it is opposed to extending the arms embargo. “If American diplomacy is frustrated by a veto, however, the U.S. retains the right to renew the arms embargo by other means,” Hook wrote, citing the ability of a party to the Iran nuclear deal to trigger a so-called snapback of all U.N. sanctions on Iran, which includes the arms embargo. Tehran was given sanctions relief under a 2015 deal with the United States, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France that prevents Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The deal allowed for a return of sanctions if Iran violated the deal.
U.S. President Donald Trump quit the agreement in 2018, saying the accord from Barack Obama’s presidency as “the worst deal ever.” But Washington argues it can trigger a return of U.N. sanctions because a 2015 Security Council resolution enshrining the deal still names the U.S. as a participant.
“This is ridiculous,” Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told reporters on Tuesday. “They are not members, they have no right to trigger.”Diplomats say the United States would likely face a tough, messy battle if it tries to spark a return of sanctions, though it was not immediately clear how or if a Security Council member could stop such a move. Iran has breached several central limits of the deal, including on its stock of enriched uranium, in response to the U.S. withdrawal and Washington’s reimposition of sanctions that have slashed Iran’s oil exports. Britain, France and Germany are trying to save the deal, but have made little progress.
*Writing by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Michael Perry

US weighs measures in response to Iran fuel shipment to Venezuela: Reports
Al Arabiya/May 14/2020
The United States is considering measures it could take in response to Iran’s shipment of fuel to crisis-stricken Venezuela, a senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration told Reuters on Thursday.
The United States has a “high degree of certainty” that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government is paying Iran tons of gold for the fuel, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is not only unwelcome by the United States but it’s unwelcome by the region, and we’re looking at measures that can be taken,” the official said. The oil sectors of Iran and Venezuela - members of OPEC that both are deeply at odds with the United States - are under tough US sanctions..The official declined to specify the measures being weighed but said options would be presented to Trump, a fierce critic of the governments of both Iran and Venezuela. At least one tanker carrying fuel loaded at an Iranian port has set sail for Venezuela, according to vessel tracking data from Refinitiv Eikon on Wednesday, which could help ease an acute scarcity of gasoline in the South American country.
The Iran-flagged medium tanker Clvel earlier on Wednesday passed the Suez Canal after loading fuel at the end of March at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, according to the data. Venezuela is in desperate need of gasoline and other refined fuel products to keep the country functioning amid an economic collapse that has occurred under the socialist Maduro. It produces crude oil but its infrastructure has been crippled during the economic crisis. Neither Venezuela’s oil ministry nor state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) responded to requests for comment. The shipment marks the latest sign of cooperation between Iran and Venezuela. Starting last month, several flights from Tehran have brought materials to Venezuela to help it restart the catalytic cracking unit at its 310,000 barrel-per-day Cardon refinery, drawing US condemnation. Venezuela’s 1.3 million-bpd refining network has all but collapsed due to under-investment and lack of maintenance.Last year, the United States imposed sanctions on PDVSA as part of Trump administration efforts to oust Maduro, whose 2018 re-election was considered a sham by most Western countries.The United States and dozens of other nations recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president last year. But Maduro, who calls Guaido a US puppet, remains in power, backed by Venezuela’s military as well as Russia, China, Cuba and Iran - a growing source of frustration for Trump, according to some US officials.
The United States also maintains punishing sanctions on Iran aimed at containing its regional power in the Middle East, measures that were re-imposed after Trump pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Tehran.
Four other vessels of the same size as the Clavel, all flagged by Iran and loaded with fuel at or near Bandar Abbas, are about to cross the Atlantic Ocean after passing Suez. They have not yet set their final destinations, data showed. One of them, the Fortune, appears on a list of tankers scheduled to enter Venezuelan port, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Opposition politicians also said they had received information that all five tankers were heading to Venezuela. All five are bringing gasoline, according to Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, a service that tracks oil shipments and storage. Madani said the vessels loaded at Berths 1 and 2 at the Shahid Rajaee port at Bandar Abbas, according to the service’s satellite imagery. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month called on countries to deny overflight rights to Mahan Air, an Iranian airline under US sanctions, which he said delivered cargoes of “unknown support” to the Venezuelan government.

Iran building new tunnel at Imam Ali base in east Syria: Satellite images
Ismaeel Naar, Al Arabiya English/Thursday 14 May 2020
Iran is currently building an underground storage facility capable of handling advanced weapons systems at the Imam Ali military base in Albukamal, eastern Syria, new satellite images show. The satellite images captured by ImageSat international (ISI) May 12, a commercial provider of satellite imagery services, showed construction work at the base located 5 km west of the Iraqi border. The satellite images show bulldozers at the entrance of a 4-5 meter wide tunnel entrance northwest of the Imam Ali base. “The tunnel is estimated to be 4-5 meters wide, while its length is unknown. Due to the terrain, ISI asses that the tunnel will not be significantly long,” ISI said in its assessment of the images. “The construction of the new tunnel signifies Iran’s commitment to further developing its military presence in this area, despite repeated attacks. The tunnel is fit to be used as a shelter and storage for trucks and vehicles including vehicles carrying advanced missile weapon systems,” ISI added in its assessment. The Imam Ali base was struck by US bombardment on March 11 where at least 18 fighters from the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Unit (PMU) militia umbrella group were killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights at the time. The new satellite images from ISI show a first tunnel south of the new construction site now abandoned since that March attack. Images from ISI come as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Wednesday that Israel is now concentrating its attacks in Syria on missile-manufacturing sites.
Israel has conducted many raids inside Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011. It sees the presence of Hezbollah and its ally Iran there as a strategic threat.(With agencies)

Iran sentences young Christian woman to 10 lashes, three months in prison
Emily Judd, Al Arabiya English/Thursday 14 May 2020
Iran has sentenced a young Christian woman to 10 lashes and three months in prison for allegedly demonstrating against the military’s downing of a Ukrainian airplane in January.
Mary Mohammadi, 21, was arrested in Tehran on January 12 and charged with “disrupting public order by participating in an illegal rally,” according to nonprofit Christian watchdog Article 18.
Mohammadi said she was subjected to torture while being detained in Evin prison and Qarchak Women’s Prison for 46 days.
“I was forced to endure all kinds of torture, none of which is sanctioned by law, and which ought to be considered crimes in themselves,” said Mohammadi in a post on Twitter.
Iran’s largest women’s prison, Qarchak is known for its “unbearable conditions, including regular assaults and inappropriate behavior of prison guards towards women, chronic lack of water, unsanitary living spaces, and an environment that enables rape and murder,” said US official Brian Hook during a special briefing in December.
Mohammadi was sentenced on April 21, according to Article 18, who reported the judge at the court hearing repeatedly asked Mohammadi about her Christian faith.
Mohammadi said she is being punished for “protesting against the slaughter of human beings” and for “showing sympathy for all the families who perished on the Ukraine airline crash.”
Flight PS752, a Ukrainian International Airlines airliner, was shot down outside Tehran on January 8, killing all 176 people on board.
Iranian officials initially claimed the plane had crashed due to a technical error and invited countries that lost citizens to help investigate.
Three days later, Iran admitted responsibility for shooting down the plane, saying its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) mistook the plane for a “hostile target.” The admission came after Western leaders said there was strong evidence the plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile.
The plane’s passengers included 63 Canadians, 82 Iranians, and others from Ukraine, Sweden, Afghanistan, Germany and the UK.
After Tehran’s admission, protests erupted across the country in support of the victims. Mohammadi said in a social media post she is “proud of sympathizing with human beings” and that her sentencing is the cost of that.
Mohammadi is just one of many young Iranians who have been sentenced to time behind bars for protesting against the IRGC shooting down the civilian airliner. Just after Mohammadi’s judgment, two other Iranian students were sentenced to prison time for participating in the January protests.
Iran’s judiciary announced on January 14 it had arrested about 30 protesters in relation to the "illegal rallies."
“Around 30 people have been arrested for taking part in illegal gatherings ... We have tolerance towards legal rallies,” said spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili, the Iranian semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.
Mohammadi, whose sentence has been suspended for one year, has decided not to appeal against the verdict, according to Article 18.
“We have refrained from appealing against the verdict because the appeal courts have turned into confirmation courts!” Mohammadi said in a statement to Article 18.
US President Donald Trump mentioned the case against Mohammadi during a speech at the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, in February

Iran building new weapons storage at military base in eastern Syria, satellite images show
Trey Yingst, Yonat Friling/Fox News/May 14/2020
JERUSALEM - Iran is building a new tunnel at the Imam Ali military base in Eastern Syria capable of storing advanced weapons systems, according to satellite images and analysis obtained by Fox News.
Images captured on May 12 show bulldozers at the entrance of the structure that is estimated to be around 15 feet wide. Satellite shots from April 1 show an excavator and bulldozers near where the new construction took place. Intelligence analysis conducted by Image Sat International (ISI), a civilian satellite company, indicates the tunnel is fit to be used for the storage of vehicles carrying advanced weapons systems. This conclusion was drawn from looking at similar tunnels that were dug over the past nine months on the same complex. One such tunnel, two miles away, was bombed in March, forcing the Iranians to abruptly stop construction. Fox News was first to report the existence of this Iranian military base in September 2019, citing multiple Western intelligence sources. The compound, that sits along the Iraq/Syria border, was targeted with airstrikes less than a week later.
The Israeli military has struck numerous Iranian-linked sites in Syria over the past two years, but has not acknowledged recent attacks against the Imam Ali base. Although reports this month say Israeli defense officials believe Iran is reducing its footprint in Syria, analysts at ISI say the construction of the new tunnel shows Iran plans to continue operating in this area.
*Trey Yingst currently serves as a Jerusalem-based general assignment reporter for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined the network in August 2018.

Washington Seeks Extending Iran Arms Embargo

New York - Ali Barada/ Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
Marking two years since US President Donald Trump pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action JCPOA, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, Washington has stepped up its diplomatic efforts to extend the arms embargo on Iran. According to the nuclear deal and UN Resolution 2231, the arms embargo would be lifted in November. Diplomats and officials at the UN, interviewed by Asharq Al-Awsat, said the US administration left no room for doubt that it would not allow the Iranian regime to return to importing deadly weapons that are used to "destabilize" Gulf region and the Middle East. Officials confirmed that the US will work on drafting a new resolution for voting in the UN Security Council before the deadline in October 2020. Fearing that China or Russia may veto the resolution, the US will seek to trigger the “snapback” provision in the 2015 Security Council resolution endorsing the nuclear deal, which would restore all UN sanctions against Iran that had been lifted or eased under the terms of the agreement. Europeans acknowledge the dangers of the ballistic missiles file and Iran’s role in sabotaging peace in the Middle East, but they consider that applying pressure on the mullah regime must go in parallel to preserving the nuclear deal. The US considers that impossible. Iran has been under an arms embargo since March 2007 under Resolution 1747. This was renewed in 2010 by Resolution 1929. These decisions were passed unanimously at the time. US diplomats working on Iran say that lifting the arms embargo five years after Resolution 2231 "was a big mistake." Anthony Miranda, Counselor for Public Affairs at the US Mission to the United Nations, told Asharq Al Awsat that the Iranian regime spends public money on matters that do not benefit Iranians. Miranda noted that Tehran constantly violates Resolution 2231, noting that Iran fires ballistic missiles against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, continues to arm Houthi insurgents in Yemen and funds the Hezbollah terrorist organization.

