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

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Bible Quotations For today
Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 08/51-55/:”Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.’The Jews said to him, ‘Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and so did the prophets; yet you say, “Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.” Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets also died. Who do you claim to be?’Jesus answered, ‘If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, he of whom you say, “He is our God”, though you do not know him. But I know him; if I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him and I keep his word.”

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

Ministry of Health: 1909 new coronavirus cases, 16 deaths
Health Minister: Current figures do not indicate tangible progress in reducing Covid-19 cases
US dollar exchange rate: Buying price at LBP 3850, selling price at LBP 3900
Aoun receives independence congratulatory cables from Presidents and Kings of brotherly and friendly countries, meets Del Col
Berri calls for joint session to assess electoral bill proposals
Lebanon specifies its starting point for maritime border talks with Israel
Report: Promises to Facilitate Govt Formation ‘Fade’
Assad Sends Cable to Aoun on Independence Day
Wehbe Discusses Lavrov Visit with Russian Counterpart
Jumblat Says Diab’s Caretaker Govt Relinquished Duties
French Army Chief of Staff Visits Lebanon
Derian, French Ambassador push for speedy formation of rescue government

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

WHO Warns of Deadly Second Wave of Virus across Middle East
Oxford Covid Vaccine Safe for Older Adults, Results Show
Fearing Turkish role, France wants international supervision in Nagorno-Karabakh
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launches aircraft-carrying ship
One year on, grief and anger over Iran protest crackdown
U.S. imposes sweeping sanctions on Iran, targets Khamenei-linked foundation
Text of Treasury Department press release: Treasury targets vast Supreme Leader patronage network and Iran’s Minister of Intelligence
Text of press statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: The importance of sanctions on Iran
Israel, Bahrain Agree to Open Embassies
Pompeo, in Israel, Vows New Action Against Boycott Movement
Pompeo Is 1st Top US Diplomat to Visit an Israeli Settlement
Canada: Iran Among Main Cyber-Crime Threats
Turkey Must Stop Provocations in Eastern Mediterranean - German FM
Ethiopia Accuses Tigrayan WHO Chief of Backing Dissident Region
UK to Unveil 'Largest Military Investment' in Three Decades

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

The United Nations stands in the way of Arab-Israeli peace/David May/Richard Goldberg/Washington Examiner/November 19/2020
Iranian disabled bodybuilder jailed for questioning coronavirus restrictions, sparks calls for execution/Benjamin Weinthal/FDD/November 19/2020
How To Build Upon Recent Progress in the Middle East/Jonathan Schanzer/FDD/November 19/2020
Chipped Away into Nonexistence: Armenia Surrounded by Islam/Raymond Ibrahim/November 19/2020
Arabs Warn Biden: Do Not Embrace Islamists/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/November 19/2020
Ethiopia… Almost Like Reading About Many Other Countries/Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/November, 19/2020
Growing reliance on mercenaries spells more chaos in the region/Francis Ghiles/The Arab Weekly/November 19/2020
Return to Iran nuclear deal would be disastrous for region/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/November 19/2020
Trump or No Trump, Religious Authoritarianism Is Here to Stay/Katherine Stewart/The New York Times/November 19/2020
Why the Muslim Brotherhood does not represent Islam/Heba Yosry/Al Arabiya/November 19/2020

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

Ministry of Health: 1909 new coronavirus cases, 16 deaths
NNA/November 19/2020
The Ministry of Public Health announced 1909 new coronavirus infection cases and 16 deaths over the past 24 hours.

Health Minister: Current figures do not indicate tangible progress in reducing Covid-19 cases
NNA/November 19/2020
Caretaker Minister of Public Health, Hamad Hassan, on Thursday said that the current figures do not indicated tangible progress in reducing the number of Covid-19 cases. "The scientific data and statistics at the Ministry of Public Health do not show tangible progress in lowering coronavirus cases, the incident rate, and the death toll; but this is normal," the Minister told a news conference following a meeting for the Scientific Committee. Hassan also revealed that within weeks, the number of hospitals' intensive care beds would be increased by 114. Moreover, he called citizens for patience and commitment to the coronavirus preventive measures.

US dollar exchange rate: Buying price at LBP 3850, selling price at LBP 3900
NNA/November 19/2020  
The Money Changers Syndicate announced in a statement addressed to money changing companies and institutions Thursday’s USD exchange rate against the Lebanese pound as follows:
Buying price at a minimum of LBP 3850
Selling price at a maximum of LBP 3900

Aoun receives independence congratulatory cables from Presidents and Kings of brotherly and friendly countries, meets Del Col
NNA/November 19/2020  
President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, expressed his hope that ongoing negotiations to demarcate the southern maritime borders will bear fruit, and that Lebanon will restore all rights based on international laws.
President Aoun’s positions came while receiving UNIFIL Commander, General Stefano Del Col, today at the Presidential Palace.
The President told General Del Col that “The demarcation of southern maritime borders is achieved on the basis of the line which starts overland from the point of Ras Al-Naqoora, according to the general principle known as the median line, without taking into account any impact on the occupied Palestinian coastal islands”.
President Aoun then stressed the need to correct the “Blue Line” so that it conforms to the internationally recognized land borders, informing General Del Col that Lebanon thanks the assistance provided by UNIFIL after the Beirut Port explosion, especially in terms of helping preserve the heritage character of Mar Mikael region, removing around 500 tons of rubble, protecting the Foreign Ministry building, and helping clean the Port in addition to the storage of 150 tons of reusable stone and wood facades.
While appreciating UNIFIL efforts in hosting the tripartite mechanism meetings which are taking place in Ras El-Naqoora, the President also presented Lebanon’s observations on the report issued two days ago by UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, about the implementation of Resolution 1701 issued by the Security Council, stressing the importance of strengthening coordination between the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL forces, to assure proper implementation of all the tasks which are required of both Lebanese Army and International forces.
For his part, General Del Col made a presentation on the current situation in the area of UNIFIL operations, in addition to what the international forces in Beirut had achieved in helping clean the port, asserting on the existing cooperation between UNIFIL and the Lebanese Army. Del Col also expressed his satisfaction with the ongoing negotiations in demarcating southern maritime borders.
Independence Congratulations:
Moreover, President Aoun received congratulatory telegrams on the 77th occasion of Lebanese independence anniversary from Presidents and Kings of brotherly and friendly countries.
Syrian President:
Syrian President, Bachar Al-Assad, wrote in his telegram:
“On the occasion of the 77th independence anniversary of the brotherly Lebanon, I extend the warmest and heartfelt congratulations, to you and to the Lebanese, in addition to my best wishes that your country will always enjoy security and stability and that it proceeds on its path towards further progress and prosperity. The long colonial era which Lebanon and Syria lived in the past, and the current attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of the two countries by the modern colonial countries, clearly show the intentions of these countries towards our region and their plans to return our countries to the era of mandate, but in different ways and methods.
Mr. President, we ask God to provide you with the adequate health, well-being and contentment, and to spare Lebanon all harm”.
Moroccan Monarch:
Moroccan King, Mohammed VI wrote:
“It is my pleasure, while the Lebanese republic celebrates its National Day, to send you my warmest congratulations and sincere wishes for progress and prosperity to your brotherly people. I also express to you, my appreciation for the solid relations between our two countries, based on sincere brotherhood, active solidarity and mutual appreciation, assuring you that the Kingdom of Morocco is keen to consolidate these relations and advance our bilateral cooperation in a way which responds to the aspirations of our two brotherly peoples”.
Egyptian President:
The President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, wrote:
“It is with great pleasure for me on the occasion of the Lebanese Republic’s celebration of Independence Day that I extend to your Excellency and the brotherly Lebanese people, my sincerest heartfelt congratulations and fraternal wishes. I benefit from this good occasion to pay tribute to the solid historical relations between Egypt and Lebanon, and I assure that we have always been keen to strengthen and consolidate these relations in all fields in order to achieve common interests of our two brotherly countries. I also express full Egyptian support, Government and people, for our brothers in Lebanon in order to achieve the aspirations of the brotherly Lebanese.
Mr. President, my dear brother, I wish you good health and happiness, and I wish the Lebanese more stability, development and prosperity”.
Independence congratulation cables were also received from: Austrian President, Alexander Van der Bellen, Gabon President, Ali Bongo, Paraguayan President, Mario Abdo, Benin President, Patrice Talon, and Chairman of the State Affairs Committee of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jong On.-- Presidency Press Office

Berri calls for joint session to assess electoral bill proposals
NNA/November 19/2020
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Thursday summoned the Finance and Budget, Administration and Justice, National Defense, and Interior and Municipalities Parliamentary Committees to a joint session, on Wednesday, November 25, in order to assess a number of electoral bill proposals.

Lebanon specifies its starting point for maritime border talks with Israel
Reuters/19 November ,2020
President Michel Aoun on Thursday specified Lebanon’s starting point for demarcating its sea border with Israel under US-mediated talks, in the first public confirmation of a stance sources say actually increases the size of the disputed area. Israel and Lebanon launched the negotiations last month with delegations from the long-time foes convening at a UN base to try to agree on the unresolved border that has held up hydrocarbon exploration in the potentially gas-rich area. A Presidency statement said Aoun instructed the Lebanese team that the demarcation line should start from the land point of Ras Naqoura as defined under a 1923 agreement and extend seaward in a trajectory that a security source said extends the disputed area to some 2,300 square km from around 860 square km. There was no immediate Israeli comment. Last month sources said the two sides presented contrasting maps for proposed borders. They said the Lebanese proposal extended farther south than the border Lebanon had years before presented to the United Nations and that of the Israeli team pushing the boundary farther north than Israel’s original position. The talks, the culmination of three years of diplomacy by Washington, are due to resume in December. Israel already pumps gas from huge offshore fields but Lebanon, which has yet to find commercial gas reserves in its own waters, is desperate for cash from foreign donors as it faces the worst economic crisis since its 1975-1990 civil war.

Report: Promises to Facilitate Govt Formation ‘Fade’
Naharnet/November 19/2020
Bringing the government formation talks back to square one reportedly "serve" Hizbullah and its backer, Iran, which prefers to push the consultations until after US President-elect Joe Biden assumes his constitutional duties, succeeding President Donald Trump, the Saudi Asharq el-Awsat reported on Thursday.
Reports said the latest meeting on the formation between Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun “ended with deep negativity after the President insisted on naming the Christian ministers.”
A former Lebanese PM told Asharq el-Awsat that through his adamant position, Aoun provided an “excuse” for his ally, Hizbullah, and its backer Iran, which prefers the formation of a government in Lebanon be delayed until after Biden assumes his constitutional responsibilities. He added, on condition of anonymity, that what matters for Iran is to negotiate with Biden on the outstanding issues between Tehran and Washington, including the situation in Lebanon, “in order to reach a settlement instead of letting Paris settle it for a price Iran is unable to pay.” He said although Hizbullah MP Mohammed Raad showed willingness, during recent talks with French envoy Patrick Durel, to help facilitate the formation process, it has not been paralleled with practical steps. The ex-PM said that during his meetings with Lebanese officials in Beirut, Durel received “mere promises” from Aoun, his son-in-law, the head of the Free Patriotic Movement Jebran Bassil, and Hizbullah on their adherence to the French initiative; however, these promises soon “evaporated” upon his return to Paris.

Assad Sends Cable to Aoun on Independence Day
Naharnet/November 19/2020
President Michel Aoun has received a cable from Syrian President Bashar Assad, greeting him on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of Lebanese Independence, Russia Today website said on Thursday. In his message Assad wished that “Lebanon will enjoy stability and security, and that it will proceed towards progress and prosperity,” the Syrian President said in the message. “The malign attempts of colonialism to interfere in the affairs of Lebanon and Syria clearly show intentions to take our region back to the colonial era,” added Assad in his message.Lebanon celebrates its Independence Day on November 22. But the crisis-hit country has cancelled all types of national festivities because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Wehbe Discusses Lavrov Visit with Russian Counterpart
Naharnet/November 19/2020
Caretaker Foreign Minister Charbel Wehbe received a message from his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, relayed to him through the Russian Ambassador to Lebanon Alexander Rudakov, the National News Agency reported on Thursday. Wehbe met Rudakov inquiring about the Russian Foreign Minister's visit to Beirut. Rudakov said that Lavrov’s anticipated visit to Lebanon “will gladly be arranged when the conditions are acceptable.”Lebanon has been expecting Lavrov's visit since October, but the trip was postponed.

Jumblat Says Diab’s Caretaker Govt Relinquished Duties
Naharnet/November 19/2020
Progressive Socialist Party leader, ex-MP Walid Jumblat criticized the caretaker government of PM Hassan Diab, accusing the ministers of giving up on their duties. “Regardless of political divisions, the government of PM Diab in its caretaker capacity is not entitled constitutionally to abstain from carrying out its duties, until a new government is in place,” said Jumblat in a tweet. Jumblat said some important decisions must not remain pending until a new cabinet gets lined up, “mainly ones related to the State budget and other critical decisions.”Diab’s government resigned in the aftermath of the colossal August 4 explosion. PM-designate Saad Hariri was assigned by the President in October, but has so far been unable to line up a government amid horse trading over ministerial portfolios between political parties. The country is grappled in an unprecedented economic and financial crisis that led many Lebanese into poverty, amid a paralyzed authority. Adding to the repercussions of the Beirut port explosion that devastated large swathes of the capital, came an outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. The country is currently in a two-week lockdown, unexpectedly ends on November 30.

French Army Chief of Staff Visits Lebanon
Naharnet/November 19/2020
French Army Chief of Staff, General François Lecointre, is expected to make an official visit to Beirut on November 19 and 20, 2020, the French embassy said in a statement Thursday. The visit illustrates France's keenness on the development of defence cooperation between the two countries.
The statement said: “Since 2017, France has delivered nearly 60 million euros worth of equipment to Lebanese military units. It has trained several hundred Lebanese military cadres, either in France or in Lebanon. Over the past two years, it has developed in cooperation in the field of fighting against terrorism and implementing maritime security.”Army General François Lecointre will be received by his Lebanese counterpart, Major General Joseph Aoun, in Yarze, where both men will sign a letter of intent aimed at developing military cooperation between the two countries, added the statement. General Lecointre will also attend a presentation with a briefing on the Lebanese Army's activities following the Beirut Port explosion on August 4 in cooperation with the French Army. General Lecointre will then go to the port of Beirut where he will be briefed on the work being carried out at the port area by the Lebanese Army, in close cooperation with French soldiers. The French Army's Chief of Staff will then decorate General Joseph Aoun with the insignia of Officer of the Legion of Honor, for his unwavering endeavours for the development of defence cooperation between the two countries and his distinguished action at the head of the Lebanese Army. This ceremony will take place aboard the French frigate Aconit, a leading vessel in the French navy, which is currently on a stopover in Beirut.

Derian, French Ambassador push for speedy formation of rescue government
NNA/November 19/2020
Mufti of the Republic, Sheikh Abdel Latif Derian, on Thursday welcomed at Dar al-Fatwa, French Ambassador to Lebanon, Anne Grillo, who paid him a protocol visit upon assuming her new diplomatic mission in Lebanon.
Talks reportedly focused on an array of Lebanese affairs, and the challenges that accompany the country's dire political situation. The pair saw eye-to-eye on the necessity for optimism, as well as the continuation of France's efforts to make its initiative a success helping Lebanon out of its multiple crises by accelerating the formation of a salvation government, harmoniously, and far from political disputes, to accomplish reforms.
 

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

WHO Warns of Deadly Second Wave of Virus across Middle East
Associated Press/November 19/2020
As winter nears and coronavirus cases surge across the Middle East, the regional director for the World Health Organization said Thursday the only way to avoid mass deaths is for countries to quickly tighten restrictions and enforce preventative measures. In a press briefing from Cairo, Ahmed al-Mandhari, director of WHO's eastern Mediterranean region, which comprises most of the Middle East, expressed concern that countries in the area were lowering their guard after tough lockdowns imposed earlier this year. The fundamentals of pandemic response, from social-distancing to mask wearing, "are still not being fully practiced in our region," he said, adding that the result is apparent throughout the region's crowded hospitals. Noting that the virus had sickened over 3.6 million people and killed more than 76,000 in the region over the past nine months, al-Mandhari warned "the lives of as many people — if not more — are at stake," urging action to "prevent this tragic premonition from becoming a reality." More than 60% of all new infections in the past week were reported from Iran, which has seen the worst outbreak in the region, as well as Jordan and Morocco, he said. Cases are also up in Lebanon and Pakistan. Jordan, Tunisia and Lebanon have reported the biggest single-day death spikes from the region. From Pakistan, Faisal Sultan, special assistant to the prime minister for national health services, told reporters the winter surge had arrived. Although Pakistan managed to control the outbreak with targeted restrictions earlier this year, the forecast turned more alarming as the country unlocked, he said. "The second wave is just as risky if not more than the first," Sultan said, adding that winter in Pakistan brings an increase in social interaction, with schools, events and wedding parties in full swing. "There is a sense of complacency and fatigue in compliance." Tunisia is another country that thought its worst virus days were in the past, only to see cases soar in recent weeks. It loosened restrictions in a bid "to cautiously coexist" with the virus, said Faycal Ben Salah, director general of health, after officials decided the lockdown was killing the economy and creating "catastrophic social consequences." While al-Mandhari cautiously welcomed news of viable vaccine candidates, he said the pandemic was far from over. "We cannot — and should not — wait until a safe and effective vaccine becomes readily available for all," he said. "We simply do not know when this will be."

Oxford Covid Vaccine Safe for Older Adults, Results Show
Agence France Presse/November 19/2020
A leading Covid-19 vaccine candidate has shown to safely produce a robust immune response in healthy older adults, its British makers said Thursday as it released its phase 2 trial results. The vaccine, developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, produced fewer side effects in people aged 56 and over than in younger people -- a significant finding given that Covid-19 disproportionately causes severe illness among seniors. The manufacturers said the vaccine was undergoing larger, more comprehensive phase 3 trials to confirm the results. Immune responses from vaccines tend to lessen as people get older as the immune system gradually slows with age. This leaves older adults more vulnerable to infection from a variety of illnesses. "As a result, it is crucial that Covid-19 vaccines are tested in this group who are also a priority group for immunisation," Andre Pollard, an Oxford professor and lead author of the study results, published in The Lancet. The phase 2 trial saw 560 participants, 240 of whom were over 70, split into groups that received either one or two doses of the vaccine, or a placebo. They had their immune responses assessed on the day of the vaccination, then several more times over the coming weeks. Responses were "similar" across all age groups, the researchers said.  "The research shows that an immune response was generated in all age groups, including in the cohort of participants aged over 70 years," said Michael Head, senior research fellow in Global Health at the University of Southampton, who was not involved in the trial. "Since elderly populations will be one of the priority groups to receive a vaccine when one is available, this is good news." The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is one of 48 that are undergoing human trials against Covid-19, according to the World Health Organization.
This month Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna announced the results of phase 3 trials -- which are much larger than phase 2 and normally include tens of thousands of subjects -- that suggested both vaccine candidates were effective in preventing Covid-19.

Fearing Turkish role, France wants international supervision in Nagorno-Karabakh
Reuters/19 November ,2020
France wants international supervision to implement a ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict amid concerns in Paris that Russia and Turkey could strike a deal to cut out Western powers from future peace talks, the presidency said on Thursday. Moscow co-chairs the Minsk group overseeing the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute with Washington and Paris, but they were not involved in the deal signed by Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to end six weeks of fighting over the enclave. Since the ceasefire, Russia has held talks with Turkey, a key Azerbaijani ally and a harsh critic of the Minsk group, that could lead to Ankara deploying troops to the region. “The end of the fighting should now allow the resumption of good faith negotiations in order to protect the population of Nagorno-Karabakh and ensure the return of tens of thousands of people who have fled their homes in recent weeks in good security conditions,” President Emmanuel Macron’s office said after calls with the Azerbaijani president and Armenian prime minister. France’s population includes between 400,000 to 600,000 people of Armenian origin. Macron has been careful not to back a side in the conflict but has faced criticism at home that he did not do enough to help Yerevan. “We want the Minsk Group to play its role in defining the surveillance (of the ceasefire),” a French presidential official told reporters. The source said Paris was pushing for “international supervision” of the ceasefire to allow the return of refugees, organize the return of foreign fighters, especially from Syria, and to start talks on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. Relations between France and Turkey have been particularly bad for several months. Paris has accused Ankara of fueling the crisis in the Caucuses. “We understand that the Russians are talking to the Turks regarding a possible formula, which we don’t want, that would replicate the Astana (process) to divide their roles in this sensitive region,” the official said. “We can’t have on one side Minsk and the other Astana. At one point the Russians have to make a choice.”The Astana forum enabled Russia and Turkey to discuss between them how to handle the Syrian conflict and brush aside Western powers.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard launches aircraft-carrying ship
AP//Arab News/November 19/2020
TEHRAN: Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it launched a heavy warship Thursday capable of carrying helicopters, drones and missile launchers amid ongoing tensions with the US. Photographs of the ship, named after slain Guard naval commander Abdollah Roudaki, showed it carrying truck-launched surface-to-surface missiles and anti-aircraft missiles. It also carried four small fast boats, the kind the Guard routinely uses in the Arabian Gulf. Sailors manned deck-mounted machine guns. The Guard said the ship has a length of 150 meters. By comparison, a US Nimitz-class aircraft carrier has a length of 332 meters (1,092 feet). The Guard’s ship does not have a runway, but includes a landing pad for a helicopter. The commander of the Guard’s navy, Adm. Ali Reza Tangsiri, suggested his forces wanted to move beyond the waters of the Gulf into deep-water patrolling. Typically, the Guard covers the waters of the Arabian Gulf, while Iran’s navy patrols the Gulf of Oman and beyond. “Presence and assignments in the Indian Ocean is our right,” Tangsiri said. The ship appears to be an answer to US Navy patrols in the region by its Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. US aircraft carriers routinely travel through Mideast waters. Iran sees those missions, as well as Israel’s expanding presence in the region, as a threat.

One year on, grief and anger over Iran protest crackdown
Agencies//Arab News/November 19/2020
PARIS: One year after protests that were harshly suppressed by the Iranian authorities, grief over the hundreds of mainly young lives lost is matched by anger over the lack of accountability for a crackdown whose scale is only now beginning to emerge. The protests, of a magnitude rarely seen in Iran following the 1979 Islamic revolution and the biggest since 2009 rallies over a disputed election, erupted nationwide in November 2019 after a sudden hike in fuel prices. Activists say the authorities managed to impose control only after a ruthless crackdown that, according to Amnesty International, left at least 304 people dead in a deliberate policy to shoot at demonstrators. The harshness of the crackdown and size of the toll were concealed by an internet shutdown that activists denounced as a bid to prevent information from filtering out. Meanwhile, not a single official in Iran has faced justice over the repression, amid allegations that families who lost loved ones have been pressured into keeping silent. Those arrested during the protests, however, have faced sentences including the death penalty. “Iranian authorities have avoided any measure of accountability and continue to harass the families of those killed during the protest,” said Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. According to a report published by Amnesty this week, Iran implemented “a near-total internet blackout” from Nov. 16, the day after the protests began, by ordering internet service providers to shut down, with access restored only gradually from Nov. 21. It said the shutdown prevented people from seeing shocking videos of the crackdown taken by Iranian citizens with their phones, in what the group describes as a “web of impunity.” Even now the scale of the suppression is still unclear, and Amnesty warns the toll is likely to exceed its figure of 304 verified deaths. The group had posted online what it says are more than 100 verified videos taken in 31 cities in November 2019 revealing the “repeated use of firearms” against unarmed protesters and bystanders. At least 23 of those killed were under the age of 18, Amnesty said, including teenagers like 15-year-old Mohammad Dastankhah, who was shot by security forces stationed on a roof while on his way home from school in Sadra, a city in the Shiraz region. Another innocent bystander to die, it said, was Azar Mirzapour, 49, a nurse and mother of four who according to Amnesty was shot dead in Karaj, outside Tehran, as she was about to arrive home from work. “The Iranian security forces used unlawful and excessive force against unarmed protesters and bystanders,” said Raha Bahreini, Iran researcher for Amnesty International. “In most cases security forces used live ammunition aimed at the head or bodies, indicating they were implementing a shoot-to-kill policy,” she added. Activists say that rather than helping relatives of the victims seek justice, authorities have been prosecuting protesters, with Amnesty alleging that those arrested were subjected to torture, including water-boarding and sexual abuse.
Death sentences imposed in June against three young men were halted only after a campaign to spare their lives both outside and inside Iran. Manouchehr Bakhtiari, whose 27-year-old son Pouya was shot dead, was jailed after he criticized the authorities, according to Persian-language media based outside Iran.
The refusal of Iran to prosecute any officials — and the lack of response to calls for a UN-led international inquiry — has prompted activists to set up their own “tribunal” to determine whether crimes were committed under international law. The Aban Tribunal, named after the Iranian month when the events took place, is being set up by NGOs including the London-based Justice for Iran and the Oslo-based Iran Human Rights (IHR). Rights lawyers and other tribunal members will hear evidence from witnesses and victims from Feb. 10-12, 2021, in The Hague, and judgments will be announced in April 2021.
The tribunal will send a “strong message to those responsible for the atrocities that they are being watched and one day will be held accountable for the crimes they’ve committed,” said Mahmood Amiri-Moghaddam, executive director of IHR.