Iraq Launches New Anti-ISIS Operation in Kirkuk

Kirkuk - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
Iraq's Security Media Cell reported that military and security forces kicked off on Wednesday a security operation to track down ISIS elements in areas under Kirkuk (250 km north of Baghdad).In it's report it said the new operation comes in line with efforts to "boost security and stability in the area." ISIS elements are active in Kirkuk and continuously carry out attacks against civilians, security and military forces in the province. Meanwhile, a United Nations (UN) committee conducting investigations into ISIS crimes in Iraq has reported making “significant progress in finding new evidence.”
The progress made was attributed mainly to telephone data, according to a statement by the committee’s chairman. In the fourth annual report presented on Monday to the Security Council and obtained by AFP on Tuesday, the chief investigator of the team, Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, praised the Iraqi authorities’ cooperation with his team that “allowed for recording cellular phones’ communications data” from the Iraqi companies. The committee’s chairman clarified in his report that this cooperation allowed for collecting different data from cellular phones, subscriber identification cards and information storage used by ISIS. He considers that these statements can accelerate the judicial investigations targeting members in the terrorist organization suspected of having committed crimes against different parties in Iraq. In his report, the chairman specifically referred to attacks committed in August 2014 against the Yazidi minority in the Sinjar region, stressing that the investigation committee had reached “more than two million call records” and geographical location information. The committee chairman said that thanks to financial contributions from the UK, Northern Ireland and the US, the UN investigators will be able to consider new crimes suspected of being committed against different religious sects in Iraq. The committee, established by the UN Security Council in 2017, currently has 129 members from around the world, 49 per cent of whom are women. According to AFP, the UN considers that the massacres committed against the Yazidis in Iraq are classified as genocide. ISIS which was defeated in Iraq in late 2017, left more than two hundred mass graves, which may contain up to 12 thousand bodies, according to the UN.

Likud rebellion delays Knesset swearing-in
Jerusalem Post/May 14/2020
Netanyahu was supposed to announce the list of his cabinet ministers at 6 p.m. Thursday evening and they were supposed to be sworn in later at night.
The swearing in of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz's new government will be delayed until Sunday, Netanyahu and Gantz announced on Thursday evening.
The delay came due to the logjam of ministerial hopefuls in Likud.
Netanyahu was supposed to announce the list of his cabinet ministers at 6 p.m. Thursday evening and they were supposed to be sworn in later at night.
But Likud ministers complained about the portfolios they were offered by Netanyahu. They also complained that the head of the Likud's negotiating team, outgoing tourism minister Yariv Levin, did not leave the party enough portfolios after coalition deals with other factions in the Knesset.
Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi and Deputy Defense Minister Avi Dichter, were not invited to meet with Netanyahu about their next roles, announced that they would boycott the vote of confidence in the government that had been set for late Thursday night.
"I guess I am not needed in the Knesset, so Shabbat shalom," Hanegbi wrote on social media. Dichter said by not inviting him, Netanyahu was "spitting in the face of the 130,000 Likud members" who voted for him.
Likud ministers who have complained about what they were offered included Gila Gamliel, David Amsalem, Ze'ev Elkin, Nir Barkat and Yoav Galant.
"Those who flattered Netanyahu got jobs and those who are professionals and have done their job well have come up empty," a Likud minister was quoted as saying.
Netanyahu did promote two ministers considered very close to him. Outgoing Justice Minister Amir Ohana will be public security minister. Outgoing Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev will be transportation minister in the first half of the term and despite her poor English, foreign minister in the second half.
Gantz rescinded his resignation from his role as Knesset speaker after the vote on a new Knesset speaker and the swearing in of the government were delayed.
Gantz made history on Thursday, when he told MK Pnina Tamano-Shata that she will become the first Ethiopian-born minister in Israel's history.
Tamano-Shata, who will be minister of immigrant absorption, came to Israel in Operation Moses when she was three years old. Gantz took part in the operation.
The highest-ranking woman in Blue and White, MK Miki Haimovich, will not be a minister at the start of the government. Gantz met with Haimovich on Thursday morning and offered her ministerial posts, but she told him she preferred to head the Knesset's Interior and Environmental Affairs Committee.
Haimovich, a former news anchor, has focused on environmental issues, but the Likud insisted on keeping the Environmental Protection portfolio because of the Likud's opposition to Haimovich's views.
Gantz appointed MK Alon Schuster as Agriculture Minister on Thursday morning. Schuster is a farmer from Kibbutz Mefalsim and former mayor of the Shaar Hanegev regional council. MK Chili Tropper was appointed by Gantz as the minister of culture and sports in the upcoming government.
As expected, when Gantz met with MK Gabi Ashkenazi, he officially gave him the Foreign Affairs portfolio, and when meeting MK Avi Nisenkorn, he gave him the Justice Ministry.
Gantz gave the Science and Technology portfolio to MK Izhar Shai, a former hi-tech executive. Gantz appointed MK Meirav Cohen as social equality minister. As part of her duties she will be in charge of protecting the rights of Holocaust survivors.
Cohen will replace the current minister in that office, Gila Gamliel.
MK Assaf Zamir will be tourism minister, MK Orit Farkash Hacohen strategic affairs minister and Omer Yankelevich minister of Diaspora affairs. MK Michael Biton will be a second minister in the Defense Ministry along with Gantz and will handle civilian issues.
Yankelevich is the first haredi (ultra-Orthodox) woman to be a minister.
Bayit Yehudi leader Rafi Peretz abandoned the Yamina alliance of right-wing religious parties and decided to join the new government instead of heading to the opposition benches. It originally appeared that Peretz would receive become minister of Jerusalem Affairs and National Projects, but Netanyahu backtracked on that promise. As of Thursday evening it was still unclear what if any position Peretz would get, and even if he would end up in the government at all.
A spokesman declined to comment.
Peretz decision to split from his party caused consternation amongst the party, although its leaders were somewhat reticent to strongly criticize him. Peretz told his colleagues that he disagreed with their decision not to enter the coalition and that in a time of emergency, it is essential to take part in a unity government.
With Peretz, Netanyahu's coalition will have 73 MKs. The remaining five Yamina MKs will be in the opposition. Reports emerged that Peretz was trying to merge Bayit Yehudi into the Likud party which would then cover part of the religious party’s sizeable debts, although senior party members and activists could not confirm this. Following Peretz’s decision, Smotrich disparagingly tweeted a picture of a Mitsubishi car keys in reference to the ministerial cars that ministers are chauffeured in.
He also wrote on Facebook that Netanyahu was humiliating Peretz and disrespecting the religious-Zionist community at the same time, by backtracking on his promise of the Jerusalem ministry, saying that after having treated Yamina poorly during the coalition negotiations he could have repaired the damage by giving Peretz a senior ministerial position.
“But Netanyahu so completely disregards the religious-Zionist community that is making Rabbi Rafi crawl all night and continues to humiliate him with the offer of some fake ministry for nothing affairs,” wrote the outgoing transportation minister.
Eli Ben-Dahan, who served as a Bayit Yehudi MK from 2013 to the end of last government, strongly condemned Peretz’s decision however, describing it as a the latest in a long line of broken promises.
“Public representatives need to act with honor and respect agreements and pledges they make, Rabbi Rafi has not honored what he has committed to,” Ben Dahan told the Post.
Technically Peretz’s decision needs to be approved by the Bayit Yehudi central committee but there seems little chance he will convene it for this purpose. It is possible that central committee members will appeal any failure to gain its approval to first the party court and then beyond to the state courts, but such a process looks unlikely to be successful. Large numbers of central committee members have been furious with Peretz for months for refusing to allow a primary challenge to his leadership, refusing to allow primaries for the party list, and ejecting former MK Moti Yogev from the party list, amongst other perceived misdeeds.On Thursday evening, Bennett, Smotrich and Shaked held a press conference where they further castigated Netanyahu, especially over what they claimed was the removal of clauses in the Likud’s coalition agreement with Blue and White to annex the settlements.
“Netanyahu promised time and again he would apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, it was the promise of the elections, but Gantz and Ashkenazi threatened Netanyahu and he capitulated and erased it from the foundational principles [of the coalition agreement],” said Bennett.
Bennett also attacked Netanyahu for what the failure to insist on reforms to the judicial system which Bennett and Yamina have strongly pushed. “There was choice between Netanyahu and the right-wing bloc and Netanyahu chose Netanyahu,” said the Yamina leader.
The Likud flatly denied that the clause has been removed and said they would be going ahead with the annexation while Bennett would be sitting on the sidelines “with Lapid, Liberman, and Yazbek.”
Presumptive opposition leader Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) said the government was "broken and was being formed in a way that is broken." He said that what happened with the government was a farce, but he said he is glad the government was not formed on May 14, the anniversary of the founding of the state.
Meretz faction chairwoman Tamar Zandberg said "the formation of the government was being handled in a way that is as twisted as the government being formed."

Hamas, Jihad Refuse to Attend Palestinian Leadership Meeting
Ramallah- Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 14 May, 2020
Hamas and Islamic Jihad refused to attend the Palestinian leadership talks scheduled for Saturday to discuss an action plan against possible Israeli decisions to annex parts of the West Bank. Hamas said that it had not received any official invitation to attend the meeting, stressing its readiness to participate in any serious talks that could bring about the required change in the Palestinian situation. The movement called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to invite the secretaries-general of the Palestinian factions and forces, to an urgent meeting based on an adequate mechanism, in order to work on an effective national strategy to face the annexation plan. The Islamic Jihad Movement has also announced that it would not attend the gathering in Ramallah. In a brief press statement, the movement said: “The Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine has received an invitation to attend the talks to be held in Ramallah next Saturday, May 16, under the title of the Leadership Meeting.”The Jihad added that it supported “every constructive and sincere effort to restore unity and confront the occupation,” but stressed that any leadership meeting should include the secretaries-general of the different factions “to discuss the risks to the national cause… and start rebuilding on new foundations that achieve partnership and end division.”The Palestinian leadership has conveyed invitations to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements to attend a scheduled meeting next Saturday, dedicated to announcing the strategy to respond to any possible Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank. The PLO’s executive member and Minister of Social Development Ahmed Majdalani had confirmed that the two movements, in addition to the Popular Front, would participate in the discussions. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have participated in the last talks to discuss US President Donald Trump’s announcement of his Middle East peace plan.

Pompeo Considers Netanyahu-Gantz Unity Government an 'Opportunity for Peace
Tel Aviv – Nazir Majali/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on Wednesday, made a swift visit to Israel, during which he held talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his partner in the soon-to-be unity government, Benny Gantz. During his visit, Pompeo held separate meetings with Netanyahu and Gantz, leader of the centrist party of Blue and White. In a joint press conference with Netanyah, Pompeo said that Israel’s unity government presents an opportunity for peace, adding that "Israel has the right to defend itself and the United States supports this right."As for Netanyahu, he said that he considered his new government an opportunity to advance peace and security based on the understandings with Trump. During his visit, Pompeo also met Gabi Ashkenazi, a lawmaker with Blue and White who is expected to serve as the new government's foreign minister, and Yossi Cohen, chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.
Gantz praised US President Donald Trump’s peace plan but warned of regional instability. Blue and White confirmed that Gantz discussed with Pompeo different ways to enact the plan. Political sources said that Pompeo discussed 4 topics with the Israelis: the decision to annex lands from the West Bank, China, and Iran, in addition to the coronavirus pandemic. Sources said that Pompeo demanded postponing the annexation of Palestinian territories until there is an opportunity to engage Palestinians. On the issue of the evolving relationship between Israel and China, Pompeo said that the Israelis and the world should beware of the Chinese, and any Chinese investment will cause information leakage and will strengthen the Communist Party of China. Pompeo further accused Iran of using its resources to "foment terror" in the world at a time when its people are suffering from a devastating health and economic crisis.
Pompeo also discussed confronting Tehran's threats and the need for joint efforts to deter Iran and prevent it from attaining a nuclear weapon.