U.S. imposes sweeping sanctions on Iran, targets Khamenei-linked foundation
Daphne Psaledakis, Humeyra Pamuk/Reuters/November 19/2020
The United States on Wednesday imposed broad sanctions targeting Iran, blacklisting a foundation controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and taking aim at what Washington called Iran’s human rights abuses a year after a deadly crackdown on anti-government demonstrators.
The sanctions announced by the U.S. Treasury Department, which also targeted Iran’s intelligence minister, are the latest action to reinforce the “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran pursued by President Donald Trump’s administration. They come little more than two months before Trump is due to hand over power to Joe Biden after losing a Nov. 3 election.
The department imposed sanctions on what it described as a key patronage network for Khamenei. It said it blacklisted the Bonyad Mostazafan, or the Foundation of the Oppressed, which is controlled by Khamenei, in a move also targeting 10 individuals and 50 subsidiaries of the foundation in sectors including energy, mining and financial services.
The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of those targeted and generally bar Americans from doing business with them. Anyone who engages in certain transactions with these individuals and entities runs the risk of being hit with U.S. sanctions.
The charitable foundation - an economic, cultural and social-welfare institution - has amassed vast amounts of wealth to the detriment of the rest of the Iranian economy and controls hundreds of companies and properties confiscated since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, insiders say.
The Treasury Department in a statement accused Khamenei of using the foundation’s holdings to “enrich his office, reward his political allies, and persecute the regime’s enemies.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement: “The United States will continue to target key officials and revenue-generating sources that enable the regime’s ongoing repression of its own people.”
‘SIGN OF DESPERATION’
Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York, called the new sanctions “a sign of desperation” by Trump’s administration.
“These latest attempts to continue a failed policy of ‘maximum pressure’ against Iran and its citizens will fail, just as all other attempts have,” Miryousefi said.
The head of the blacklisted foundation, Parviz Fattah, tweeted: “The struggle of the declining U.S. government cannot impact the foundation’s anti-sanction activities and its productivity.”
Fattah, who was among those blacklisted on Wednesday, described Trump as “a loser and disturbed person.”
U.S.-Iranian tensions have risen since Trump two years ago abandoned the 2015 Iran nuclear deal struck by his predecessor, Barack Obama, and restored harsh economic sanctions designed to force Tehran into a wider negotiation on curbing its nuclear program, development of ballistic missiles and support for regional proxy forces.
President-elect Biden, set to take office on Jan. 20, has said he will return the United States to the nuclear deal, if Iran resumes compliance.
Some analysts have said Trump’s piling-on of additional U.S. sanctions appeared to be aimed at making it harder for Biden to re-engage with Iran after taking office.
“The administration is clearly, and I think transparently, trying to raise the political cost for Biden to re-engage with Iran and lift the nuclear deal sanctions,” said Henry Rome, an Iran analyst with Eurasia Group.
Rome said Wednesday’s move could embarrass the supreme leader, dissuade non-U.S. companies from dealing with the charitable foundation even if sanctions are eventually lifted, and put the Biden administration in the potentially difficult position of justifying why they did so.
The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi and accused his ministry of playing a role in serious human rights abuses against Iranians, including during last year’s protests.
The U.S. State Department also designated two Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officials, accusing them of involvement in the killing of nearly 150 people in the city of Mahshahr during last year’s crackdown. The action bars them and their immediate families from traveling to the United States.
The 2019 crackdown may have been the bloodiest repression of protesters in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Reuters reported last year that about 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest that started on Nov. 15, 2019. The toll was provided to Reuters by three Iranian Interior Ministry officials.
Iran’s Interior Ministry has said around 225 people were killed during the protests, which erupted after state media announced that gas prices would rise by as much as 200% and the revenue would be used to help needy families.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a statement urged other nations to take action against Iran for its human rights abuses.
Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Humeyra Pamuk; Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Dubai, Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Editing by Mary Milliken, Will Dunham and Howard Goller
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Text of Treasury Department press release: Treasury targets vast Supreme Leader patronage network and Iran’s Minister of Intelligence
Treasury Targets Vast Supreme Leader Patronage Network and Iran’s Minister of Intelligence
November 18, 2020
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took action today against a key patronage network for the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Islamic Revolution Mostazafan Foundation (Bonyad Mostazafan, or the Foundation), an immense conglomerate of some 160 holdings in key sectors of Iran’s economy, including finance, energy, construction, and mining. While Bonyad Mostazafan is ostensibly a charitable organization charged with providing benefits to the poor and oppressed, its holdings are expropriated from the Iranian people and are used by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to enrich his office, reward his political allies, and persecute the regime’s enemies.
OFAC is also designating Iran’s Minister of Intelligence and Security, Mahmoud Alavi, pursuant to human rights authorities. Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has played a central role in the Iranian regime’s human rights abuses against Iranian citizens, including during the November 2019 protests.
“Iran’s Supreme Leader uses Bonyad Mostazafan to reward his allies under the pretense of charity,” said Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “The United States will continue to target key officials and revenue generating sources that enable the regime’s ongoing repression of its own people.”
BONYAD MOSTAZAFAN: AN ECONOMIC CONGLOMERATE CONTROLLED BY THE SUPREME LEADER
Today’s action targets the Islamic Revolution Mostazafan Foundation, also known as Bonyad Mostazafan or the Foundation; its leadership, presided over by former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) official Parviz Fattah; and 50 Bonyad Mostazafan subsidiaries in key sectors such as energy, mining, logistics, information technology, and financial services, which collectively account for a substantial portion of Bonyad Mostazafan’s multi-billion dollar economic empire. These entities and individuals are being designated pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13876, which targets the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian Supreme Leader’s Office (SLO), as well as their affiliates.
Bonyad Mostazafan was created in the wake of the Islamic Revolution to confiscate and manage property, including that originally belonging to religious minorities such as Baha’is and Jews. The Foundation has since emerged as a source of power, wealth, and influence for the Supreme Leader and his inner circle.
Bonyads are opaque, quasi-official organizations controlled by current and former government officials and clerics that report directly to the Supreme Leader. Bonyads receive benefits from the Iranian government, including tax exemptions, but are not required to have their budgets publicly approved. They account for a significant portion of Iran’s non-petroleum economy, with the Foundation itself estimated to account for over one percent of Iran’s gross domestic product.
Bonyad Mostazafan’s vast economic wealth is partly the result of asset expropriation and business with human rights abusers and those involved with Iran’s support of international terrorism. As of 2017, the Foundation was owed nearly $2.5 million in trade debt by the Law Enforcement Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the IRGC, and Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL), all of which have been previously designated under multiple authorities, including counterterrorism authorities. The Martyrs Foundation repaid a similar debt of $1.65 million to the Foundation between 2016 and 2017.
Despite its outsized influence in the Iranian economy, Bonyad Mostazafan operates outside of government oversight and, due to a 1993 decree by the Supreme Leader, is exempt from paying taxes on its multi-billion-dollar earnings. The Supreme Leader has the authority to regulate its central accounts and personally profits from the Foundation’s holdings, which also line the pockets of his allies. Between 2015 and 2016, the Foundation transferred large sums of money to the SLO. In 2017, the Foundation financially contributed to candidates for Iran’s presidential election. Foundation managers worked for the campaign of candidate Ebrahim Raisi, a member of the Supreme Leader’s inner circle and the current Judiciary Chief, who is reportedly linked to the so-called “death commission” that ordered the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Raisi was designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 in November 2019.
As of 2020, according to Bonyad Mostazafan President Fattah, Foundation properties have been occupied by the IRGC, the Iranian navy, the Iranian Parliament (Majles), and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, none of whom pay to do so. Ahmadinejad bases his office in an upscale property belonging to the Foundation, worth some $50 million in a wealthy neighborhood of Tehran.
The abuse of Bonyad Mostazafan’s assets also benefits the Supreme Leader’s inner circle. Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, a Khamenei confidant and the father-in-law of his son Mojtaba Khamenei, occupies Foundation property worth some $100 million, paying rent far below market rates. A member of Iran’s Expediency Council, Haddad-Adel, was designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 in November 2019. Mojtaba Khamenei was simultaneously designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 alongside Haddad-Adel.
While the Supreme Leader enriches himself and his allies, the Foundation’s primary mission to care for the poor has become a secondary objective. According to the Foundation’s previous president, in past years as little as seven percent of the Foundation’s profit has been spent on projects aimed at reducing poverty.
Bonyad Mostazafan is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, the Supreme Leader of Iran.
PARVIZ FATTAH, BONYAD MOSTAZAFAN’S BRIDGE TO THE IRGC
Bonyad Mostazafan maintains close ties to the IRGC, personified by current Foundation president and former IRGC officer Parviz Fattah. Appointed to the presidency of the Foundation by the Supreme Leader in July 2019, Fattah previously served as Minister of Energy during the Ahmadinejad presidency before his appointment as managing director of the IRGC-linked Bonyad Taavon Sepah. He later served as head of the Imam Khomeini Relief Committee, whose Lebanon branch was designated pursuant to counterterrorism authorities in 2010 for being owned or controlled by, and for providing financial and material support to, Hizballah.
Known for his loyalty to the Supreme Leader, Fattah has also forged ties to senior IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) officials. According to Fattah, former IRGC-QF commander Qassem Soleimani sought Fattah’s assistance to finance the Fatemiyoun Brigade, an IRGC-QF-led militia composed of Afghan migrants and refugees in Iran coerced to fight in Syria under threat of arrest or deportation. Several hundred Fatemiyoun Division fighters, including children as young as 14 years old, have died fighting for Iran’s interests in Syria’s civil war. The Fatemiyoun Brigade, like the IRGC-QF itself, is designated pursuant to both counterterrorism and human rights authorities.
Fattah is being designated today pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being a person appointed by the Supreme Leader of Iran to a position as the head of an entity located in Iran, and for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan. Fattah was previously designated pursuant to E.O. 13382, a counterproliferation authority, for acting on behalf of, and providing services to, Bonyad Taavon Sepah, an organization designated pursuant to E.O. 13382 in December 2010 for providing services to the IRGC.
OFAC is also designating several Bonyad Mostazafan deputies, who are appointed by, and report directly to, Fattah, and are charged with managing key business functions for the Foundation.
Amir-Mansour Borghei, Javad Ghana’at, Khosro Mokhtari, and Mohammad-Ali Yazdan Joo are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being a member of the board of directors or a senior executive officer of Bonyad Mostazafan.
BONYAD MOSTAZAFAN-OWNED OR -CONTROLLED ENTITIES
Bonyad Mostazafan maintains control of its economic empire through a network of holding companies touching nearly every sector of the Iranian economy. Today, OFAC is designating seven of those companies, along with dozens of their owned-or-controlled subordinate entities, as well as a number of “independent” Foundation owned-or-controlled subsidiaries and their owned-or-controlled subordinate companies.
Sina Energy Development Company
Sina Energy Development Company (SEDCO), an energy holding of Bonyad Mostazafan and the Foundation’s second highest exporter and profit generator, is active in the fields of energy exploration, drilling, and refining. SEDCO is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
SEDCO’s Iran-based subordinate companies Payandan Company, Coal Tire Refining Company, Pishro Iran Financial and Investment Company, Pars Energy-Gostar Drilling and Exploration, and North Drilling Company are also being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Additionally, OFAC is designating SEDCO’s managing director, Javad Oji. Javad Oji is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being a member of the board of directors or a senior executive officer of SEDCO.
Behran Oil
Behran Oil, a joint venture between SEDCO and Bonyad Mostazafan that exports fuel to the Assad regime in Syria, is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Behran Oil’s Iran-based subsidiary companies Beh Tam Ranakar Company, Behran Trading Company, and Tabchem Chemical Industries Company are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Behran Oil.
Kaveh Pars Mining Industries Development Company
Kaveh Pars Mining Industries Development Company (KMID), the holding company for Bonyad Mostazafan’s mining and metals companies, is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
KMID’s Iran-based subordinate companies Pars Sarralle Company, Damavand Mining, Tehran Cement Company, Kaveh Khozestan Aluminum Company, Arvand Kaveh Steel Co., Kaveh Shargh Steel Co., and South Kaveh Steel Co. are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, KMID. Germany-based International Trade & Industrial Technology ITRITEC GmbH, which procures technologies from abroad for the benefit of the Iranian mining industry, and Turkey-based Turira Company, both KMID subsidiaries, are also being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, KMID. Iran-based Somic Engineering and Management Co, Tehran International Transport Co, and Pishgaman Horizon Development Iranian Business Trading Company are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Additionally, OFAC is designating KMID’s managing director, Seyyed Mohammad Atabak. Seyyed Mohammad Atabak is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being a member of the board of directors or a senior executive officer of KMID.
Sina Financial and Investment Holding Company and Bank Sina
Sina Financial and Investment Holding Company, Bonyad Mostazafan’s holding company in the investment and financial services industry, is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Bank Sina, which was previously designated pursuant to E.O. 13224, a counterterrorism authority, is being designated today pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan. Bank Sina’s Iran-based subsidiary, Sina Currency Exchange Company, which has procured foreign currency for the Central Bank of Iran and Behran Oil Company, is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bank Sina.
Additionally, OFAC is designating key members of Bank Sina and Sina Financial and Investment Holding Company’s leadership. Mohammad Eskandari and Mohsen Alikhani are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being a member of the board of directors or a senior executive officer of Sina Financial. Seyyed Zia Imani is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being a member of the board of directors or a senior executive officer of Sina Bank.
Omran va Maskan Iran Company and Paya Saman Pars Company
Omran va Maskan Iran Company and Paya Saman Pars Company, Bonyad Motazafan’s holding companies in the construction industry, are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Paya Saman Pars Company’s Iran-based subordinate companies Raman Company, Melli Sakhteman Company, Day Company, and Taloon Company are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Parsian Tourism and Recreational Centers Company
Parsian Tourism and Recreational Centers Company, Bonyad Mostazafan’s holding company in the hospitality and logistics industries, is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Parsian Tourism’s Iran-based subordinate companies Sina Port and Marine Services Development Company, Bonyad Shipping Agencies Company, Bonyad Eastern Railway Company, and Sina Pars Rail Company are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan. The cargo ship Bosco Gilan is also being identified as blocked property in which Bonyad Shipping Agencies Company has an interest.
Sina Paya Sanat Development Co.
Sina Paya Sanat Development Co., Bonyad Mostazafan’s holding company in the industrial manufacturing sector, is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
Sina Paya Sanat Development Co.’s Iran-based subordinate companies Sanati Doodeh Fam Company, Shisheh va Gas Industries Group, Iran Tire Manufacturing Company, North Wood Industry Company, Selkbaf Co, Aliaf Company, and Hejab Textile Company are being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan. Sina Tile and Ceramic Industries Company is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Sina Paya Sanat Development Co. Pars Tile Company is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Sina Tile and Ceramic Industries Company.
Independent Bonyad Mostazafan Subsidiaries
Iran Electronic Development Company (IEDC), a joint venture between Bonyad Mostazafan and MODAFL-controlled Iran Electronic Industries, is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan. IEDC is the majority owner of Irancell, Iran’s second largest telecommunications company.
OFAC is also designating Rah Negar Middle East Pars Company and Peyvand Tejarat Atieh Iranian Company pursuant to E.O. 13876 for being owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly, Bonyad Mostazafan.
IRAN’S MINISTER OF INTELLIGENCE MAHMOUD ALAVI
OFAC is also designating Mahmoud Alavi, the head of the regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), which has played a key role in the Iranian regime’s brutal human rights abuses against the Iranian people. MOIS agents are responsible for beatings, sexual abuse, prolonged interrogations, and coerced confessions of prisoners, particularly political prisoners. MOIS has employed mock executions and forms of sexual violence in its interrogations of prisoners, and its agents have arrested and detained members of the Baha’i religion without charges. MOIS was designated in 2012 pursuant to E.O. 13553, a human rights authority, for being responsible for or complicit in the commission of serious human rights abuses against the Iranian people since June 12, 2009.
Mahmoud Alavi is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13553 for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, the MOIS.
Today, the Department of State is also sanctioning IRGC Brigadier General Heidar Abbaszadeh and IRGC Colonel Reza Papi under Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2020 for their involvement, by operation of command responsibility, in gross violations of human rights, namely the flagrant denial of the right to life. Abbaszadeh and Papi were involved in the killing of nearly 150 individuals in the city of Mahshahr as part of the Iranian regime’s crackdown on the November 2019 protests. These individuals and their immediate family members are ineligible for entry into the United States.
SANCTIONS IMPLICATIONS
As a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the persons designated above for blocking sanctions must be blocked and reported to OFAC if their property or interests in property are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons. OFAC’s regulations generally prohibit all dealings by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of blocked or designated persons.
In addition, persons that engage in certain transactions with the individuals or entities designated today may themselves be exposed to sanctions. Furthermore, any foreign financial institution that knowingly facilitates a significant transaction or provides significant financial services for any of the persons designated today could be subject to U.S. correspondent account or payable-through account sanctions.
View identifying information on the individuals and entities designated today.
View the chart describing Bonyad Mostazafan’s Multi-Billion Dollar Equivalent Economic Empire.