Russia Rejects WHO Recommendations over Syria Cross‑border Aid Mechanism
Moscow - Raed Jabr/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
Russia rejected recommendations by the World Health Organization (WHO) to resume work on cross-border aid mechanisms that allow entrance of humanitarian supplies to Syrian regions, noting that the report issued by the organization over the issue reflects its submission to US and western pressures.
The Russian and Syrian headquarters to coordinate the return of Syrian refugees issued a joint statement criticizing the WHO for saying that "facing the epidemic effectively in northeastern Syria requires the restoration of sustainable supplies of humanitarian aid, including through Al-Yarubia crossing, the border with Iraq."It also accused the WHO of exerting pressure in line with the interests of the West, and the US in particular, at the expense of the Syrian people in light of the outbreak of COVID-19. The statement further pointed out that Washington is manipulating the epidemiological situation in northeastern Syria according to its interests, stressing that the WHO being dragged into this game is "surprising and anxious.” It also warned of the possibility of smuggling weapons and drugs and allowing the armed and infected with COVID-19 to reach the lands of neighboring countries through this crossing.
"The real goals of the West’s aggressive approach to opening Yarubia crossing are represented in the unimpeded transfer of weapons to Kurdish formations controlled by the US side and the companies controlled by the US to illegally extract Syrian hydrocarbon raw materials, instead of facing a virus infection or provide humanitarian aid to the population of Syria,” the statement added. It further urged the WHO to “reconsider its approach to observing the fundamental principles of the United Nations and to stop the practice of manipulating public opinion imposed by Western countries".
Meanwhile, Russia and Syria denied the validity of recent reports claiming that the two sides are allegedly preventing the passage of a humanitarian aid convoy agreed to enter Rakban camp in southern Syria on the occasion of the month of Ramadan, noting that these reports are nothing but a media “pump” behind the gunmen. The two parties affirmed that the Syrian government is ready to provide assistance to the citizens trapped in Rukban once it regains control over the area. Earlier, Russia vetoed the mandate renewal for cross-border assistance mechanism at the Security Council. The Council also reduced the number of crossings, given that they are under the supervision of the Syrian government. Moscow and Damascus called on the international community to pressure Washington to lift the sanctions imposed on Syria, in light of the spread of coronavirus, warning that the sanctions could create a genocide.
The center also criticized the US for ignoring the dangers of the virus in Syria, and its insistence on turning a blind eye to the UN’s proposals.It pointed out that Syrian government has very limited capabilities in detecting and treating coronavirus patients, noting that authorities are conducting 100 tests per day only. In addition, Syria has only 25 thousand beds in its medical facilities, which also lack the needed ventilators. The statement indicated that the war destroyed the health system in Syria, and it is impossible to rehabilitate this system to face the pandemic effectively without assistance from abroad. It also said that the sanctions imposed by the US and European countries unilaterally on Syria hinder supplying necessary medicines and medical equipment.

Tunisian Lawmakers Warn Saied of Withdrawing Confidence
Tunis - Mongi Saidani/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
Tunisia’s founder of the opposition Karama Coalition, Seifeddine Makhlouf, accused President Kais Saied of inciting against lawmakers, by trying to justify calls for violence and threats against some of them. Makhlouf said that Tunisians will withdraw their confidence in Saied should he continue his unacceptable interference in parliamentary affairs, accusing Saeid of justifying violence and revolt against state institutions, especially against lawmakers. Criticism has targeted Saied after his statement in the southern city of Kebili, where he called for the withdrawal of confidence from deputies should they fail to step up to the tasks handed to them. Saied also criticized the proposal to amend Chapter 45 of the parliament’s by-laws led by the Islamic Ennahda Movement. He considered it a grave violation of the constitution and stressed that Tunisians could strip deputies of their position should they fail to serve the country’s interests This was received as a call to revolt against parliamentarians and an unwarranted intervention of the executive authority in legislative affairs. Makhlouf said that Saied’s speech was “very dangerous,” accusing him of justifying violence against state institutions and the elected authority.
“While MPs waited for Saied to disavow calls for chaos and blood, which were issued by some of his supporters, and those who ran his election campaign, they were surprised by his choice to present us with theories of legality and legitimacy,” Makhlouf said.
Meanwhile, the presidency denounced accusations against Saied of inciting against lawmakers as false and reassured that the president “was and still is keen on preserving the stability of state affairs during this important phase.” The presidency defended Saied’s right to criticize the performance of some deputies and decisions issued by parliament, saying the president believes that sovereignty ultimately belongs to the people.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on May 14-15/2020
The Taliban Is Still the Main Driver of Violence in Afghanistan
government daily.Thomas Joscelyn/The Dispatch/FDD/May 14/2020
Two recent attacks by ISIS only obscure that the Taliban is attacking the Afghan
On Tuesday, a pair of monstrous terrorist attacks reminded the world that the war in Afghanistan rages on. In the Afghan capital of Kabul, gunmen stormed a bustling hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders. The jihadists killed at least two dozen people, including newborn babies and mothers in a nursery. Elsewhere, in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, a suicide bomber detonated himself at a funeral for a local police official. More than two dozen people were killed and numerous others wounded. The Islamic State’s Khorasan province (ISIS-K) quickly claimed responsibility for the latter bombing in Nangarhar. No party immediately accepted fault for the Kabul maternity ward shooting, though it is widely suspected that ISIS-K is behind that attack as well.
The Taliban denied culpability for both attacks. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad quickly seized upon the Taliban’s denial, portraying the group as a possible counterterrorism partner.
“We note the Taliban have denied any responsibility and condemned both attacks as heinous,” Pompeo said in a statement. “The Taliban and the Afghan government should cooperate to bring the perpetrators to justice.” Khalilzad tweeted the same, claiming the Taliban and Afghan government should cooperate “against a common enemy that perpetrates” such barbarism.
Pompeo and Khalilzad are the main architects of the U.S.-Taliban withdrawal agreement, which was finalized on February 29 in Doha. The deal that was supposed to pave the way for a peace process has been a spectacular failure. There is no hint of peace more than two months after it was signed.
Why? The short answer: The Taliban doesn’t want peace.
This hasn’t stopped Pompeo and Khalilzad from adopting a view of the Taliban that is entirely inconsistent with reality. They ignore the fact that the Taliban, not ISIS-K, is the main actor driving violence throughout the country. While the attacks in Kabul and Nangarhar are indeed “heinous,” the Taliban’s actions are no less so. The Taliban, and not ISIS-K, still terrorizes more civilians than any other party in Afghanistan. And while Pompeo and Khalilzad have argued that the Taliban can be America’s de facto counterterrorism partner, there is no reason to think that is true. There is no evidence indicating that the Taliban has broken with al-Qaeda, despite the supposed counterterrorism assurances enshrined in the February 29 accord.
THE TALIBAN WENT ON THE OFFENSIVE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE DEAL WAS SIGNED.
The U.S., the Afghan government and other nations have repeatedly pleaded with the Taliban to temporarily lay down its arms in anticipation of peace talks. But the Taliban has consistently rejected calls for a ceasefire. The jihadists agreed only to a short-lived “reduction in violence” during the days leading up to the signing of the Doha accord. The ink wasn’t even dry on that deal when the group unleashed a fury of attacks on Afghan forces throughout the country, killing and wounding hundreds of people. This campaign began in early March and continues to this day.
The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) has documented the Taliban’s post-deal offensive. In late April, UNAMA warned that there was a “disturbing increase in violence” after the signing in Doha. The principal culprit is the Taliban. The number of civilian casualties during the first quarter of 2020 was lower than in previous years, but it was still high, with 710 people either killed (282) or wounded (428). And the dip in late February did not lead to a lasting reprieve. UNAMA attributes more than half of Afghan civilian deaths and injuries to the “anti-government elements,” meaning the Taliban and its allies, as well as ISIS-K. UNAMA found that the Taliban caused 39 percent of civilian casualties during the first quarter of the year. By comparison, attacks by ISIS-K accounted for 13 percent of civilian deaths and injuries.
That is, while the attacks in Kabul and Nangarhar have grabbed much attention, the Taliban’s own pervasive violence is far more costly for civilians. Each and every week, more innocent men, women, and children are killed and maimed by the Taliban than any other actor in the war.
The Taliban’s men are also busy hollowing out the Afghan security forces and picking off its opponents throughout the country. Since February 29, the Taliban has claimed responsibility for hundreds of operations across nearly every Afghan province. And the group is likely behind many more.
Earlier this month, Reuters reported that two separate data sets (one maintained by a “Western military source” and the other by an “independent body”) show that the Taliban has carried out “more than 4,500 attacks in Afghanistan, marking a sharp escalation in violence, in the 45 days since signing a deal with the United States.”
That is more than 100 Taliban attacks per day. While many of these were small-scale operations, the pace and scope of the Taliban’s insurgency are still far more problematic than anything ISIS-K can muster. On May 10, for instance, the Taliban overran an Afghan National Army outpost in the eastern province of Laghman, killing more than two dozen Afghan soldiers. This type of raid is more advanced than the massacres ISIS-K conducts. It requires advanced planning, training, and weaponry. Although ISIS-K remains lethal, it doesn’t have the capacity to carry out attacks on the same level throughout the country. Only the Taliban and its al-Qaeda-affiliated allies do.
The U.S. military is certainly aware that the Taliban is driving the war, as American officials have pleaded with the group to reduce violence. The Taliban objects to such pleas, correctly noting that it made no such commitment in the February 29 agreement. “But we spoke of ALL sides reducing violence by as much as 80% to pave the way for peace talks,” U.S. Forces-Afghanistan spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett wrote in a May 2 response to the Taliban.
“Spoke”—not wrote. If the Taliban had truly committed to reducing violence after February 29, it would have been in writing. It isn’t.
The reality of the Taliban’s ongoing war has come crashing down on the Afghan government, which was not a party to the bilateral U.S.-Taliban agreement. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced on Tuesday that security forces were going on the “offensive” against the Taliban and other jihadists. The Afghans had been in something called “active defense” mode—patiently waiting for the Taliban to make some genuine gesture toward peace. But the Taliban continued to reject both the U.S. military’s calls for a reduction in violence and Ghani’s ceasefire offers.
AL-QAEDA LAUDS THE U.S.-TALIBAN WITHDRAWAL AGREEMENT.
Without any progress toward peace on the ground, Pompeo and Khalilzad have trumpeted the Taliban’s supposed counterterrorism assurances as a diplomatic success. This has always been their No. 1 selling point for the deal. In exchange for an American withdrawal, the Taliban’s political delegation agreed that the group would prevent al-Qaeda or other anti-American terrorists from using Afghan soil to plan international attacks. There are many problems with the Taliban’s counterterrorism promises, as detailed previously in Vital Interests. For starters, the Taliban has lied about the terrorist threat to the West and its close relationship with al-Qaeda since the 1990s. There are no verification or enforcement mechanisms spelled out in the Doha agreement to ensure the Taliban isn’t lying now.
In his public appearances after the deal was signed, Pompeo went well beyond the written text. He even claimed that the Taliban has agreed to help America “destroy” al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
More than two months have passed since the Doha accord was signed. While the Taliban has reportedly carried out thousands of attacks on Afghan forces and its other local foes during that time, it hasn’t conducted a single operation against al-Qaeda or affiliated groups in Afghanistan. Not a single one.
The Taliban has many jihadist targets to choose from, ranging from Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent’s (AQIS) men to smaller ethnic jihadist groups that are clearly part of al-Qaeda’s international web. These al-Qaeda actors are embedded within the Taliban insurgency, fighting to overthrow the Afghan government and resurrect the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan in its place. The Taliban hasn’t turned on any of them.
Nor has the Taliban renounced al-Qaeda. The Taliban’s propagandists publish daily messages in Arabic, Dari, English, Pashto and Urdu. They are prolific. Yet not one of these statements since February 29 has mentioned al-Qaeda, let alone renounced it. Al-Qaeda’s global leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has sworn his allegiance to Haibatullah Akhundzada, the top emir of the Taliban. Akhundzada hasn’t said a word about Zawahiri or al-Qaeda. Sirajuddin Haqqani, Akhundzada’s top deputy, runs a Taliban subgroup that has been intertwined with al-Qaeda since the 1980s. Haqqani hasn’t said or written a word about al-Qaeda since February 29. It would be easy for the Taliban to release a statement, in multiple languages, denouncing al-Qaeda. The group hasn’t done so. That’s telling.
It is no wonder that al-Qaeda’s senior leadership endorsed the U.S.-Taliban withdrawal agreement. In a three-page statement released online in March, al-Qaeda lauded the Taliban’s “historic victory” over the U.S. and congratulated Akhundzada as the “Emir of the Faithful,” a title usually reserved for a Muslim caliph. Al-Qaeda called on Muslims around the globe to support the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate, arguing that all jihadists should emulate the group, because of its success against the Americans. Al-Qaeda’s senior management team also instructed all of their followers to abide by the terms of the Doha accord. It is impossible to square such guidance with Pompeo’s claim that the Taliban is going to finally turn on its blood brothers.
In its statement praising the withdrawal deal, al-Qaeda also lauded Mullah Omar for standing firm after 9/11, when the Taliban founder defended Osama bin Laden and his men against the might of America. “Allah has promised us victory, and Bush has promised us defeat. The world will see which of these promises will be fulfilled,” Omar vowed. Al-Qaeda has repeatedly these cited words, which look more and more prophetic with each passing day.
The Taliban continues to revel in Omar’s defiance as well. In a written eulogy posted on the seventh anniversary of Omar’s death in late April, the Taliban claimed that Omar’s obstinance in late 2001 and thereafter is what “brought down another idol of this age,” meaning America. At no point in the eulogy did the Taliban express remorse for, or disapproval of Omar’s decision to stand by bin Laden.
Taliban apologists in the West have tried to rewrite history, claiming that Omar and his organization were never really that close to al-Qaeda. A mountain of evidence contradicts their obfuscation. But there is an obvious problem with the claims made by the Taliban’s most ardent defenders. If the two are really wholly separate, then why, after all these years, does the Taliban still refuse to denounce al-Qaeda? The same type of question can be asked of Secretary Pompeo. If al-Qaeda is really a “shadow of its former self,” as Pompeo claims, then shouldn’t the Taliban find it easy to publicly and unequivocally renounce its relationship with Zawahiri’s organization?
Pompeo and Khalilzad portray their agreement as a diplomatic triumph, claiming the Taliban has finally agreed to “break” with al-Qaeda. But if al-Qaeda is already a spent force, as Pompeo insists against much evidence, then that wouldn’t be much of a concession, now would it? (And again, the Taliban has not actually agreed to renounce, “break” or “destroy” al-Qaeda.)
POMPEO MORE CRITICAL OF AFGHAN GOVERNMENT THAN THE TALIBAN.
With the coronavirus pandemic taking hold in late March, Secretary Pompeo traveled halfway around the world to Afghanistan. Nearly a month had passed since the agreement at that point, but his deal with the Taliban hadn’t led to any real steps toward peace. Pompeo blamed the Afghan government.
The secretary of state first met with President Ghani and former Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah. The two political rivals were at an impasse, bickering over how the Afghan government would be structured. The Afghans also dragged their feet on a prisoner exchange with the Taliban. Pompeo and Khalilzad promised that the Afghan government would release up to 5,000 jihadists in exchange for up to 1,000 prisoners held by the Taliban. Ghani and his administration weren’t allowed to take part in State Department’s talks with the Taliban. But Pompeo and Khalilzad agreed to this concession—an uneven swap—in exchange for the Taliban merely attending “intra-Afghan” talks.
Ghani and Abdullah didn’t settle their differences during Pompeo’s visit to Kabul. And Pompeo bristled in a statement issued immediately afterward on March 23. Pompeo wrote that the U.S. was “disappointed” in Ghani and Abdullah, claiming their “leadership failure poses a direct threat to U.S. national interests.” Pompeo announced that the U.S. was “immediately reducing assistance” to the Afghan government “by $1 billion this year” and is “prepared to reduce by another $1 billion in 2021.” The political talks between Ghani and Abdullah resumed in the days that followed, while the Afghan government began slowly releasing Taliban prisoners.
Pompeo met with Mullah Baradar, a senior Taliban political official in Doha, immediately after his trip to Kabul. Judging by Pompeo’s description, his meeting with Baradar wasn’t nearly as acrimonious as his sit down with Ghani and Abdullah. During a press briefing that followed, Pompeo denied that he had harsh words for the Afghan government, even though he clearly did. Pompeo praised the Taliban’s actions since the agreement was signed, claiming the group had “committed to reducing violence” and “they have largely done that.”
That is simply not true. As the U.N., press reporting and the Taliban’s own claims make clear, the jihadists went on a rampage following the February 29 agreement.
It’s true that the Taliban hasn’t directly attacked American forces. But why would they? The U.S. is withdrawing its forces, which has been the Taliban’s central goal all along. Why would the Taliban do anything to forestall America’s retreat? For the most part, the Taliban has also refrained from headline-grabbing operations inside Afghanistan’s cities, such as the one this week in Kabul, but that doesn’t mean the jihadists have reduced violence. All of the reporting says exactly the opposite is the case.
There is no indication in the State Department’s transcripts or statements that Pompeo pressed the Taliban on its relationship with al-Qaeda. Did Pompeo demand that Baradar orchestrate a formal Taliban renunciation of al-Qaeda? Did he insist that the Taliban turn over AQIS leaders or fighters, or at least divulge their locations to the U.S.? Did he ask Baradar why al-Qaeda’s senior leadership thinks the U.S.-Taliban withdrawal agreement is a “victory” for the jihadists, and not a blow to their agenda?
If Pompeo addressed any of these concerns, then it is a well-kept secret.
We are left with a situation in which Pompeo believes that the political squabbling in Kabul is “a direct threat to U.S. national interests,” but apparently the Taliban’s unbroken, decades-long alliance with al-Qaeda is not. The Afghan government deserves much criticism, but it isn’t the Taliban. There was a time when this basic distinction would have seemed obvious.
All President Trump wants is to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. None of this is necessary to accomplish a full withdrawal, or close to it. It isn’t necessary to absolve the Taliban on the way out the door.
*Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for FDD’s Long War Journal. Follow Tom on Twitter @thomasjoscelyn.

Jonathan Schanzer: Iranian Missiles "Likely to Be the Cause of the Middle East's Next War"
Gary C. Gambill/Middle East Forum/May 14/2020
https://www.meforum.org/60908/schanzer-the-cause-of-the-middle-easts-next-war
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Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spoke to participants in an April 20 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the threat posed by Iranian precision-guided munitions (PGMs).
Over the past two years, Israel has been conducting frequent "preemptive strikes" intended to disrupt Iran's efforts to qualitatively upgrade the threat to Israel posted by its proxies in Lebanon and Syria by arming them with "game changing" PGMs.
This campaign has been dubbed the "war between wars" (or "campaign between wars") by the Israeli defense establishment.
Although the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah organization has stockpiled tens of thousands of rockets, most are unguided and thus highly inaccurate. Israel's Iron Dome tracks the trajectory of incoming rockets and ignores the majority that are projected to miss their intended targets, while intercepting those few that are projected to be a threat. Upgrading large numbers of these rockets into PGMs likely to hit their targets would therefore enable Hezbollah to overwhelm Israeli defenses.
Even a small number of PGMs getting through could be devastating, Schanzer explained:
One PGM getting through to, for example, the chemical plant in Haifa could be the equivalent of a chemical weapons attack. An attack on the purported nuclear facility in Dimona would be the equivalent of a nuclear attack. And then of course there exists the possibility of simply striking high density civilian targets, apartment buildings in Tel Aviv or even the Kirya, the "Pentagon of Israel" in Tel Aviv.
Thus, Iran's PGM project "is second only to the Iranian nuclear program in terms of the threats that [Israel] face[s] right now in the region," said Schanzer. "The fact that Iran has been transferring this technology into the hands of non-state actors is a gross violation of the existing norms."
Israel has taken it upon itself to not only target the munitions themselves, but also the facilities where the munitions are built or upgraded and the engineers responsible for building them. This is not so difficult in Syria, as the Russian air force is "willing to stand down when the Israelis have things that they need to clean up," Schanzer explained. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has begun building these facilities underground in civilian-populated areas, so "it's much harder for the Israelis to strike without prompting a full blown war."
"Transferring this technology into the hands of non-state actors is a gross violation of the existing norms."
Israel is not the only one threatened by Iranian PGMs, said Schanzer, noting that PGMs were used in the attack on Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil-processing facility last year, which took much of its production offline for several weeks, and in Iran's January 8 missile strike on U.S. forces in Iraq following the killing of Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
The PGM capabilities of Iranian proxies are "likely to be the cause of the Middle East's next war, unless we're able to find out a way to get the Iranians to stand down," Schanzer concluded. Alongside its kinetic efforts to degrade these capabilities, Israel has made diplomatic efforts through intermediaries to mitigate the threat. Unfortunately, "right now we don't see any sign of [Iran] letting up."
*Gary C. Gambill is general editor at the Middle East Forum. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

The Death of Polemic in the Arab Levant
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
In the 1960s and 70s, the Arab world was rife with polemics. In Arab Nationalist circles, Baathists and Nasserites argued heatedly. Some other titles revolved around prioritizing “unity of the front” over “unity of objective” or vice versa, and whether attaining Arab unity would liberate Palestine or the other way around. Later, with the Palestinian resistance and the “new left”, the polemics’ margins widened to include comparisons between classical war and “guerrilla war of popular liberation”, which was linked to the question over the extent to which “petit bourgeois regimes” could play revolutionary roles. Those who repudiated this possibility resolved that these regimes’ armies do not fight. In 1973, when they did fight, the debate ended. The question over whether total liberation of Palestine or a democratic secular state ought to be sought was also debated, but the Arab regimes’ interventions weighed in on it before the infamous and shameful Ma’alot operation ended it.
In Marxists circles, the issues raised in the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party (1956) remained a heated subject. The fieriest debates were over the path to revolution, violent or parliamentary, and over “non - capitalist” development. Many other headlines featured: Soviet-Chinese conflict, Marxism and the national question, disputes that led to splits among communist parties, the ever-present question of the nature of the relationship with “petit bourgeois regimes” of Nasser and the Baath and Palestinian resistance. In 1973, the coup waged against Allende’s government in Chile ignited some debate about revolutionary change and whether the state, as a “tool in the hands of the bourgeoisie,” could be its vehicle.
Later, a multifaceted debate ensued over democracy and the acceptability of welcoming foreign intervention in order to establish it. This was a revival of an old debate that had perhaps been started by the liberal Armenians of the Ottoman Empire who disagreed with their reformist Turkish Muslim colleagues over the issue. In parallel, arguments over economic issues like development and dependency and oil and oil policies did not stop. As for the ever-present discussions that never changed, the debate persisted over dyads and their reconciliation: Arabism and Islam, socialism and Islam, socialism and nationalism and of course authenticity and modernity.
This state of heated debate was not clear of malformations, like the fact that some of the advocates of nationalism were civil servants working for their “nationalist” regimes. This extends from the Egyptian Nasserite Ismat Seif al-Dawla to the Iraqi Baathist Saadoun Hammad. Another is that some Marxists did not rid themselves the prison of their quasi-religious devotion to texts and archives, questioning whether this or that assessment was consistent with what Lenin had said in the "State and Revolution" or “What is to be Done”?
However, the biggest failure was that the fabric of our societies and the relationships between their components were not discussed and were instead usually addressed with denial. Despite the eruption of two civil wars, in Jordan in 1970 and in Lebanon in 1975, and the increasing “sectarianization” of many regimes at the expense of their ideological pretenses, addressing this issue remained akin to transgressing a taboo. This taboo surfaced with many faces: there is the ideological face, which seeks to preserve the purity of the conceited system of thought by those who held it, the security face, which prevents any reckoning with the real problems of the community concerned, and the moral face, that of a traditional culture that has decided that highlighting difference and disparity is "shameful" and a crime against a divine unity.
The communities that established Levantine states bear responsibility because they did not engage themselves in discussing their states: the Lebanese Christianity preached and ordered the rest to become Lebanese. Iraqi Sunnism was hubristic and considered its leadership a bestowal that was not to be returned. Syrian Sunnism assured its people that it was preparing for the country's evaporation as soon as the blessing of Arab unity was arrived at. Palestinian nationalism was distracted by liberation from the people who were to be liberated.
Deplorably, the explosion of this long-forgotten issue, that is, the social fabric, was most devastating to our societies, and it was especially devastating to the polemic, which has become scarce in our intellectual and cultural lives. It is no accident that Beirut's silence, as a result of its civil war, silenced much of that "chaos". Of course, this stifling of polemics came together with other factors, among them was the grand ideologies' defeat after the Cold War - the ideologies on which most of the old controversies were based or revolved around. In turn, political culture declined in general in favor of technical schematics and localized fragmented perspectives, before defamation, especially after the rise of social media, attained a very high podium.
However, the fragmenting of societies is, nevertheless, the most prominent cause of polemic’s death. This is because no one is interested in talking to anyone any longer, let alone persuading them. In Lebanon, for example, “the people”, in 2005, announced that they had become at least two peoples, and in Iraq, a civil war exploded in 2006, cementing thick and heavy borders between groups; in 2007 the “war between brothers” split Palestinian authority in two, one in the West Bank and the other in Gaza. In Syria, since 2011, at the latest, the ruler has become the enemy of the people, from whom there is no other enemy.
In this sense, polemics fell victim to a disregard of reality and the need to debate it. This reality swiftly avenged itself.