Text of press statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo: The importance of sanctions on Iran
The Importance of Sanctions on Iran
PRESS STATEMENT
MICHAEL R. POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE
NOVEMBER 18, 2020
The Maximum Pressure campaign against the Iranian regime continues to be extraordinarily effective. Today, Iran’s economy faces a currency crisis, mounting public debt, and rising inflation. Prior to the Maximum Pressure campaign, Iran was exporting nearly 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. Now it struggles to export even a quarter of that volume. Since May 2018, we have denied the regime of direct access to more than $70 billion in oil revenue, and will continue to prevent the regime access to around $50 billion annually. The Iranian rial has depreciated to one fifth of its former value against the dollar since the start of the campaign, while Iran’s GDP has shrunk by around 6% for three consecutive years. These sanctions deprive the regime of funds it would use to carry out its malign activities. As a direct result of sanctions, Iran reduced its military budget by nearly 25 percent in 2019. The regime’s terrorist proxies and partners beg for cash, and have been forced to take austerity measures, even furloughing some terrorist fighters. Sanctions are part of the pressures creating a new Middle East, bringing together countries that suffer the consequences of Iran’s violence and seek a region more peaceful and stable than before. Reducing that pressure is a dangerous choice, bound to weaken new partnerships for peace in the region and strengthen only the Islamic Republic.
We need not speculate about what a cessation of sanctions would imply for Iran’s funding for terrorism; we can simply look to the recent past. From 2016 to 2018, Iran took advantage of the sanctions relief provided under the JCPOA to increase its defense spending by more than 30 percent, to a record high. Iran’s proxies and partners became flush with cash and greatly emboldened. The Iranian people did not benefit from the funds as had been promised by their leaders; instead, the regime increased funding for the military and for the Basij, the key instrument of internal oppression, while its elites took billions to enrich themselves. That is why Iranian dissidents around the world are calling for sanctions to remain against this regime as long as its malign behavior continues.
The Iranian regime seeks a repeat of the failed experiment that lifted sanctions and shipped them huge amounts of cash in exchange for modest nuclear limitations. The regime desperately needs an economic lifeline. For that reason, they make two arguments: sanctions are useless and ineffective; or, in the alternative, when sanctions are effective they hurt only the Iranian people and not the regime; either way they should be removed. The regime’s greatest fear is that sanctions will remain.
We can expect to see repeated efforts by the regime to spread disinformation, and we are likely to see reports and arguments that say sanctions have failed. We should not be deceived. The consulting firm Facts Global Energy (FGE) reports Iran exported only 280,000 barrels of oil per day in October. Other estimates are higher, but even if we double FGE’s numbers we see the enormous impact of U.S. sanctions.
Meanwhile, the Western media reports with alarm that the Iranian regime is increasing its stockpile of enriched uranium. This is indeed troubling, but even more disturbing is the notion that the United States should fall victim to this nuclear extortion and abandon our sanctions. That is precisely the effect the regime intends when it publicly discloses its uranium stockpile. The world must never reward nuclear threats with a cash appeasement—and must never fall victim to regime propaganda intended to save it from powerful sanctions.
The Maximum Pressure campaign is working, sanctions will continue, and the United States will not hesitate to impose painful consequences on those who engage in sanctionable activity. Throughout the coming weeks and months, we will impose new sanctions on Iran, including using our nuclear, counterterrorism, and human rights authorities, each reflecting the wide range of malign behavior that continues to emanate from the Iranian regime. These sanctions are a critical tool of national security to preserve the safety of the region and to protect American lives.
 

Israel, Bahrain Agree to Open Embassies
Tel Aviv - Manama - Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 19 November, 2020
Tel Aviv and Manama have agreed to exchange embassies soon, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and his Bahraini counterpart Abdlatif al-Zayani arrived in Tel Aviv on Wednesday for a short visit, heading a delegation of 25 Bahraini political figures aboard the first commercial nonstop flight to Israel. The Bahraini FM conveyed to his Israeli counterpart Manama’s approval of a request by Tel Aviv to open an embassy, and submitted an official request to open a mission in Israel. The bilateral talks addressed issues of shared interest to achieve stability in the region, especially in light of the escalating challenges of terrorism and extremism and the growing need to enhance the culture of dialogue and mutual understanding, according to Bahrain News Agency (BNA). Zayani affirmed that cooperation would pave the way for peace in the Middle East, indicating that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to be resolved through negotiations. The Bahraini foreign minister also announced that he has invited his Israeli counterpart to visit Manama next month, and a close associate of Ashkenazi said he will be visiting Bahrain on December 4. Ashkenazi described the visit as "historic," saying Zayani is a friend and partner in peacemaking. He stressed that the deals signed with the UAE and Bahrain pave the way for achieving peace with the Palestinians. He also welcomed the Palestinian Authority’s decision to resume cooperation, saying: “our door is open to renew negotiations and I urge the Palestinians to step through this door with no preconditions.”
Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement announcing that Wednesday’s discussions focus on ways to boost bilateral relations and mechanisms for activating the memoranda of understanding they signed last month following the declaration to support peace and the Abraham Accords.
Meanwhile, an Israeli official who attended the first meeting between the two ministers, indicated that it is clear that Bahrain wants to push the cooperation forward, in almost all fields. He noted that this will certainly be reflected in a number of bilateral agreements, including aviation and technological cooperation.
The Israeli diplomat indicated that there is an enormous economic potential in the relations with the UAE and Bahrain, and many officials who have helped establish these relationships for more than 15 years, are now happy to be able to talk about it openly.
The Bahraini minister also met with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who lauded the historic beginning for joint cooperation between the two countries. Rivlin presented the foreign minister with a copy of the Quran translated into Hebrew by his father, Professor Yosef Yoel Rivlin.
“This is a gift I will treasure all my life,” Zayani said thanking Rivlin. He stressed that Bahrain’s approach is based on commitment to peace as a strategic alternative to launch initiatives to promote international cooperation, stability and peace as well as prosperity in the Middle East, reported BNA.
Zayani then headed to a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed by a tripartite meeting in the presence of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. They were later joined by Ashkenazi and a high-level US delegation, headed by the outgoing administration’s chief peace negotiator Avi Berkowitz. During a joint press conference, Netanyahu announced that the peace between "Israel and Bahrain is built on solid foundations of mutual appreciation and shared interest," that extend to years even before the signing of the Abraham Accords. Pompeo hoped there will be peace agreements between Israel and other countries in order to provide excellent opportunities for development. "These agreements open up wonderful opportunities for commerce and economic development." For his part, Zayani called on the Israelis and Palestinians to return to peace talks aimed at resolving the conflict between the two sides and reaching a viable two-state solution. “It was a tremendously important step on our common path to reconciliation and peace. Today, King Hamad and I are building a bridge of peace that many others will cross in the future.”

Pompeo, in Israel, Vows New Action Against Boycott Movement
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 19 November, 2020
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the U.S. will regard the Palestinian-led boycott movement as "anti-Semitic" and cut off government support for any organizations taking part in it, a step that could deny funding to Palestinian and international human rights groups.
Pompeo announced the initiative during a visit to Israel in which he is expected to make the first-ever appearance by a secretary of state in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. In another first, Pompeo said he would visit the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and later annexed in a move not recognized internationally. "We will regard the global, anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic," Pompeo said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
"We will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw US government support for such groups," he said, adding that all nations should "recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is."BDS organizers cast their movement as a non-violent way of protesting Israel's policies toward the Palestinians modeled on the campaign that helped end apartheid in South Africa. The movement has had some limited success over the years but no impact on the Israeli economy.
Israel views BDS as an assault on its very existence, and has seized on statements by some supporters to accuse it of anti-Semitism, allegations denied by organizers. In a statement, the BDS movement reiterated its rejection of "all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish racism," and accused the US and Israel of trying to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights. "The BDS movement for Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality, stands with all those struggling for a more dignified, just and beautiful world," it said. "With our many partners, we shall resist these McCarthyite attempts to intimidate and bully Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders into accepting Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism as fate." Pompeo did not provide additional details about the initiative, and it was unclear what organizations would be at risk of losing funding. Israelis have accused international groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of supporting BDS, allegations they deny. Human Rights Watch, whose researcher was deported from Israel last year for past statements allegedly in support of BDS, does not call for boycotting Israel but urges companies to avoid doing business in West Bank settlements, saying it makes them complicit in human rights abuses. Amnesty does not take a position on the boycott movement.
"The Trump administration is undermining the common fight against the scourge of antisemitism by equating it with peaceful advocacy of boycotts," Eric Goldstein, acting Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
Israel passed a 2017 law that bars entry to foreigners who have called for economic boycotts of Israel or its settlements. The US House of Representatives passed a resolution opposing the boycott movement last year, and several US states have enacted anti-BDS laws.
Virtually all Palestinian organizations support the boycott movement, but under President Donald Trump the US has already cut off nearly all forms of aid to the Palestinians. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to restore the aid as part of efforts to revive the peace process.
Pompeo spoke at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the Israel-US alliance had reached "unprecedented heights" under the Trump administration.
Netanyahu thanked the administration for moving its embassy to contested Jerusalem, abandoning the US position that Israeli settlements are contrary to international law, recognizing Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, and taking a hard line against Iran.
Israel captured east Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 war. The Palestinians want both territories to be part of their future state and view the settlements as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace - a position endorsed by most of the international community.
Trump's Mideast plan, which overwhelmingly favored Israel and was rejected by the Palestinians, would allow Israel to annex up to a third of the West Bank, including all of its settlements there, which are home to nearly 500,000 Israelis.
"For a long time, the State Department took the wrong view of settlements," Pompeo said, but it now recognizes that "settlements can be done in a way that (is) lawful, appropriate and proper." Neither Netanyahu nor Pompeo said anything about the US election. Pompeo, like Trump, has yet to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Netanyahu congratulated Biden and referred to him as the president-elect in an official statement earlier this week.