What Covid-19’s Second Wave Could Look Like
Max Nisen/Bloomberg/May 14/2020
The world is beginning to loosen restrictions that have been put in place to limit the spread of Covid-19. Leaders of countries, states and cities are finding they have little choice but to return to economic activity well before an effective vaccine or treatment for the disease is available. This means secondary outbreaks are a near certainty.
What’s uncertain is how devastating future surges of infection will be. If they’re sporadic and kept under control, death rates will stay low, and life may inch back toward normalcy. If they’re large, countries and regions may need to dive back into shutdown mode, extending the pandemic’s economic damage.
Unfortunately, many of the factors that will determine what’s coming are beyond anyone’s control.
That’s not to say countries are entirely powerless over their fates. Areas that open gradually and with widespread testing and contact-tracing programs will most easily be able to detect and interrupt outbreaks. But nature will play a significant role, too, and an unpredictable one — starting with the weather.
The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 might behave as the common coronaviruses that cause many mild respiratory infections do.
They spread more readily in colder, drier environments and have a harder time infecting people when the weather is warm and humid. (They’re helped by the way people cram together indoors during cold weather.) In the US, these viruses typically peak in November and December and fall to a trough from February to May.
Medical scientists have yet to determine the extent to which seasonal tendencies apply to Covid-19. But any warm-weather decline this year is likely to arrive late and not amount to much. After all, the disease didn’t show up in many parts of the world until late winter. While there’s some evidence that this coronavirus doesn’t care for heat, most transmission has been occurring indoors. And the existence of outbreaks in warmer nations (Thailand and Singapore, for instance) and the sheer virulence of Covid-19 suggest that dramatic summer suppression is unlikely.
Seasonality may nevertheless at least limit the size of any post-lockdown rebound. New outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere this summer could be smaller, and that would buy valuable time to make progress on testing, developing treatments and reinforcing health systems. On the other hand, it could also mean that the virus begins to spread more rapidly in the Southern Hemisphere, and that later outbreaks in the fall and winter will be especially acute in places where people neglect to take appropriate precautions.
Theoretically, the coronavirus might also peter out, as viruses do, if populations acquire immunity and it runs out of people to infect. While most countries around the world have either embraced social distancing or invested aggressively in containment, Sweden has imposed only mild restrictions. Its goal is to reduce the economic impact of the pandemic. Racing toward “herd immunity” isn't an explicit aim of the policy, according to the country’s chief epidemiologist, but it’s a helpful threshold he thinks could be achieved in Stockholm within weeks.
The problem with this strategy, beyond its potentially high human cost, is that scientists know little about acquired immunity to Covid-19. Contracting a virus generally leads to some future protection, as the body’s immune system remembers the bug and is prepared with antibodies for the next fight.
However, the duration and strength of this immunity varies by the disease, the intensity of the person’s infection, and other factors. There have been reports of people infected with the Covid virus twice — though these might reflect testing problems. But resistance to seasonal coronaviruses is known to fade within a year. And while antibodies to SARS, Covid-19’s cousin, have lasted longer, the SARS outbreak died out before researchers had a chance to observe whether they broadly prevent reinfection. Months-long studies of antibody-positive individuals are needed to learn about acquired immunity to Covid-19.
Thus, Sweden is taking its chances. And it’s not clear it would be a good idea for any country to issue “immunity passports” for people who test positive for Covid-19 antibodies.
If it turns out that immunity is easily gained and long-lasting, infection rates should decline over time. If it’s transient and unreliable, the world could face annual or biennial outbreaks for years to come. One model of Covid-19’s future transmission dynamics suggests that the size of outbreaks will vary drastically depending on the virus’s seasonality and the duration of people’s immunity.
Going forward, countries have experience and, having flattened the curve, more time to prepare. Yet when cold weather returns in the fall, they may face a new challenge: the simultaneous return of Covid-19 and the flu. This could sow confusion and strain testing and hospital capacity. Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has noted that a winter outbreak of Covid-19 could be more troublesome even if it is smaller than the one we’re having now.
It will help if more of the world’s population gets a flu vaccine. In an average year, however, less than half of American adults do.
Scientific breakthroughs could also steer the trajectory of Covid-19: The discovery of an effective treatment would greatly reduce suffering and strain on health care systems. News that Gilead Sciences Inc’s remdesivir sped recovery in some hospitalized patients in a placebo-controlled trial is welcome, even though it’s not the game changer that’s needed. And by the fall, scientists should have data on lab-grown antibodies that could potentially prevent and treat the disease. However, treatments and vaccines now in the works are aimed at the version of the coronavirus that is currently spreading. Any significant mutation could undermine progress. In the face of so many unknowns, countries and companies have no choice but to approach reopening with all possible caution.

Iran’s Regime Shamelessly Blames Child Laborers for Role in Virus Spread

Noor Pahlavi/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
When faced with thousands, if not millions, of hungry children most governments would spring into action to feed them. They would support and partner with charities bringing food to these children. In Iran, the regime is feeding them in a different way.
“Eat it! Eat it!” he shouts as the children quiver in fear, trying to chew and swallow the plastic. “Eat it!”
This is not a scene from a horror film, but for the estimated three to seven million Iranian child laborers this is a nightmare that is all too familiar. When two of these millions of children were apprehended for selling flowers in the street, the official forced them to eat the flowers and the plastic in which they were wrapped. He recorded and shared a video of the abuse, to scare other children from daring to try the same.
Among the crises facing our country, this is perhaps among those least covered. And it is among the most important because it causes deep physical and mental health challenges for the next generation. While many official regime figures drastically underreport the number of child laborers, activists place the number in the millions.
The videos of these children selling gum, washing windows, offering poems with sadness flowing out of their little eyes as their packages pile up on their little backs and blood and mud encrust their little feet are heartbreaking. The most unfortunate of these child laborers are also street children who sleep on the same streets on which they work.
Clearly, these days are even more difficult for these children. Regime officials have not only refused to act on behalf of the welfare of these children in years past, but they now also shamelessly blame them for being one of the factors in the spread of the coronavirus. One of the members of the Islamic Republic’s parliamentary commission on health called child laborers “the most important source of transmission of the coronavirus”-- a shameful and unsubstantiated accusation that exposes these children to hatred and a false public image.
According to a regime official, in Tehran alone, there are more than 5,000 children who survive by picking through garbage. The question is not only how these children can be helped, but more importantly why in our Iran there are children who pick through garbage in the first place.
Bravely and honorably trying to improve the conditions of these children, many activists and NGOs collect information on and offer support to them. They offer shelter, food, and look to find them a path off the streets. But their generosity and resources are no match for the scale and immense need of Iran’s street children and child laborers.
These children, forced into work because of the profound corruption and economic mismanagement of the regime, take to the streets in search of money for a day’s meal. In the process, untold numbers are taken advantage of by child traffickers. Many are forced into drug use and more are sexually abused and raped, subsequently falling into life-long drug addiction. The immediate consequences of this sickening pattern are obvious. The long-term implications for these children and for our country are even more daunting.
It is because of this immense scale that the current work being done to address this is regrettably insufficient. The brave NGOs doing this work need government-backing and partnership to be successful. With this regime, they will never get the proper support they need. Whether humiliating and harming children by forcing them to eat flowers and plastic or beating them, this regime is the cause of this problem.
The child laborers and street children of my country, Iran, are these days suffering from both the risk of contracting COVID-19 and from widespread neglect. Why, in a country like Iran, should the nation’s wealth be spent on terror and not on saving our children?
Iran’s children deserve a comprehensive strategy to tackle and forever eliminate this national issue. NGOs and activists must be empowered and partnered with, not shunned, ignored, or arrested. The government must make among its primary priorities the education and protection of children. Growing up, this was something my grandmother talked to me about as an issue that weighed heavily on her heart. Her hope, and that of my entire family, was and remains to see the circumstances of these children improve.
We sat together and watched a widely circulated video. A man sits down with a child who has spent his day collecting trash to sell scraps.
The man asks, “what is your hope in life?” The child looks up, quizzically, and stares back at the man. Shrugging his shoulders he says, “what is ‘hope?’”
Hope, for this young boy and the millions like him, will be a real childhood. Hope is gathering with his friends and thinking about what game they’ll play and not about where his nightly meal is coming from.
Hope is going to school and thinking about what he’ll be when he grows up, not where he’ll sleep tonight. Hope is rebuilding our country and having not only a people that care, but a government that actually does.
In a free Iran, children must be among the nation’s foremost priorities. They are the future.
*This article was first published in The Independent Persian

Turkish 'Justice': Free Mobsters, Keep Dissidents Locked Up

Burak Bekdil/The Gatestone Institute/May 14/2020
Notorious mob boss Alaattin Çakıcı was freed last month under a new law providing for the temporary release of around 45,000 prisoners to stem the spread of the coronavirus, but prisoners of conscience were excluded.
Alaattin Çakıcı is a well-known Turkish mafia figure. But his militant far-right past makes him a shadier figure in Turkey's domestic and international political scenes, not just in the criminal underworld. In the 1970s he was a leading fighter in Turkey's near civil war between ultra-left and -right fractions. His first arrest came shortly after the military coup d'état in 1980: He was tried on charges of murdering 41 leftists.
According to leaked reports, Çakıcı was used as a hitman in the 1980s and 1990s by Turkish intelligence. His targets were leftists and pro-Kurdish groups. Turkish intelligence also tasked him with carrying out operations in foreign countries, including Greece and Lebanon, targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).
In 2018 Devlet Bahçeli, a far-right politician and a staunch supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, described Çakıcı as "brave and fearless" and as someone "who was in love with [his] homeland and ideals." Bahçeli had said that Çakıcı was in prison on multiple sentences for murder, armed attack, money laundering, and leading an illegal armed group. Among other such escapades, he had contracted out the murder of his ex-wife, who in 1995 was shot dead in front of their son.
Çakıcı's is certainly not the résumé of an ideal, law-abiding, peaceful citizen. But last month, at age 67, he walked free from the prison in which he had been kept. How could this ruthless crime machine walk out of prison, jump into a chauffeur-driven car and be escorted to a holiday resort accompanied by a big convoy and hundreds of "devotees" who gave him a hero's welcome? How, especially in a country where a simple joke on social media can earn an otherwise honest citizen several months in jail?
The short answer is amnesty. Erdoğan's rubber-stamp parliament passed a law that opened the way for the temporary release of around 45,000 prisoners "to stem the spread of the coronavirus." Another justification for the law is "prison overcrowding." The amnesty bill will reduce the number of inmates by a third from around 300,000, while Turkey's present prison capacity is 230,000.
Erdoğan and his MPs were surgically precise not to let one single political prisoner walk free.
When drafting the bill, Erdoğan and his MPs were surgically precise not to let one single political prisoner walk free. About 50,000 inmates who were excluded from the bill, as terror convicts and suspects would not be eligible for amnesty.
That is where the trouble starts: under terror charges, the expression of even the slightest dissent could cost a Turk several months in pre-trial detention.
It did not come as surprise that Turkey -- minus team Erdoğan and mobsters -- unanimously condemned the move. "You forgive the mafia... You don't forgive journalists that write the truth. You don't forgive those that want peace," said opposition lawmaker Turan Aydoğan.
"The state wants to release the ones who committed a crime against citizens while keeping the ones who questioned its authoritarianism behind bars," thousands of anti-amnesty campaigners including journalists, academics and NGO members said in a signed statement. "When lives are at stake, there can be no discrimination based on beliefs or ideologies".
Two European Union lawmakers, Nacho Sanchez Amor and Sergey Lagodinsky called the law "a great disappointment".
Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey director at Human Rights Watch, told Middle East Eye that the amnesty law was "utterly discriminatory" and politically biased. "Turkey is notorious for having a justice system under tight political control and locking up government opponents and perceived critics on terrorism charges," she said.
According to an annual report of the Turkish Journalists' Union:
There are 85 journalists presently in jail (and excluded from the amnesty bill)
Only in the past year 103 journalists were detained 108 times
They spent a minimum 239 days in jail
Eleven journalists claimed they were beaten up in jail, two complained of forced strip search
In the past year new investigations were launched against 79 journalists
Erdoğan and his men just shrugged it off, but the opposition MPs said on April 14 that they would take the law to Turkey's top court (the Constitutional Court) and demand its annulment.
The free-fall of this professed NATO ally back toward the authoritarian East looks sadly irrevocable.
"Many aspects of the reform package violate the constitution," said opposition MP Mustafa Yeneroğlu "It is highly likely that the Constitutional Court will have to extend the scope of the package because of the principle of non-discrimination".
The top court may or may not announce a verdict to correct this galling piece of Erdoğan legislation. Regardless of that verdict, however, the bitter truth will remain: More than half a century after its march into Western democracy, Turkey is a country where a pen is viewed as more dangerous than a gun. Under Erdoğan's 18 years in power, the free-fall of this professed NATO ally back toward the authoritarian East looks sadly irrevocable.
*Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based political analyst and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

What Is Behind the Leadership Tensions Inside Syria?

Michael Young/Carnegie MEC/May 14/2020
Assaad al-Achi | Executive director of Baytna Syria, Syrian civil society activist
Although leadership tensions, at least public ones, are extremely rare in Syria, they have always existed since Hafez al-Assad’s coup in 1970. The most flagrant case of such a leadership challenge was the confrontation between Hafez and his brother Rif‘at in 1984. Hafez was hospitalized due to a heart attack and Rif‘at tried to seize power by having the military brigades he controlled encircle Damascus. The situation was only resolved when their mother intervened and Rif‘at was expelled from Syria, with a very generous sum of money.
This was in the wake of the Hama massacre of 1982 and the Islamist challenge to Assad’s rule throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was reported that Rif‘at regarded his brother’s reaction to this challenge as too soft. More importantly, Rif‘at did not appreciate his brother’s overtures to traditional socioeconomic actors to quell the tensions and move out of the conflict phase.
The current challenge to the regime comes from Rami Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s cousin. Rami has effectively been the family treasurer since 2000. After the uprising began in 2011, he used his Al-Bustan charity to become the main financier of pro-regime militias. He is said to directly or indirectly control upwards of 50 percent of the Syrian economy, a pattern accentuated by the war. However, such hegemony is now challenged by the state, which has imposed huge fines on his main source of income, the mobile operator Syriatel. In a rare appearance, Makhlouf appeared on social media twice publicly asking his cousin to intervene. It seems that his calls remained unanswered. It also seems that Bashar wants to move to a post-conflict phase and dismantle the war economy empire that emerged after 2011 and reach out again to traditional socioeconomic actors. Whether these are his wishes or those of his patrons in Russia remains to be seen.
Sara Kayyali | Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch
Syria is going through an unprecedented economic crisis, and in the face of its inability to fix the situation the leadership has turned on itself. Rami Makhlouf, a key supporter of the Syrian government and the posterchild of the country’s failing economy, has apparently fallen out with Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s authoritarian president. Makhlouf himself publicized these tensions in a series of videos he posted on Facebook this month.
In the latest of a series of actions against Makhlouf, the government demanded that Makhlouf’s Syriatel, a company with a near-monopoly over the telecommunications sector, pay SYP$233 billion ($161 million at the black market rate) that the government claims it owes alongside its smaller competitor. While Makhlouf denies this, the state’s security services have reportedly arbitrarily arrested several Syriatel employees to pressure Makhlouf to pay.
It is difficult to say which side is telling the truth, with both parties known to distort reality. However, the government is using the same abusive tactics of arbitrary arrest, harassment, and misuse of laws to sideline Makhlouf that it did to tens of thousands of Syrians who demanded change since 2011.
As Makhlouf decries the injustice of it all, it is worth remembering that he, by his own admission, was a major sponsor of the abusive and extractive system that has now turned on him. This should serve as a reminder that unchecked, rights abuses can touch anyone.
Ziad Majed | Associate professor at the American University of Paris, author, with Farouk Mardam-Bey and Subhi Hadidi, of Dans La Tête de Bachar Al-Assad (Solin/Actes Sud, 2018)
The tensions inside the inner circle of the Syrian regime reflect three dynamics. The first pertains to the family. Since the Russian military intervention in 2015, followed by the death of Bashar al-Assad’s powerful mother in 2016, the Makhloufs (his mother’s family) have been gradually ousted from positions of authority. The measures against Rami, who once controlled more than 50 percent of Syria’s economy, complete this process—after his brother Hafez and father Mohammed. He is being replaced by businessmen close to Asma, Bashar’s influential wife, in an attempt to enlarge the regime’s clientelistic networks.
The second is related to Russian pressure on Assad. Moscow wants to restructure state institutions, reorganize the army, and centralize the decisionmaking mechanisms under its command, in order to negotiate reconstruction contracts with possible Western and Chinese partners and bring Russian companies and entrepreneurs into a fully controlled theater of operations. To achieve such a situation, Iranian influence within regime circles has to be reduced and Syrian tycoons with monopoles (and Iranian ties) should be sidelined. For Assad, this provides an opening to get rid of his cousin, with his bad reputation, and say he is doing his best to fulfill Russian requirements.
The third can be read through the analysis of the regime’s history and the tensions and defections it faced. After the removal of Rif‘at al-Assad, Bashar’s uncle, in 1984, of Ghazi Kan‘an, the strongman of the security services, in 2005, and of Assef Shawqat, Bashar’s brother in law, in 2012, the Makhloufs are now being targeted. This is not surprising in totalitarian regimes with sectarian, tribal, and familial considerations—often built on the basis of delicate equations.
All this means that the regime will be facing increasing pressure and internal struggles in the coming months. Russia needs official international recognition of its hegemony over Syria and its reconstruction projects. Iran will not agree to be marginalized. And Bashar is mainly concerned with his “reelection” in 2021. Meanwhile, other foreign actors, such as Turkey and the United States, are also reassessing their roles and reshaping relations with their local allies in Syria’s northwest and northeast in preparation for the next phases.
Kheder Khaddour | Nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut
The recent—and very public—airing of grievances between the prominent Syrian businessman Rami Makhlouf and his cousin President Bashar al-Assad has sparked rampant speculation about tensions among different elements of the Syrian political and economic elite. A great deal of this speculation has focused on the role of Russia and Iran, and the influence of both in Syria, as well as on the competition between them. However, Makhlouf’s dispute appears to be largely an internal matter, one that is more reflective of the changing nature of Syria’s economy than of foreign involvement.
What the Makhlouf affair demonstrates is that the regime is in the midst of rebuilding its networks, which would reflect the development of a post-conflict economy. The war has given rise to a new set of economic elites, many of which rely on their connections to regions outside regime control, or with external powers, for influence. While Makhlouf has been a dominant force in Syrian commercial affairs for nearly two decades, the relative absence of such connections in his case has led to the gradual erosion of his influence to the benefit of newcomers such as Samer Foz, the Qaterji brothers, and Mohammed Hamsho, among others.Makhlouf’s current struggle is focused on trying to remain relevant in a new phase of Syria’s economy, in which he faces fierce competition. The extent to which he can achieve this remains an open question. While Makhlouf may be able to use the Alawite community to some extent to protect himself, his family connections do have their limits. His ties with Assad through the president’s mother has afforded Makhlouf significant influence, but at the end of the day it is the immediate family of Hafez al-Assad that controls the levers of power.

New Nuclear Threats to the U.S.: Better to Deter Them or Play Dead?