Pompeo Is 1st Top US Diplomat to Visit an Israeli Settlement
Asharq Al-Awsat//Thursday, 19 November, 2020
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday became the first top American diplomat to visit an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank as the State Department announced that products from the settlements can be labeled "Made in Israel" in a major policy shift.
The two moves reflected the Trump administration's acceptance of Israeli settlements, which the Palestinians and most of the international community view as a violation of international law and a major obstacle to peace.
Pompeo also announced that the U.S. would brand the international Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel as "anti-Semitic" and bar any groups that participate in it from receiving government funding. It was not immediately clear which groups would be affected by the move.
A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed Pompeo's visit to the Psagot winery, in a settlement near Jerusalem, to reporters traveling with him but who were not allowed to accompany him on that leg of the visit.
Pompeo had earlier said he would visit the Golan Heights. Israel seized the West Bank and the Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed the Golan in a move that not recognized internationally.
Pompeo had earlier announced the US will regard the Palestinian-led boycott movement as "anti-Semitic" and cut off government support for any organizations taking part in it, a step that could deny funding to Palestinian and international human rights groups.
"We will regard the global, anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic," Pompeo said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.
"We will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw US government support for such groups," he said, adding that all nations should "recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is." BDS organizers cast their movement as a non-violent way of protesting Israel's policies toward the Palestinians modeled on the campaign that helped end apartheid in South Africa. The movement has had some limited success over the years, particularly on college campuses and with artists and entertainers, but no impact on the Israeli economy.
Israel views BDS as an assault on its very existence, and has seized on statements by some supporters to accuse it of anti-Semitism, allegations denied by organizers. In a statement, the BDS movement reiterated its rejection of "all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish racism," and accused the US and Israel of trying to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights. "The BDS movement for Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality, stands with all those struggling for a more dignified, just and beautiful world," it said. "With our many partners, we shall resist these McCarthyite attempts to intimidate and bully Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders into accepting Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism as fate."
Pompeo did not provide additional details about the initiative, and it was unclear what organizations would be at risk of losing funding. Israelis have accused international groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of supporting BDS, allegations they deny.
Human Rights Watch, whose researcher was deported from Israel last year for past statements allegedly in support of BDS, does not call for boycotting Israel but urges companies to avoid doing business in West Bank settlements, saying it makes them complicit in human rights abuses. Amnesty does not take a position on the boycott movement. "The Trump administration is undermining the common fight against the scourge of antisemitism by equating it with peaceful advocacy of boycotts," said Eric Goldstein, acting Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Israel passed a 2017 law that bars entry to foreigners who have called for economic boycotts of Israel or its settlements. The US House of Representatives passed a resolution opposing the boycott movement last year, and several US states have enacted anti-BDS laws.
The European Union's former foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said she opposed BDS but backed the movement's right to call for boycotts as freedom of speech.
Virtually all Palestinian advocacy groups support the boycott movement. Under President Donald Trump, the US has already cut off nearly all forms of aid to the Palestinians. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to restore the aid as part of efforts to revive the peace process.
Pompeo spoke at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the Israel-US alliance had reached "unprecedented heights" under the Trump administration.
Netanyahu thanked the administration for moving its embassy to contested Jerusalem, abandoning the US position that Israeli settlements are contrary to international law, recognizing Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights, and taking a hard line against Iran.
Israel captured east Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 war. The Palestinians want both territories to be part of their future state and view the settlements as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace - a position endorsed by most of the international community.
Trump's Mideast plan, which overwhelmingly favored Israel and was rejected by the Palestinians, would allow Israel to annex up to a third of the West Bank, including all of its settlements there, which are home to nearly 500,000 Israelis.
"For a long time, the State Department took the wrong view of settlements," Pompeo said, but it now recognizes that "settlements can be done in a way that (is) lawful, appropriate and proper."
Neither Netanyahu nor Pompeo said anything about the US election. Pompeo, like Trump, has yet to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden's victory. Netanyahu congratulated Biden and referred to him as the president-elect in an official statement earlier this week.

Canada: Iran Among Main Cyber-Crime Threats
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 19 November, 2020
State-sponsored programs from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea pose the greatest high-tech threats to Canada, a report from the nation's authority on cyber security warned Wednesday, saying it feared foreign actors could try to disrupt power supplies. "The number of cyber threat actors is rising, and they are becoming more sophisticated", the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and its Canadian Center for Cyber Security said. The center found that those four countries are very likely attempting to build up capacities to disrupt key Canadian infrastructure -- like the electricity supply -- to further their goals. The report said they are also expected to target intellectual property related to the battle against the coronavirus pandemic in order to boost their own response to the contagion. Threats against Canadians and their companies include cyber spying and online influence campaigns. "The most sophisticated capabilities belong to state sponsored cyber threat actors who are motivated by economic, ideological, and geopolitical goals," the center said. "We assess that almost certainly the state-sponsored programs of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea pose the greatest state-sponsored cyber threats to Canadian individuals and organizations," it added. That said, many other states are rapidly developing their own cyber threats. State-sponsored attackers are expected to continue to "conduct commercial espionage against Canadian businesses, academia, and governments", the center said. It further warned that the pandemic has led to a jump in teleworking and online activity in general for Canadians, a trend that will continue and could expose people to an evolving array of cyber threats. Canadians lost over Can$43 million (US$32.8 million) to cybercrime fraud in 2019, according to statistics from the Canadian AntiFraud Center. CSE is probing whether China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd can supply equipment for next-generation 5G networks. The United States and other close allies have moved to block Huawei, saying its gear could contain backdoors allowing access for spies. "State-sponsored actors are very likely attempting to develop the additional cyber capabilities required to disrupt the supply of electricity,” it said. In 2019, Russian-associated actors probed US and Canadian electricity utilities, it added.

Turkey Must Stop Provocations in Eastern Mediterranean - German FM
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 19 November, 2020
Turkey has to cease provocations in the eastern Mediterranean if it wants to avoid new discussions about European Union sanctions against Ankara at an EU summit in December, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on Thursday. “It is up to Turkey what decision will be taken at the EU summit in December,” Maas said ahead of a meeting with his EU counterparts. “If we see no positive signals coming from Turkey by December, only further provocations such as (Turkish President Tayyip) Erdogan’s visit to North Cyprus, then we are heading for a difficult debate,” Maas said. The question of imposing sanctions against Turkey would then certainly come up again, he added

Ethiopia Accuses Tigrayan WHO Chief of Backing Dissident Region
Agence France Presse/Thursday, 19 November, 2020
Ethiopia's army chief on Thursday accused WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus -- the country's highest-profile Tigrayan abroad -- of lobbying in favour of the dissident region and helping them get weapons. "He has worked in neighbouring countries to condemn the war. He has worked for them to get weapons," army chief Berhanu Jula told a press conference. He said Tedros had "left no stone unturned" to help the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF), the party Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed says he is targeting in a military offensive in the region. Abiy, last year's Nobel Peace Prize winner, accuses the TPLF, which dominated power for three decades before his appointment in 2018, of seeking to destabilise his government. "This guy is himself part of that team," said Berhanu of Tedros, who served as health minister in the former government. "What do you expect from him? We don't expect he will side with the Ethiopian people and condemn them," he said. Now in its third week, the controversial military operation which Abiy says is essential to restore law and order in the country, has left hundreds dead and sent thousands streaming over the border with Sudan.

UK to Unveil 'Largest Military Investment' in Three Decades
Agence France Presse/November 19/2020
Prime Minister Boris Johnson will on Thursday unveil what is being billed as Britain's biggest programme of investment in the armed forces since the end of the Cold War. In a speech to lawmakers in parliament, Johnson will announce an extra £16.5 billion ($22 billion, 18.5 billion euros) in funding over the next four years. It follows the ruling Conservatives' commitment in their election manifesto last year to increase defence spending by 0.5 percent above inflation until 2025. Johnson's Downing Street office said the cash boost would "cement the UK's position as the largest defence spender in Europe and the second largest in NATO". It comes despite Britain's economy suffering a historic downturn this year due to the coronavirus crisis, which has seen the government spend unprecedented sums to support people and businesses. "I have taken this decision in the teeth of the pandemic because the defence of the realm must come first," Johnson said in remarks released ahead of his speech. "The international situation is more perilous and more intensely competitive than at any time since the Cold War and Britain must be true to our history and stand alongside our allies."He added the new funding was "our chance to end the era of retreat" and that it would be used to "upgrade our capabilities across the board".
- 'Threats' -
Britain's increase in military spending, which will total £24.1 billion ($31.8 billion, 26.9 billion euros) over four years, comes at a pivotal moment for the country. After formally leaving the European Union in January, it will end the 11-month Brexit transition period at the end of the year and begin a new era in international trade and relations. Meanwhile US President-elect Joe Biden will take power in late January, with trans-Atlantic allies hoping that marks a more stable period for NATO after the tumult of the Trump years. Newly appointed United States acting defense secretary Christopher Miller hailed the move Wednesday evening. "The UK is our most stalwart and capable ally, and this increase in spending is indicative of their commitment to NATO and our shared security," he said in a statement. "With this increase, the UK military will continue to be one of the finest fighting forces in the world." Increased UK military investments will target "cutting-edge technology", including cyber and space capabilities, while also addressing "weaknesses in our defence arsenal", Downing Street said. Johnson will announce a new agency dedicated to Artificial Intelligence, the creation of a National Cyber Force and a new "Space Command", capable of launching its first rocket by 2022, it added. Meanwhile, after a boost of £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion, 1.6 billion euros), nearly £6 billion ($7.9 billion, 6.7 billion euros) will be spent on military research and development, including on upgrading aerial warfare systems. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the settlement provided the "financial certainty we need to modernise, plan for the future and adapt to the threats we face". "Defence will be at the forefront of creating the jobs and business opportunities that will help us build back from the pandemic," he added.

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

The United Nations stands in the way of Arab-Israeli peace
David May/Richard Goldberg/Washington Examiner/November 19/2020
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which recently normalized relations with Israel by signing the Abraham Accords, nonetheless supported seven United Nations General Assembly resolutions singling out and condemning Israel this month. While Israeli-Arab rapprochement is racing forward, reconciliation is proceeding at a turtle’s pace at Turtle Bay.
Last Tuesday marked the 45th anniversary of the U.N. General Assembly declaring Zionism to be racism and establishing the Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, or CEIRPP, a pillar of the U.N.’s anti-Israel infrastructure. After several failed attempts to defeat the Jewish state by military means, the Arab world launched a decades long political war to delegitimize Israel, mainly at the U.N.
To facilitate this work, the General Assembly created the (misleadingly named) Division for Palestinian Rights within the U.N.’s Department for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.
The CEIRPP and DPR receive around $2.7 million annually, along with support from the U.N. Department of Public Information, to disseminate their anti-Israel propaganda. The DPR organizes anti-Israel meetings and conferences, coordinates with anti-Israel NGOs (including the agricultural arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and other groups allegedly tied to terrorists), and organizes an annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People every Nov. 29.
The anniversary of the vote to partition Mandatory Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab, is a peculiar choice of day for anti-Israel events, reports, and resolutions, given that Jewish leadership at the time mostly accepted the plan while the Arabs roundly condemned and rejected the move. The U.N. appears to be celebrating Palestinian rejectionism.
If the goal of the Abraham Accords is to promote the “spirit of coexistence, mutual understanding and mutual respect,” all the parties to the accords and their allies should prioritize the elimination or reform of multilateral organizations whose work only sows discord. The UAE, for example, remains an observer at the CEIRPP. With its own signed peace treaty with Israel, the UAE should renounce its observer status immediately, and others should follow.
There are, of course, other problem areas at the U.N. The Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices prepared four of the recent anti-Israel resolutions. The committee’s mandate targets Israel for war crimes accusations while turning a blind eye to the actual war crimes committed by Iran-backed terror organizations in Gaza and Lebanon that use human shields to protect their terror infrastructure.
Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia understand the frustration of facing an enemy that sacrifices civilians to score propaganda points: In Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthis use the same human shield tactics employed by Hezbollah and Hamas. Both Gulf states should therefore support the special committee’s elimination.
Another body with a special mandate to discriminate against Israel and promote Palestinian demands is the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. Established in 1950 to care for Arabs who fled Palestine during Israel’s War of Independence, UNRWA today defines millions of Palestinians as stateless refugees, even though most either live within the borders of the Palestinian Authority or are citizens of other countries such as Jordan. UNRWA helps ensure that Palestinians continue to live in squalor and serve as political pawns in a 70-year campaign to undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist. At UNRWA schools, generation after generation of Palestinian children are raised to hate Jews and the Jewish state.
UNRWA’s existence not only damages the prospects for reconciliation, but it also poses a danger to Arab states that make peace with Israel. Those same countries helped establish UNRWA and pushed the myth of a Palestinian “right of return” for decades. In effect, UNRWA encourages extremism inside Sunni Arab monarchies, placing a giant target on Gulf leaders accused of abandoning the Palestinian cause.
In 2018, the United States cut funding to UNRWA because of its incitement against Israel and its failure to disclose how many true Palestinian refugees (people who were displaced by conflict in 1948) are still alive today. Though the UAE and Saudi Arabia remain among UNRWA’s biggest financiers, possibly as a hedge against backlash for growing ties with Israel, Palestinian leadership continues to lambaste them. Since their donations produce no goodwill, the Gulf countries could use their financial support as leverage to overhaul the wayward refugee agency.
Arab leaders want to normalize relations with Israel for their own strategic and economic interests, but absent changes, the U.N. system will continue to nurture grievances instead of promoting solutions that would increase regional stability. It’s time for Arab countries to stop voting for anti-Israel resolutions and to start working with the U.S. and Israel to eliminate the U.N.’s institutional barriers to peace.

*David May is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (@FDD), where Richard Goldberg serves as a senior adviser. Follow May on Twitter via @DavidSamuelMay and Goldberg via @rich_goldberg. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

Iranian disabled bodybuilder jailed for questioning coronavirus restrictions, sparks calls for execution
Benjamin Weinthal/FDD/November 19/2020
Reza Tabrizi had called out the Iranian regime for keeping gyms closed during the pandemic.
The arrest of an Iranian champion disabled bodybuilder for allegedly merely questioning why gyms are closed while Muslim shrines remain open amid the coronavirus pandemic has sparked calls for his execution by a regime cleric.
Reza Tabrizi had written on Instagram that it was “hypocritical” to close down gyms in the city of Mashhad – the second largest city in Iran – but still allow pilgrims into the city’s Imam Reza Shrine.
Tabrizi, who won a silver medal for powerlifting at the 2011 IPC Athletics World Championships in New Zealand, has walked back the post, asking for forgiveness.
“I apologize to all my friends and fans and hereby state that the love of our religious saints runs in the blood of my family, and if as a result of a moment of negligence I have hurt your feelings I do sincerely apologize and ask for your forgiveness,” he wrote in a subsequent post.
However, the apology did nothing to stop officials from arresting Tabrizi.
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist in the U.S. and a women’s rights campaigner, tweeted a video showing Iranian authorities escorting Tabrizi from his gym to a car as he struggled to walk.
“I got this shocking video from Iran. Reza Tabrizi, a disabled athlete, was violently forced into a police car & harassed by plainclothes agents as he struggled to walk,” she wrote in the tweet. “He was arrested for asking why religious shrines are open while gyms are closed during [the COVID-19 epidemic]. He faces death.”
The regime-controlled Fars News Agency reported that anti-Tabrizi protesters showed up at the Reza Tabrizi Sports Club in Mashhad. The angry mob ransacked his gym after he was carted off to jail.
The IranWire citizen journalism news site reported that people held sit-ins at the Imam Reza Shrine, in which “they shouted out chants calling for his death. Social media users have also continued to call for Tabrizi to be executed.”
One big voice calling for Tabrizi’s death is Morteza Mustafazadeh, an official with the Iranian regime’s powerful Basii militia — a branch of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps. He accused the bodybuilder of posting a “threatening insult Instagram account and thought that in the country ruled by our religious beliefs he could do any damn thing that he wants. Thanks be to God he is now behind bars.”
There is an ongoing investigation against Tabrizi, Fars News reported.
Iran’s official COVID-19 death rate last week surpassed 40,000 — the highest number of virus-related deaths in the Middle East. The country has been ravaged by the pandemic, and Iran’s death toll is significantly underreported, according to Western security officials.
The arrest of Tabrizi comes hot on the heels of the Iranian regime’s execution of the champion wrestler Navid Afkari in September. The hanging of Afkari was widely viewed as an extrajudicial killing for his protest against regime corruption.
Rob Koehler, director general of Global Athlete, a sports organization seeking to advance the rights of athletes, told Fox News that Tabrizi’s case much like that of Afkari’s has highlighted the years of abuse toward Iranian athletes.
“It’s time for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Paralympic Committee (IPC) to place athletes​’ rights at the center of their attention,” he said. “Both the IOC and IPC have a duty of care to protect athletes, so their lack of action should be a concern to every athlete. The IOC’s and IPC’s failure to stand up for athletes’ human rights and their willingness to stand by while athletes are jailed, tortured and executed can no longer be tolerated. Athletes, sporting leaders, government, sponsors, and human rights experts cannot sit idle; they must demand action.”
A spokesman for the International Paralympic Committee told Fox News that it is aware of the case involving Tabrizi and has been in contact with the Iran National Paralympic Committee (NPC) “in order to seek greater clarity, as currently, the facts are scarce and in some cases inconsistent or inaccurate.
“What is clear at this stage is that neither the IPC or NPC Iran have any record of Mr. Tabrizi having participated in the Paralympic Games or any recognized Para sport event,” the spokesman added.
An IPC spokesman added that “it appears from the information we have so far that he participates in bodybuilding, a sport with no association to the Paralympic Movement. We hope that the principles of human rights prevail in this matter.”
The United4Navid campaign, which began when Navid was arrested and subsequently executed, condemned the Iranian regime for its “war on athletes,” which it said “shows no signs of running out of steam.”
“The Islamic Republic of Iran’s war on athletes shows no signs of running out of steam. Tabrizi’s crime? He had criticized the double standards which had led to the closure of gyms due to coronavirus. In a post on Instagram, Tabrizi asked: ‘Why are gyms closed during COVID-19 pandemic but religious shrines to remain open. After all, does the virus discriminate based on the location?’ Little did he know that even such an innocent question would draw the ire of fanatic clerics,” the campaign said on its website.
The Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry and Alireza Miryousefi, a counselor and head of the press office at Iran’s Mission to the United Nations, did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
**Benjamin Weinthal reports on human rights in the Middle East and is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @BenWeinthal. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

How To Build Upon Recent Progress in the Middle East
Jonathan Schanzer/FDD/November 19/2020
Litigation surrounding the 2020 presidential election is set to continue for a while, as state legislatures will not report official results until December. Assuming nothing changes, Biden will enter the White House in January. When he does, he will inherit a Middle East policy shaped by his predecessor’s most important achievement: the Abraham Accords. The peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel can help inform the policies of the incoming Biden administration in a number of key areas.
The Abraham Accords was the first in a wave of peace agreements not likely to end with the Trump presidency. Bahrain followed shortly after the UAE, with Sudan then following shortly thereafter. These countries made the decision to de-prioritize their pointless historical animosities with Israel and to instead emphasize their own national priorities—namely, to look at how Israel and the United States can advance their own interests. Other Arab countries are now openly mulling similar shifts. They include Oman, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and perhaps even a few others.
With an opportunity to notch additional diplomatic achievements that only a few years ago seemed impossible, the incoming administration should see clearly that diplomacy with countries peripheral to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a greater chance of success than does direct engagement with the Palestinians themselves. That said, the more countries that de-emphasize historical Palestinian claims and narratives on the path to normalizing with Israel, the more the Palestinians will feel the pressure to negotiate and compromise. This creates an opportunity to pursue both tracks simultaneously.
But a word of warning: Returning to the orthodoxy of two-state solution diplomacy is ill-advised. Blindly yielding back leverage to the intransigent Palestinian leadership is not likely to encourage successful diplomacy. If anything, history has shown the opposite to be true.
With than in mind, the incoming administration should enlist the Arab states that normalized ties with Israel to play an intermediary role. In the past, many Arab leaders served as enablers of Palestinian intransigence. One gets a sense that fewer are inclined to serve that role, today. Helpful allies can convey the friendly, yet tough, messages to the sclerotic Palestinian leadership that those leaders need to hear. Specifically, calls to conquer Israel must be seen for what they are: unrealistic and silly. No less outlandish is the Palestinian call for the “right of return” of some five million Palestinians to live in Israel. This narrative, which stems from the tendentious Palestinian practice of viewing the descendants of refugees from the original 1948-1949 war as refugees in their own right, must finally be put to rest.
Similarly, the Arab states can work with the Palestinians to finally create institutions for better governance and services for the Palestinian people. With any luck, some of the wealthy Gulf states might even help finance such projects.
The alliance between some Arab states and Israel also introduces a new wrinkle in the Iran debate. The Middle East countries that were largely excluded from the last round of Iran deal negotiations are now likely to come together with one unified voice. Last time, Arab states quietly cheered while Israel contested the concessions that the United States and others made to Tehran. This time, they are likely to work openly with Israel, and to demand closer communication and coordination. Additional points of friction should be expected, particularly given Iran’s continued aggressive and provocative actions across the region.
The incoming administration should also remember that mutual concern about Iranian aggression served as a key motivation for peace between the UAE and Israel. Iran concerns played a role in the normalization agreements with Bahrain and Sudan, too. The next administration should leverage this if it decides to engage with Iran, reminding the regime of the growing coalition of countries in the region that seek to contain Iran’s nuclear program, as well as its missile proliferation and support for terrorism. A myopic focus on one challenge that ignores the others is not likely to resonate well in the new Middle East, where an Arab-Israeli coalition is increasingly speaking with one voice.
Finally, a word of warning. Some Democrats want to downgrade ties with Saudi Arabia, as justifiable outrage lingers from the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, human rights violations at home and botched military operations that killed civilians in Yemen. But retribution is a mistake. It would likely deter Saudi normalization with Israel and disrupt the positive diplomatic trends in the Middle East, given Riyadh’s quiet leadership in this space. It might also push Saudi Arabia toward Russia and China, or even prompt the Saudis to reverse course on recent domestic reforms. This is not to say that Saudi transgressions should go unaddressed. The key is addressing them wisely and prudently.
The coalition between the pragmatic Arab states and Israel is off to a running start. It has the potential to expand—in terms of both numbers and influence. One can only hope that this new leverage will be used to serve the American interest. Specifically, it can be used to encourage increased regional cooperation as a means to counter Iran and advance a more realistic vision for Middle East peace.
*Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

Chipped Away into Nonexistence: Armenia Surrounded by Islam
Raymond Ibrahim/November 19/2020

ريموند إبراهيم/تمزيق أرمينا المحاصرة بالإسلام وضرب امكانيات وجودها

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/92535/raymond-ibrahim-chipped-away-into-nonexistence-armenia-surrounded-by-islam-%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%85%d9%88%d9%86%d8%af-%d8%a5%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%87%d9%8a%d9%85-%d8%aa%d9%85%d8%b2%d9%8a%d9%82-%d8%a3%d8%b1/
“Peace” was recently achieved between Armenia and Azerbaijan, who had been fighting for nearly two months, after the Christian nation agreed to cede its ancestral lands in Artsakh to its Muslim neighbor.
From a temporal and myopic point of view, such a settlement may seem progressive; from a long point of view it is regressive and reflective of the continuum of Armenian/Islamic history and relations: in exchange for peace, Christians have always been forced to cede territory to Muslims. Indeed, the heart of the Muslim world—the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia Minor—was all Christian before the sword of Islam invaded.
Thus, before Islam violently conquered eastern Anatolia (Asia Minor) in the eleventh century, Armenia was significantly larger than today. Beginning a thousand years, however, Turks chipped away at and absorbed ethnically Armenian territory. What is happening today is simply part of that continuum.
The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa (d.1144), an Armenian historian who lived close to the initial conquests, makes all this clear. According to this valuable historical resource, in 1019, “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of infidels called Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword.” Three decades later the raids were virtually nonstop. In 1049, the founder of the Turkic Seljuk Empire himself, Sultan Tughril Bey (r. 1037–1063), reached the Armenian city of Arzden, west of Lake Van, and “put the whole town to the sword, causing severe slaughter, as many as one hundred and fifty thousand persons.”
Other contemporaries confirm the devastation visited upon Arzden. “Like famished dogs,” writes Aristakes (d.1080) an eye witness, the Turks “hurled themselves on our city, surrounded it and pushed inside, massacring the men and mowing everything down like reapers in the fields, making the city a desert. Without mercy, they incinerated those who had hidden themselves in houses and churches.”
Eleven years later, in 1060, the Turk’s laid siege to Sebastia (which, though now a Turkish city, was for the preceding 400 years Armenian). Six hundred churches were destroyed, “many and innumerable people were burned [to death],” and countless women and children “were led into captivity to Persia.”
Between 1064 and 1065, Tughril’s successor, Sultan Muhammad bin Dawud Chaghri—known to posterity as Alp Arslan, one of Turkey’s unsavory but national heroes—laid siege to Ani, the fortified capital of Armenia, then a great and populous city. The thunderous bombardment of Muhammad’s siege engines caused the entire city to quake, and Matthew describes countless terror-stricken families huddled together and weeping. Once inside, the Islamic Turks “began to mercilessly slaughter the inhabitants of the entire city . . . and piling up their bodies one on top of the other…. Innumerable and countless boys with bright faces and pretty girls were carried off together with their mothers.”
Not only do several Christian sources document the sack of Armenia’s capital—one contemporary succinctly notes that Muhammad “rendered Ani a desert by massacres and fire”—but so do Muslim sources, often in apocalyptic terms: “I wanted to enter the city and see it with my own eyes,” one Arab explained. “I tried to find a street without having to walk over the corpses. But that was impossible.”
Such is an idea of what Muslim Turks did to Christian Armenians—not during the Armenian Genocide of a century ago but one thousand years ago, starting in 1019, when the Islamic conquest of Armenia first began.
“That was the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” Matthew of Edessa concludes towards the end of his account: “So, lend an ear to this melancholy recital.” This has proven to be an ominous remark; for the aforementioned history of blood and tears was, indeed, just “the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” whose “melancholy recital” continues to this day,” most recently by the nation’s recent concessions which, in the long run, may well have been in vain.
Little wonder many Armenians are displeased with their government’s surrender of even more land—to the point of storming parliament and “beating Parliament Speaker Ararat Mirzoyan unconscious in front of his family.” Perhaps they are aware that, as history suggests, true and permanent peace between Armenia and its Muslim neighbors will only be achieved when the Christian nation has ceded itself into nonexistence.
Note: Quotes from Matthew of Edessa were excerpted from the author’s book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