Peter Huessy/2020 Gatestone Institute/May 14, 2020
At present, exactly zero percent of America's nuclear platforms are modernized.
Worse, when, in 2017, General Hyten... warned of the Russian threat, a common counter-narrative in the U.S. arms control community – and shared by some members of Congress -- was that simply by proposing to modernize a then-rusting nuclear deterrent, the United States was "leading an arms race."
Even these critics, however, had to know that it takes years to research, develop, test, and then build highly complex nuclear forces, so that no new U.S. nuclear deployments would even be able to start until 2029.
Russia has already completed 87% of its arms race while the US is just putting on its track shoes. The door to an arms race was opened long ago -- but by Russia, not the United States.
Without nuclear modernization, unfortunately, the United States cannot keep a credible nuclear deterrent against its nuclear armed enemies -- not only Russia but also China, whose nuclear arsenal is scheduled to double in the next decade, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The current U.S. administration inherited a nuclear deterrent 40-50 years old. Its submarines had first been deployed in 1981, its B-52 bomber cruise missiles in 1982, and its Minuteman land-based missiles in 1970. Pictured: The ballistic missile nuclear submarine USS Rhode Island. (Image source: U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Rebecca Rebarich)
Now that 184 countries are grappling with the medical and economic convulsions of China's CCP coronavirus that seems to have originated in a bio-warfare laboratory in Wuhan, what other catastrophes might be headed our way, especially ones we have been forewarned about?
What if America's adversaries might start to believe that because the US has a Covid-19 crisis on its hands, the nation might be distracted and vulnerable, so that now might be a good time to strike? If such adversaries think the US does not have a strong deterrent, does that make it an even more tempting target?
Last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said that by the end of 2020, Russia will have modernized 87% of its nuclear arsenal, up from its current 82%.
Many Americans might shrug it off and say that the Russians are simply being their normal selves, just like the Soviets, year after year, building and modernizing their nuclear weapons.
Many Americans might also assume that the United States would be keeping up to make sure that the Russians were not about to get the nuclear drop on the US, right?
Not quite.
The United States, in fact, remains considerably behind the Russians. For nearly three decades after the end of the Cold War, a euphoric United States stopped taking nuclear deterrence seriously. The current administration, therefore, inherited a nuclear deterrent 40-50 years old. Its submarines had first been deployed in 1981, its B-52 bomber cruise missiles in 1982, and its Minuteman land-based missiles in 1970.
At present, exactly zero percent of America's nuclear platforms are modernized.
This dangerous "procurement holiday" dates back to the end of the Cold War in 1991, when leaders in the West presumably imagined that modernized systems would no longer be needed.
The problem is, presidents and Congresses have been warned. The US has known for some time that the Russians are fully modernizing their nuclear weapons. The US has also been aware that the Russians were increasing the role of nuclear weapons in their security strategy, and had also adopted a policy of "escalate to win." In this strategy, the Russians would use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons early in a crisis, based on the assumption that in face of such threats, the United States would stand down.
Several years ago, for example, the Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, the senior U.S. military officer responsible for nuclear strategy, General John Hyten, told Congress that by 2020, the Russians would have fully modernized at least 70% of their nuclear arsenal.
Hyten not only warned about the Russia's new "escalate to win" policy; he also took stock of the fact that while the United States had decided -- belatedly -- to modernize its nuclear forces, it was still nearly 15 years away from fielding its first modernized nuclear platform. Regrettably, not everyone in Congress and the nuclear disarmament community listened. For many in politics, after all, it was assumed that the U.S. would "reset" relations with Russia and nuclear threats were happily diminishing toward a "global zero."
Worse, when, in 2017, General Hyten, (now Vice Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff), warned of the Russian threat, a common counter-narrative in the U.S. arms control community -- and shared by some members of Congress -- was that simply by proposing to modernize a then-rusting nuclear deterrent, the United States was "leading an arms race."
Even these critics, however, had to know that it takes years to research, develop, test, and then build highly complex nuclear forces, so that no new U.S. nuclear deployments would even be able to start until 2029.
An ideological attachment to the arms control catechism of the day, particularly among the advocates of "global zero," trumped any common-sense support of the potential necessity, even to use as a deterrent, for U.S. nuclear modernization.
Instead, what many disarmers proposed was the elimination of more than half of U.S. nuclear armed submarines, and 100% of America's land-based nuclear missiles and air-launched nuclear cruise missiles -- all eliminated unilaterally, without the Russians reducing anything
In 2018, nuclear critics in the Democratic party, now in the House majority, called for the unilateral "roll back" of the entire ICBM leg of the US nuclear Triad (land, sea and air) to curtail a supposedly "overly aggressive nuclear strategy" by the Trump administration. The proposal appears intended to prevent a presumed "expansion" of the US nuclear arsenal.
Ironically, the Trump administration's nuclear modernization effort at that time was nearly identical to the Obama administration's effort: keeping America's nuclear forces strictly within the New START Treaty limits. The Trump administration's policy at the time did not seek to expand the U.S. arsenal by even a single nuclear warhead.
Even today, however, despite Russia's confirmation that its nuclear forces are nearly fully modernized, and that the new U.S. modernization effort may not be putting new forces in the field until 2029, the same nuclear critics still do not seem to understand the strategy of deterrence: if you look disarmed and easy to overrun, you are inviting aggression, but if you do not look easy to overrun, people might think twice before attacking you. Former President Ronald Reagan called it, "Peace through strength". It was how, in large part, by building up the US nuclear arsenal and promising subsequently to build robust missile defenses, he induced the Soviet Union, unable to keep up, to collapse.
Even so, one unilateral disarmer inexplicably wondered recently if the current U.S. planned nuclear modernization effort might somehow open "the door to an expensive nuclear arms race".
This critic may be unaware that Russia has already completed 87% of its arms race while the US is just putting on its track shoes. The door to an arms race was opened long ago -- but by Russia, not the United States.
Sputnik News reports:
"Russia's nuclear forces have received or are in the process of receiving a series of new weapons in recent years, including the RS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, the Avangard hypersonic boost-glide vehicle, and the Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic cruise missile. The maritime leg of the country's nuclear triad has seen the deployment of the new Borei class of strategic missile submarines equipped with R-30 Bulava ballistic missiles. Russia has also upgraded its fleet of Tu-95MS 'Bear' and Tu-160 'White Swan' bombers, increasing their range and capabilities and equipping them with new cruise missiles."
The current U.S. administration is fully aware of the Russian challenge and has robustly funded a U.S. nuclear deterrent. The modernization plan was approved by Congress -- although there is a worrisome emerging decline in the margin of support.
Without nuclear modernization, unfortunately, the United States cannot keep a credible nuclear deterrent against its nuclear armed enemies -- not only Russia but also China, whose nuclear arsenal is scheduled to double in the next decade, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.
It is widely anticipated that the scope of U.S. nuclear deterrent modernization might be a debate topic this election year.
Some members of the House and Senate, may again push unilaterally to reduce much of America's nuclear arsenal to a level even as low as 20% of Russia's current deployed nuclear arsenal.
U.S. lawmakers may also again push to require that Congress must first approve any presidential decision to use nuclear weapons, thereby making a timely U.S. response to a surprise enemy nuclear attack virtually impossible.
Still other members of Congress may push to pass a new legal requirement that the United States pledge not to use nuclear weapons, even if the country was attacked and suffered millions of casualties from enemy biological, chemical, or cyber weapons.
Is this, then, the right time for the U.S. to stop nuclear modernization or hamstring its nuclear deterrent strategy? History illustrates how deadly being unprepared to face real threats can be, as in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the terrorist attacks of 9-11 or the coronavirus pandemic.
However serious these events were, most people probably know how much worse the outcome would be if an adversary initiated the use of nuclear weapons against the United States.
By now, the U.S. should know that its nuclear-armed adversaries are serious about using nuclear weapons -- either straightforwardly or for coercive leverage -- if they think they can get away it and avoid painful retaliation. The only sensible plan, therefore, is for the United States to maintain a nuclear deterrent second to none, to deter not only the threat of nuclear weapons but their straightforward employment, should it come to that.
In the election this November, Americans face a choice -- whether to continue with the planned modernization of America's nuclear forces, or yet again to kick nuclear modernization down the road and again pretend that nuclear threats -- that are potentially existential to the United States -- do not in fact exist.
*Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Judge Sullivan: A Prosecutor in Robes
Alan M. Dershowitz/Gatestone Institute/May 14/ 2020
In the Flynn case, the prosecution and defense both agree that the case should be dropped. Because there is no longer any controversy between the parties to be resolved, there is no longer any case properly before the judge. His only job is to enter an order vacating the guilty plea and dismissing the case with prejudice.
Under our constitutional system of separation of powers, the new prosecutor has no standing.... the separation of powers.... allocates the power to prosecute to the executive not judicial branch.
It makes no constitutional difference that Flynn pleaded guilty — even if his plea was voluntary, which is questionable in light of the threats against his son.
The Justice Department has the constitutional authority to dismiss a prosecution that it has brought at any time and for any reason, without being second-guessed by the judicial branch.
[Sullivan] is endangering our system of separation of powers and he should be stopped by a writ of mandamus or a motion to recuse. Judges, too, are not above the law or the Constitution.
Judge Emmet Sullivan is exceeding his authority by turning his courtroom into a three-ring partisan circus, designed to allow him to get his way despite the agreement of the actual parties before him. Pictured: Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor, departs the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse following a pre-sentencing hearing on July 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)
Judge Emmet Sullivan's decision to appoint a retired federal judge to argue against the Justice Department's entirely proper decision to end the criminal prosecution of General Michael Flynn is designed to circumvent the constitutional limitation on the jurisdiction of federal judges. The Constitution limits this jurisdiction to actual cases and controversies. There must be disagreement between the parties that requires resolution by a judge. If the parties agree, there is nothing for the judge to decide.
In the Flynn case, the prosecution and defense both agree that the case should be dropped. Because there is no longer any controversy between the parties to be resolved, there is no longer any case properly before the judge. His only job is to enter an order vacating the guilty plea and dismissing the case with prejudice.
But Judge Sullivan does not want to do that. He apparently thinks Flynn belongs in prison. He has as much as said that. So, he has manufactured a fake controversy by appointing a new prosecutor because evidently he does not like what the constitutionally authorized prosecutor — the Attorney General — has decided. The new prosecutor has been tasked to argue for the result that Judge Sullivan prefers. But under our constitutional system of separation of powers, the new prosecutor has no standing to make such an argument. He is not a member of the executive branch, which is the only branch authorized to make prosecutorial decisions. He was appointed by a member of the judicial branch to perform an executive function — a clear violation of the separation of powers, which allocates the power to prosecute to the executive, not judicial, branch.
It makes no constitutional difference that Flynn pleaded guilty — even if his plea was voluntary, which is questionable in light of the threats against his son.
The Justice Department has the constitutional authority to dismiss a prosecution that it has brought at any time and for any reason, without being second-guessed by the judicial branch.
Judge Sullivan is basing his unconstitutional actions on Rule 48(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure which provides that: "The government may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment, information, or complaint. The government may not dismiss the prosecution during trial without the defendant's consent." This judge-written rule was designed to protect the defendant against manipulation by the government to circumvent the protection against double jeopardy. It is not properly employed to hurt the defendant by empowering the judge to act as both prosecutor and decision-maker. It rarely if ever results in a judge denying leave to the government to drop a prosecution that it believes is unjustified.
Judge Sullivan is exceeding his authority by turning his courtroom into a three-ring partisan circus, designed to allow him to get his way despite the agreement of the actual parties before him. He is taking judicial activism to a new and grossly improper level, to the disadvantage of a defendant he does not like.
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg recently wrote for a unanimous Court: "Courts are essentially passive instruments..." It is not within their legitimate authority to "sally forth each day looking for wrongs to right." Their role is to "decide only questions presented by the parties." Judge Sullivan is improperly exceeding that role in the Flynn case and should be chastised for it, whether one agrees or disagrees with the Justice Department's decision on its merits.
There is a joke lawyers who practice in Federal Court like to tell. Angel Gabriel summons Sigmund Freud in heaven and tells him God is having delusions of grandeur. Freud asks how God can have delusions of grandeur: There is no one grander than Him. To which the Angel Gabriel responded, "he thinks he's a federal judge." But what Judge Sullivan is doing is no joke. He is endangering our system of separation of powers and he should be stopped by a writ of mandamus or a motion to recuse. Judges, too, are not above the law or the Constitution.
*Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the book, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo, Skyhorse Publishing, November 2019. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