“Peace” was recently achieved between Armenia and Azerbaijan, who had been fighting for nearly two months, after the Christian nation agreed to cede its ancestral lands in Artsakh to its Muslim neighbor.
From a temporal and myopic point of view, such a settlement may seem progressive; from a long point of view it is regressive and reflective of the continuum of Armenian/Islamic history and relations: in exchange for peace, Christians have always been forced to cede territory to Muslims. Indeed, the heart of the Muslim world—the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia Minor—was all Christian before the sword of Islam invaded.
Thus, before Islam violently conquered eastern Anatolia (Asia Minor) in the eleventh century, Armenia was significantly larger than today. Beginning a thousand years, however, Turks chipped away at and absorbed ethnically Armenian territory. What is happening today is simply part of that continuum.
The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa (d.1144), an Armenian historian who lived close to the initial conquests, makes all this clear. According to this valuable historical resource, in 1019, “the first appearance of the bloodthirsty beasts … the savage nation of infidels called Turks entered Armenia … and mercilessly slaughtered the Christian faithful with the sword.” Three decades later the raids were virtually nonstop. In 1049, the founder of the Turkic Seljuk Empire himself, Sultan Tughril Bey (r. 1037–1063), reached the Armenian city of Arzden, west of Lake Van, and “put the whole town to the sword, causing severe slaughter, as many as one hundred and fifty thousand persons.”
Other contemporaries confirm the devastation visited upon Arzden. “Like famished dogs,” writes Aristakes (d.1080) an eye witness, the Turks “hurled themselves on our city, surrounded it and pushed inside, massacring the men and mowing everything down like reapers in the fields, making the city a desert. Without mercy, they incinerated those who had hidden themselves in houses and churches.”
Eleven years later, in 1060, the Turk’s laid siege to Sebastia (which, though now a Turkish city, was for the preceding 400 years Armenian). Six hundred churches were destroyed, “many and innumerable people were burned [to death],” and countless women and children “were led into captivity to Persia.”
Between 1064 and 1065, Tughril’s successor, Sultan Muhammad bin Dawud Chaghri—known to posterity as Alp Arslan, one of Turkey’s unsavory but national heroes—laid siege to Ani, the fortified capital of Armenia, then a great and populous city. The thunderous bombardment of Muhammad’s siege engines caused the entire city to quake, and Matthew describes countless terror-stricken families huddled together and weeping. Once inside, the Islamic Turks “began to mercilessly slaughter the inhabitants of the entire city . . . and piling up their bodies one on top of the other…. Innumerable and countless boys with bright faces and pretty girls were carried off together with their mothers.”
Not only do several Christian sources document the sack of Armenia’s capital—one contemporary succinctly notes that Muhammad “rendered Ani a desert by massacres and fire”—but so do Muslim sources, often in apocalyptic terms: “I wanted to enter the city and see it with my own eyes,” one Arab explained. “I tried to find a street without having to walk over the corpses. But that was impossible.”
Such is an idea of what Muslim Turks did to Christian Armenians—not during the Armenian Genocide of a century ago but one thousand years ago, starting in 1019, when the Islamic conquest of Armenia first began.
“That was the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” Matthew of Edessa concludes towards the end of his account: “So, lend an ear to this melancholy recital.” This has proven to be an ominous remark; for the aforementioned history of blood and tears was, indeed, just “the beginning of the misfortunes of Armenia,” whose “melancholy recital” continues to this day,” most recently by the nation’s recent concessions which, in the long run, may well have been in vain.
Little wonder many Armenians are displeased with their government’s surrender of even more land—to the point of storming parliament and “beating Parliament Speaker Ararat Mirzoyan unconscious in front of his family.” Perhaps they are aware that, as history suggests, true and permanent peace between Armenia and its Muslim neighbors will only be achieved when the Christian nation has ceded itself into nonexistence.
Note: Quotes from Matthew of Edessa were excerpted from the author’s book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

Arabs Warn Biden: Do Not Embrace Islamists
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/November 19/2020
خالد أبو طعمة/معهد جايتستون/ العرب يحذرون بايدين من مخاطر الإرتماء في أحضان الإسلام السياسي
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“These observers pointed out that, behind the Council’s statement, there is a Saudi message saying that the Brotherhood’s rush to welcome and embrace Biden and its attempt to win his sympathy while inciting against important countries in the region will not change Saudi Arabia’s steadfast position of considering the group a terrorist organization and a real incubator for all militant groups.” — The Arab Weekly, November 12, 2020.
Abdullatif Al-Sheikh, the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs, responding to the Council’s statement, said …. that his warning came out of concern for “our religion, our country, our citizens, and all Muslims.” — Twitter, November 10, 2020.
The statement of the [Saudi] Council of Senior Scholars came after a long and careful study of the methodology and thinking of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organization, which views non-Muslims as infidels.”
“The group’s [Muslim Brotherhood’s] extremism and violence are an inherent feature of its ideology, and there is no point in reforming or changing it.” — Dar-Alifta.org, November 11, 2020.
The analysts and experts added that the world has realized that the existence of this terrorist organization represents a real threat to the identity and stability of states, and stress that the Brotherhood group does not represent the approach of Islam.
Several Arab political analysts and columnists, particularly in the Gulf, have voiced similar sentiments. The message they are sending to Biden and the Democrats: We do not want to go back to the bad old days when the US administration aligned itself with Islamist terrorist groups.
These Arabs are determined to prevent the Islamists from returning to power in Egypt or raising their heads in other Arab countries. It remains to be seen if the future US administration will cooperate in this effort.
There is a growing fear in some Arab countries that a Biden administration may return to former President Barack Obama’s policy of empowering and appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood.
In a clear message directed to a possible US administration under Joe Biden, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have warned against supporting the Muslim Brotherhood organization. They state that it gives birth “to extremist terrorist groups who wreak havoc on the country and the people.”
On November 10, Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Scholars, the kingdom’s highest Islamic religious body, issued a warning amid growing fear in some Arab countries that a Biden administration may return to former President Barack Obama’s policy of empowering and appeasing the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Saudi warning was immediately endorsed by Egypt’s senior Islamic religious institute, Dar al-Ifta, and prominent Egyptian writers and political analysts.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which has congratulated Biden on his disputed victory in the US presidential election, is hoping that if and when he becomes president, he will not classify the organization as a terrorist group.
The Council of Senior Scholars, in a strongly worded statement, said that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist group and “does not represent the true values of Islam.”
The Council described the Brotherhood as a “deviant group that undermines coexistence within nations, stirs up sedition, violence and terrorism and pursues its partisan goals in an attempt to seize more power for itself under the cover of religion. The history of the organization of one of evil, strife, extremism and terrorism.”
The Council said that the history of the Muslim Brotherhood reveals the full scale of the evil for which it is it is responsible and that it has inspired the formation of many extremist and terrorist groups that are responsible for atrocities all around the world.
The Council called on the public to be wary of the Muslim Brotherhood and its activities, and urged them not to join it, support it or become involved with its activities.
In 2014, Saudi Arabia blacklisted the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Three years later, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt issued a joint statement in which they listed as terrorists 59 individuals, including prominent Muslim Brotherhood figures, and 12 charities of various nationalities.
The London-based Arab Weekly newspaper noted this month:
“Followers of Saudi affairs did not rule out that the statement of the Council of Senior Scholars was a response to the Muslim Brotherhood’s exaggerated enthusiasm over Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential elections and its probable negative impact on Saudi-American relations.
“These observers pointed out that, behind the Council’s statement, there is a Saudi message saying that the Brotherhood’s rush to welcome and embrace Biden and its attempts to win his sympathy while inciting against important countries in the region will not change Saudi Arabia’s steadfast position of considering the group a terrorist organisation and a real incubator for all militant groups.”
Abdullatif Al-Sheikh, the Saudi Minister of Islamic Affairs, responding to the Council’s statement, said that he has “warned against the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization for more than 20 years.” He said that his warning came out of concern for “our religion, our country, our citizens, and all Muslims.”
Al-Sheikh’s statement is also seen by Arabs as a warning to Biden after the Muslim Brotherhood congratulated him on his “victory.”
Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta, an Islamic advisory, judicial and governmental body that offers Muslims religious guidance and advice through the issuing of fatwas (Islamic rulings) on various issues, expressed full support for the Saudi Council of Senior Scholar’s statement against the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Egyptian group, also in a message seemingly directed to Biden, pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood “always seeks to divide societies and spread chaos and incite citizens to riot and engage in violence.”
“The statement of the [Saudi] Council of Senior Scholars came after a long and careful study of the methodology and thinking of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organization, which views non-Muslims as infidels… We call on various religious bodies, institutions and councils in the countries of the Islamic world to criminalize and prohibit the terrorist Brotherhood and to disavow it. The group’s extremism and violence are an inherent feature of its ideology, and there is no point in reforming or changing it.”
Arab political analysts and experts in Islamic fundamentalist movements said they considered the statement of the Council of Senior Scholars in Saudi Arabia as “a new blow to the terrorist group” and that it exposes the group’s “tricks to attract young people to its deviant discourse.”
The analysts and experts added that the world has realized that the existence of this terrorist organization represents a real threat to the identity and stability of states, stressing that the Muslim Brotherhood group does not represent the approach of Islam.
Saudi political analyst Dr. Ahmed al-Rukban said that the Council of Senior Scholars is the legislative body in the Kingdom and is considered reliable on the issues of the Arab and Islamic nation with regard to domestic and foreign policy.
Al-Rukban warned that the Muslim Brotherhood and its followers have always used Islam “to penetrate many sectors and agencies in Saudi Arabia and other countries.” The Muslim Brotherhood, he added, is financially supported by Turkey.
Mounir Adeeb, a researcher on Islamic extremist movements and international terrorism, said that the statement of the Council of Senior Scholars reveals the truth of the Muslim Brotherhood. He praised the Council for its “bold, brave and clear” description of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
Saudi writer Mohammed Al-Saaed revealed that after the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed in Saudi Arabia in 2014, “the terrorist group secretly tried to sneak back through the window.” The Brotherhood activists sought to “jump on the technocratic jobs that began to spread in the wake of the great development in the kingdom and to infiltrate and attack society whenever the opportunity arises,” he commented.
Noting that the Muslim Brotherhood carried out several terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia between 2003 and 2006, Al-Saaed wrote: “The terrorist organization has become a despicable and treacherous organization.”
Egyptian Islamic scholar Saad Eddin Al-Hilali expressed concern that Biden, if elected, will continue in the footsteps of Obama and endorse the Islamists. Al-Hilali called on Egyptians to be wary of the Islamists, “who were previously supported by Obama and will now be supported by Biden.” Biden, he said, “will complete Obama’s march, but I want to remind the Egyptians that Egypt rejected political Islam [by removing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, from power]. Now, Egypt stands firmly on its feet and is saying no to trafficking in religion.”
Egyptian media personality Mustafa Al-Faqi also expressed concern over the possibility that a Biden administration would embrace the Muslim Brotherhood. “Biden endorsed the approach of Obama, who wanted to spread Islamism in the region,” Al-Faqi said. “Obama saw the Muslim Brotherhood as part of the national opposition. This is nonsense.”
The Saudis and Egyptians are hardly the only Arabs who are worried about a renewed alliance between a Democrat-led administration and the Islamists.
Several Arab political analysts and columnists, particularly in the Gulf, have voiced similar sentiments. The message they are sending to Biden and the Democrats is: We do not want to go back to the bad old days when the US administration aligned itself with Islamist terrorist groups.
These Arabs are determined to prevent the Islamists from returning to power in Egypt or raising their heads in other Arab countries. It remains to be seen if the future US administration will cooperate in this effort.
*Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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Ethiopia… Almost Like Reading About Many Other Countries
Hazem Saghieh/Asharq Al Awsat/November, 19/2020
Another one of the many identitarian conflicts, another one of the difficulties that block the building of states and societies.
When does the history of Ethiopia and 110 million inhabitants’ tragedy begin?
The earliest date leads us to Haile Selassie, an emperor who was the first to establish centralized governance at the minorities and peripheries’ expense.
His story begins with that of its “greatest” emperor, Menelik, who defeated the Italians in 1896 but was then paralyzed with dementia in 1908, despite which he stayed alive until 1913. Mr. Menelik named Lij Lyasu to succeed him. A vicious man who suffered from syphilis, Lyasu’s reckless belligerence nearly split the country and set the flames of a perpetual civil war. But his young cousin Tafari McConnen got the better of him in 1916, becoming the heir to his mother’s throne. When Empress Zodito, the first woman to occupy such a position in Africa, passed away in 1930, her son Tafari became Emperor Haile Selassie I.
A whirlwind of developments set off by foreign powers cemented the emperor’s prestige: in 1924, the British made an attempt to share Ethiopia with fascist Italy, but Selassie, as crown prince, thwarted it with a letter to the League of Nations. When the Italian invasion followed, Britain and the League abandoned Ethiopia and tried to avoid implementing the sanctions imposed on Italy. Britain refrained from supplying the emperor with arms, so his resistance collapsed, and he fled to Britain as the leader of an oppressed people.
Internal developments went in another direction: in 1955, he put in place a nominal constitution but governed as an absolutist emperor. In the mid-sixties, 54 hospitals were available for nearly 18 million Ethiopians, and only one of them was free. Roads were very few and extremely rudimentary; conditions in the countryside were as they had been since antiquity, while the illiteracy rate was 90 percent. Famines came in quick succession, and the famine that went on from 1972 to 1974 claimed a hundred thousand lives, while Haile Selassie’s family continued to live lavishly.
The Amhara culture and language were imposed on all Ethiopians, and high-ranking positions were allocated exclusively to the Amhara people, whom the Omoros accused of seizing their lands, though the former account for the second-largest ethnic group in the country (30 percent), preceded by the Oromos (34 percent). The region of Eritrea, which was the farthest geographically and the most culturally and religiously distinct, was the first to rebel, declaring its desire for independence in the late fifties. But the army also became enticed by the booty that could be attained through a military coup, making a failed attempt in 1960. The middle period of the tragedy begins in 1974. The head of a military junta known as the Derg, Sargent Mengistu Haile Mariam, overthrew the imperial dynasty that had been in power since 1270. The new regime adopted Marxism-Leninism and joined the Soviet sphere of influence: repression became more severe and hunger more widespread, while internal and external wars were successive. Mengistu and his “Red Terror regime” were overthrown in 1991. Meles Zenawi, a leader in the resistance to Mengistu who assumed the premiership after the latter fell, described the conditions of the Ethiopians at the time as follows: my ambition is for Ethiopians to be able to eat three meals a day.
Zenawi was a leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the faction that played the most prominent role in weakening Mengistu militarily and the subsequent toppling of his regime. The Front was founded in 1975 as a Marxist student organization that supported the overthrow of the emperor. Still, it was skeptical of Mengistu and the Derg’s ability to “solve the problem of nationalities,” and it quickly turned to armed struggle. After 1991, the Front took over the northern province of Tigray, and the Tigray people (6 percent of the population) came to wield far greater influence over the center than is proportional to their size. The most recent period leads us to 2018, the year Abiy Ahmed assumed the premiership. He weakened the security grip and limited ethnic powers’ influence, including that of the Tigray. He made peace with Eritrea, winning a Nobel Peace Prize as a result. But he also angered the Tigray, whose region is on the Eritrean border and who came to feel increasingly marginalized and abandoned by Addis Ababa.
Abiy accuses the leaders of the Front of corruption and resisting reform, while the Front accuses him of disregarding the federal system stipulated by the 1995 constitution that grants ethno-linguistically-based Regional States the right to self-determination. His ideology, known as “medemer”, calls for combining the cultivation of national unity with the preservation of pluralism, but it seems a difficult combination to attain in a country that has ten ethnicities, 90 spoken languages, and where 63 percent of the population is Christian and 34 percent Muslims. In this vein, he announced his intention to merge the Front and the other ethnic factions into his Prosperity Party. But the Front refused to do so and responded by holding elections in its region last September.
Abiy Ahmed is an Oromo, the first Oromo to become premier, but this doesn’t negate the presence of the anti-central government Oromo Liberation Front, whose opposition has become fiercer since 2015, when the capital’s territory was expanded at the expense of Oromo lands. Abiy’s supporters are the civil servants, the educated, and the farmers of the Amharic elite. They are the most attached to unity and central authority and the most hostile to separatist movements in the peripheries.
A war broke out a few days ago: its two factions are the Tigray Front and the central government. During the war, civilians were massacred with knives and machetes in Mai Kadewa, a town in southwestern Tigray. The Front is likely to have perpetrated it. It also bombed Eritrean territory, accusing Asmara of supporting Addis Ababa. Thousands have been displaced to Sudan, and fears of an open civil war that may go beyond Ethiopia’s borders have returned to the fore.
Indeed, it seems as though we are reading about many of the other poor countries!
UK Will Likely Follow the US in Cutting Afghanistan Troops, Minister Says
Asharq Al-Awsat/Thursday, 19 November, 2020
Britain will likely follow the United States in reducing troop levels in Afghanistan but it will continue to work with its government and the US to protect the country's security, Britain's Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said.
"I expect if they (the US) are reducing at some stage, we will come down," he told Sky News on Thursday. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump will sharply reduce the number of US forces in Afghanistan from 4,500 to 2,500 by mid-January. Meanwhile, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan arrived in Kabul on Thursday to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, days after the Pentagon announcement and with peace negotiations between the Afghan government and Taliban representatives stalling. This will be Khan's first visit to Afghanistan since assuming office over two years ago. It is the highest-profile visit by a Pakistani official to Kabul since peace talks began between the Taliban and the Afghan government in the Qatari capital of Doha. Due to leave office on Jan. 20 after losing this month's presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump is seeking to end the 19-year war in Afghanistan, the United States´ longest conflict. Critics slammed Trump for timing the withdrawal to his own calendar as opposed to some kind of breakthrough in Afghanistan that would justify a major drawdown.
And outside of Afghanistan, nowhere is the risk of instability greater than in neighboring Pakistan. Mistrust has cloaked relations between the neighbors, due to Pakistan's covert support for the Taliban during the past two decades. And as militants later began launching attacks inside Pakistan, it accused Afghanistan of stirring trouble in its borders.
"Focus would be on further deepening the fraternal bilateral relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Afghan peace process, and regional economic development and connectivity," Pakistan's foreign office said in a statement as Khan headed for Kabul.
Pakistan's role in the peace talks has been key, according to Washington, particularly given its influence over the Taliban leadership, though Pakistan says that influence has waned over the years.
Washington's special representative for Afghan peace, Zalmay Khalilzad has made a number of trips to Islamabad to discuss the peace process.
Ghani had last visited Pakistan in June 2019, according to Pakistan's foreign office. A spokesman for the Afghan presidential palace, Dawa Khan Minapal, said the main purpose of the visit would be bilateral trade and economic relations, but the fight against militancy in the region would also be at the top of the agenda. "The focus will be mainly on the peace process but we won´t keep our hopes high," said a source in the Afghan presidential palace.
Violence has remained high in Afghanistan despite the ongoing peace process.
During the past six months, the Taliban have carried out 53 suicide attacks, while 1,210 civilians were among the thousands killed in violence linked to the insurgency, according to Tariq Arian, spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry.