China's Coronavirus: How the EU is Betraying Europe

Con Coughlin/Gatestone Institute/May 14, 2020
Chinese ambassadors, particularly those based in Western capitals, simply resort to blackmail, threatening to deny governments vital medical supplies to cope with the pandemic if they do not comply with Beijing's wishes.
All these countries have good reason to want to stand their ground against Beijing. Italy has been the target of a skilful fake news campaign by Beijing with cleverly edited videos that show Italians showing their gratitude for China's help in the pandemic when no such demonstrations took place.
The French government was outraged after the Chinese embassy in Paris accused French care-workers of abandoning their posts, thereby causing elderly residents to die; while Germany has complained that Chinese diplomats tried to pressure officials to make positive statements on how Beijing was handling the coronavirus pandemic.
As the EU, by constantly capitulating to Beijing's demands, has shown it is totally incapable of protecting the interests of member states, the governments of Europe are finally waking up to the reality that, in order to defend themselves against China's bully-boy tactics, they will have to look after themselves.
The latest capitulation by the European Union in the face of Chinese intimidation demonstrates that, when it comes to protecting the interests of member states, the Brussels bureaucracy is no match for Beijing's new breed of warrior diplomats. Pictured: China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi at EU headquarters in Brussels, on December 17, 2019.
The latest capitulation by the European Union in the face of Chinese intimidation demonstrates that, when it comes to protecting the interests of member states, the Brussels bureaucracy is no match for Beijing's new breed of warrior diplomats.
Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the more notable features of China's response has been the willingness of senior Chinese diplomats to intervene forcibly in defence of China's interests.
The interventions of these "Wolf Warrior" diplomats, so-called after a series of iconic Chinese action movies in which Chinese special forces vanquish their American foes, take several forms.
On one level, Chinese ambassadors, particularly those based in Western capitals, simply resort to blackmail, threatening to deny governments vital medical supplies to cope with the pandemic if they do not comply with Beijing's wishes.
On another level, they indulge in disseminating fake news, using social media platforms to propagate information that is patently false.
To deal with the growing menace posed by China's diplomatic community, it is vital, therefore, that the West take robust action to protect its interests, and to hold China to account for its role in causing the pandemic in the first place, and then trying to cover its culpability by launching a global campaign to conceal the origins of the outbreak.
Unfortunately, so far as the EU is concerned, the Brussels establishment has proved itself to be little more than a paper tiger when it comes to dealing with China's more aggressive diplomatic approach, as can be seen from the EU's most recent act of appeasement towards Beijing. The latest controversy concerns an article written by Nicolas Chapuis, the EU's ambassador to China, which was conceived to mark the 45th anniversary of EU-China diplomatic relations, and was also signed by all 27 EU country national ambassadors in Beijing.
The article was written for publication in the state-owned China Daily newspaper, but ran into trouble when China's foreign ministry objected to a reference in the article which suggested the coronavirus pandemic originated in China. The offending passage referred to the "outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world."
The article eventually appeared in print, but not before EU officials had agreed to remove this passage, prompting Mr Chapuis to remark, "It is of course regrettable to see that the sentence about the spread of the virus has been edited."
The EU's willingness to concede to Beijing's bully-boy tactics is not the first time in recent weeks that Brussels has been forced to capitulate to Chinese intimidation. Last month, the EU amended a report into China's disinformation campaign in Europe following pressure from Chinese officials. This prompted one outraged EU official to complain that the EU was "self-censoring to appease the Chinese Communist Party."
In this latest example of Brussels kowtowing to Beijing, the EU only has itself to blame: by seeking to publish the article, it was deliberately seeking to pivot towards China in what appeared to be a European attempt to seize upon a perceived lack of U.S. leadership during the pandemic.
Apart from making itself look weak and incompetent, the failure to publish the article in full has angered a number of European governments, who have themselves been targeted by Beijing's aggressive diplomatic tactics. This resulted in the Beijing embassies of countries such as Germany, France and Italy publishing the letter in full, complete with the reference originating in China and spreading from there to the rest of the world.
All these countries have good reason to want to stand their ground against Beijing. Italy has been the target of a skilful fake news campaign by Beijing with cleverly edited videos that show Italians showing their gratitude for China's help in the pandemic when no such demonstrations took place.
The French government was outraged after the Chinese embassy in Paris accused French care-workers of abandoning their posts, thereby causing elderly residents to die; while Germany has complained that Chinese diplomats tried to pressure officials to make positive statements on how Beijing was handling the coronavirus pandemic.
As the EU, by constantly capitulating to Beijing's demands, has shown it is totally incapable of protecting the interests of member states, the governments of Europe are finally waking up to the reality that, in order to defend themselves against China's bully-boy tactics, they will have to look after themselves.
*Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
© 2020 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Simply Reprehensible”: COVID-19 Occasions More Abuse of Christians under Islam

Raymond Ibrahim/Gatestone Institute/May 14/2020
Reports have appeared in recent weeks indicating that COVID-19 is furnishing a new pretext in the Islamic word to discriminate against and even persecute religious minorities, chiefly Christians.
According to an April 29 report, “in countries such as Ethiopia Christians are denied the resources of the community, which is mainly composed of Muslims. These minorities are excluded from society, making it difficult to provide them with help or support.” A separate report notes that in Muslim-majority Uzbekistan, Christians “have been denied aid because of their religion.”
Pakistan, as usual, offers several examples. According to a March 30 report:
A Karachi [based] NGO has denied [COVID-19 related] food aid to poor Hindus and Christians, who like Muslims are suffering from coronavirus…. The Saylani Welfare International Trust has been operating in the Korangi area since 1999, handing out aid and meals to homeless people and seasonal workers. Two days ago, the welfare organisation refused to give ration cards to non-Muslims, saying that only Muslims are entitled to them. The reason for this is that Zakat, Islamic alms giving (one of Islam’s five pillars), is reserved for Muslims. The Christian man said he begged for food to no avail. Farooq Masih, a 54-year-old Christian in Korangi, said that last Saturday, Abid Qadri, a member of Saylani Welfare, with other NGO members, handed out food cards in his area. But, when they got to Christian homes, they just moved on.
“A few days back there was an announcement made through a mosque’s loud speaker in the Sher-Shah neighborhood of Lahore inviting citizens to collect the government’s announced foodstuffs,” a pastor explained concerning another similar incident in Pakistan. “When Christians reached the distribution point and presented their national identity cards, they were asked by staffers to get out of the line claiming the foodstuff was only for Muslim citizens.” This same pastor received numerous phone calls from his flock, all of whom experienced the same denial. “Christians often face religious hatred and discrimination,” a Christian woman, aged 50, said of her experience. “However, we never thought of this biased behavior by the majority people at this critical time of COVID-19.”
Others are using this pandemic to win converts to Islam. According to a May 8 report, “an Islamic cleric claims his organization is using COVID-19 food aid to convert non-Muslims to Islam.” Speaking on Pakistani television, the cleric boasted of how when a destitute Christian man came for aid, the “staff of the organization offered him conversion against food which he accepted.” The man was subsequently renamed Muhammad Ramadan, signifying his conversion had occurred during the holy month. According to the cleric, Muhammad is now fasting (which is ironic considering hunger is what prompted him to convert in the first place).
The issue in Pakistan is apparently so bad that on April 13, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USIRF) denounced its discriminatory and abusive measures as “simply reprehensible,”adding:
As COVID-19 continues to spread, vulnerable communities within Pakistan are fighting hunger and to keep their families safe and healthy. Food aid must not be denied because of one’s faith. We urge the Pakistani government to ensure that food aid from distributing organizations is shared equally with Hindus, Christians, and other religions minorities.
While “reprehensible,” Pakistan’s conduct towards its non-Muslim minorities is certainly consistent. The USCIRF’s own 2019 Annual Report notes that Christians and Hindus in Pakistan “face continued threats to their security and are subject to various forms of harassment and social exclusion.”
Among other “uncharitable” acts connected to COVID-19 in Pakistan, a Christian man was tortured to death for “defiling” a Muslim well; and, after another Christian man asked his employer if he could leave early to attend church, he was told to “clean our toilets [first] and take our germs to your church so that they can suffer”—and then given a sound beating.
At the other end of the Muslim world, in “Shariah-governed areas” of Nigeria, “the government is discriminating against Christians,” also in the context of COVID-19, said an April 17 report. Millions of Christians living in northern Nigeria’s Kaduna State, “report they get six times smaller rations from the state than Muslim families. Believers we talked to shared that a Christian family of four receives a grossly inadequate ration of a single packet of noodles and one small plate of uncooked rice.”
The same report highlighted how “hundreds of thousands of believers all throughout sub-Saharan Africa … are not only persecuted for their decision to follow Jesus but are now doubly vulnerable to the impact of a global pandemic”:
Specifically, four of the five most virus-vulnerable countries—the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Sudan and Cameroon—also count among the places in sub-Saharan Africa where life is hardest for Christians… For Christians who are already persecuted, the pandemic gives way to even more ways believers can be discriminated against, exploited and attacked for their faith.
“We are facing persecution because of our faith and we are also facing a global pandemic,” Rev. John Joseph Hayab, a pastor in Nigeria explained. “We run away from our persecution … or we run away from the global sickness that we are facing. We have a double problem.”
“We lie down at night, not knowing if we’ll wake,” another pastor said concerning the ongoing terror attacks, particularly by Fulani Muslim herdsmen, who, if anything, have only increased their deadly raids on Christian villages, thereby compromising their immune system with more stress and trauma. “In the midst of this coronavirus challenges and situation, the attacks on Christians have not stopped,” he said.
The situation for sub-Saharan Christians is further exacerbated by the fact that “[s]pecific targeting by Islamic radical groups like Boko Haram, ISIS, Fulani militants and the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) across the region has displaced many thousands of Christians.” Such Christians are now living in crowded and hard to reach refugee camps where they are “suffer[ing] intensely without water, sanitation and hygiene,” making them extra susceptible to contracting the deadly virus.
“We are only at the dawn of the unfolding of this pandemic in this part of Africa,” a human rights observer said in words that apply to Christians all throughout the Muslim world: “There are many causes for concern for Christian minorities, like the economic impact of continued violence against Christians amid lockdowns, marginalization of Christians, especially [converts], and Christians being blamed to have caused the virus.”
In other words, at a time when COVID-19 is showing the best of people—countless doctors, nurses, health care providers, philanthropist institutions and churches in America have stepped up beyond the call of duty, and certainly without consideration for things like race or religion—in the Muslim world COVID-19 has merely occasioned more of the usual: hate for and persecution of contemptible “infidels,” particularly Christians.

Will Mustafa al-Kadhimi Save Iraq?
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Asharq Al Awsat/May 14/2020
There are a few signs in Baghdad that seem to suggest change is in the air. For example, a giant mural near Baghdad International Airport of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, close to the place where he was killed by a US drone strike in January, has been removed.
In addition, security forces raided the headquarters of the Tharullah party in Basra, which is openly loyal to Iran and had been threatening Iraqi protesters and Americans.
The new development in Iraq that led to these actions was Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi coming to power. The majority of Iraqi factions and regional powers, as well as the US and Russia, seem to agree that, this time, Baghdad has a leadership they can work with. His rise in the Iraqi political arena coincides with the start of the countdown to the US presidential election, the result of which will have a decisive effect on Iran and its relationship with other countries in the region, including those in the Gulf.
Al-Kadhimi’s most difficult tasks will be to save Iraq from Tehran, which wants to control its neighbor, and to steer his country away from the dangers of the US-Iran conflict. This escalated after Washington revealed Tehran’s intention to cause political and security chaos in Baghdad. Soon after, the US assassinated Soleimani, Iran’s most prominent military leader, and several militia leaders, which was followed by an escalation of protests against the American military presence in Iraq. This was the highest level of confrontation on Iraqi soil. Soon after al-Kadhimi was confirmed as prime minister, the US government announced that it renewed a waiver for Iraq to continue to buy oil from Iran for its energy needs. In reality, the move was designed to encourage the Iranians to curb their disruptive activities in Iraq.
However, al-Kadhimi inherits the same problems that faced his predecessors, Haider al-Abadi and Adel Abdul Mahdi. Iran has infiltrated Iraq’s security, military and religious institutions. Sectarian and regional rifts have grown and corruption has increased. Government fiscal deficits have multiplied as a result of the collapse in oil prices and the recent street protests, which could return at any time.
The new prime minister needs to build public confidence in the government and secure the cooperation of parliament to meet the demands of demonstrators. He will also have to quickly control the militias and “restore prestige to the military and security institutions,” as he himself said.
The list of expectations among Iraqis is a long one, and it will be no less difficult for him to meet the expectations of regional and international powers.
However, what al-Kadhimi has in his favor, which puts him in a better position than his predecessors, is that he came to power without a history of prior feuds or disagreements. His relationships with all sides, including warring parties, are good.
This places him in a good position to move forward in the next few months by taking advantage of this goodwill, and the willingness of most politicians to cooperate with him, to free Iraq from its years-long impasse.
The recovery and rehabilitation of Iraq is in the interests of everyone, and would offer hope for others in a region that is experiencing unrest on a scale it has not experienced for decades. The resolution of Iraq’s crises will help the region to emerge, finally, from a world of chaos.