Growing reliance on mercenaries spells more chaos in the region
Francis Ghiles/The Arab Weekly/November 19/2020
A 2019 file photo shows a reported foreign pilot whose plane was shot down
Private force has become big business. No one knows how many billions of dollars move around in this illegal market. Since the turn of the century, mercenary activity has played a major role in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Nigeria, Ukraine, Syria and Libya. More recently, it played a central role in the fighting in Nagorno Karabakh. In the 2017 fiscal year, the Pentagon gave $320 billion to federal contracts, 71% of which was for “services” – a heading under which the use of private military companies falls.
The Middle East region is awash with soldiers of fortune looking for work. The capital of Kurdistan, Erbil has become a key unofficial marketplace for mercenary services. Some of them, such as the Russian Wagner Group or Turkey’s militants for hire, serve as alternates for the official armies. Others just want terrorists dead, and still others are in it for the adventure or are American or British veterans who find normal life too boring. As a battle in Syria earlier this year showed, mercenaries are more powerful than many experts realise: It took America’s most elite troops and advanced aircraft four hours to repel 500 mercenaries.
Turkey dispatched thousands of militants and mercenaries from Syria to help its allied Government of National Accord (GNA) in Libya. The United Arab Emirates dispatched hundreds of special forces mercenaries to fight the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, most of whom are drawn from South American countries like Columbia, Panama, El Salvador and Chile, veterans of the drug wars. They were paid three to four times their old salaries, but came at a fraction of the cost that British or American mercenaries would charge. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates are simply following the lead of the US as it closes it eyes on mercenaries fighting the wars of its allies although it is never shy to denounce Russia’s use of mercenaries in Ukraine and Libya. The West criticises Turkish leaders for deploying Syrian mercenaries in Libya and the Caucasus especially when it tries to impose its own endgame. But everybody is playing the same game. Nobody in the West criticised Nigeria when it resorted to South African mercenaries to hem in Boko Haram.
It is hardly surprising that states hire mercenaries: The Nigerian army failed to make inroads against Boko Haram for six years and in the Middle East, national armies make slow progress while the United Nations is absent.
Sean McFate, a former paratrooper and private military contractor who is now an associate professor at the US National Defence University, provided in “The Modern Mercenary” (OUP 2014) an unparalleled perspective into the nuts and bolts of this opaque world, explaining the economic structure of the industry and showing in detail how firms operate on the ground. The name Blackwater, renamed Xe Services and now Academi, has sometimes made the news. It runs a 7,000 acre training facility in North Carolina and had by 2007 produced an army of 20,000 troops and 20 aircraft, most of which were shipped to Afghanistan and Iraq on US government contracts. But few have heard of the security giant G4S, the second largest employer on earth with 625,000 employees (behind Walmart). It has a security presence in 125 countries. Who has heard of the Australian-owned Unity Resources Group or Erinys, thousands of whose guards protect Iraq’s oil installations, or DynCorp, whose revenue amounts to nearly $3.5 billion annually, or Triple Canopy? As McFate points out, “contract warfare has become a new way of warfare, resurrected by the United States and imitated by others.”
Contract warfare and mercenaries were common throughout history, not least before the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). “Condottiere” and “Landsknechts” dominated war in a Europe where sovereignty was fragmented among actors as diverse as king, emperor, bishop, prince, city state and chivalric order. By the 17th century, war had become the biggest industry in Europe and had given rise to military enterprisers, such as Count Albrecht Wallenstein, the Marquess of Spinola and Bernard von Weimar, who outfitted what were known as “rental regiments.” The peace of Westphalia in 1648 saw the consolidation of the modern state and consecration of the rule that the use of violence be a state monopoly.
Mercenaries had wiped out one third of the population of central Europe that it took Germany a century to recover. The rulers of Europe put an end to the free market for force — public armies replaced private ones. It is worth remembering that the history of mercenaries stretches back thousands of years. Xenophon had a huge army of Greek mercenaries, known as the Ten Thousand (401-399 BC), Carthage relied on mercenaries during the Punic Wars and half of William the Conqueror’s army were hired swords. The Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517) was a regime of mercenary slaves converted to Islam and the Byzantine emperors famously relied on the Varangian Guard of Norse mercenaries whose prowess in battle was matched by their ability to swill vast tankards of beer.
But what are the causes of this rather quick reversal to mercenaries after more than three centuries of national armies? As the world became more unstable at the end of the Cold War, the US began downsizing its massive military by 40% in order to reap a “peace dividend.” Active-duty soldiers, sailors and airmen were reduced from 2.2 million to 1.4 million, troops stationed overseas shrunk by half, all of which left many well trained men without a job. Meanwhile, instability was growing: Whereas the US Army conducted ten operational events outside of normal training and alliance commitments between 1960 and 1991, that number jumped to 26 between 1991 and 1998. “Humane warfare” came into fashion and thus was borne a new world in which drones and the private military industry, the only one to provide Ground Zero soldiers, would do the dying for America.
The modern state, which had since 1648 been defined by the monopoly of force, was changing without anyone quite realising what was happening. Private armies offer on-demand services to execute whatever their employers (states, multinational companies, etc.) please and they are cheaper than public ones. They also offer governments the added advantage of being able to deny what they are really up to, since parliament has less access to what the executive is up to and no one ever tallies the numbers of dead contractors.
The world today increasingly resembles the “fragmented” and “fractured” sovereignty of the medieval world order. But America’s growing efforts to outsource its wars has more to do with imperial fatigue than anything else. Many of its leaders still want to fight, but the average American no longer wants to bleed. As war in Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on, America found its simply could not find enough recruits. What was it to do? Withdraw and concede defeat? Reinstate the draft? Use contractors to fill the ranks? Policymakers in Washington chose the third option. From 2007 to 2012, the Pentagon spent about $160 billion on private security contractors — four times the UK’s defence budget. It may come to regret that decision as countries around the world follow suit.
Together with private intelligence industries, private armies are here to stay, and to grow, which opens up the possibility of wars without states – private wars – a concept that is inconceivable to most national security leaders or heads of state. Privatising war distorts warfare, opening up the strategies of the souk – everything is up for sale and must be bartered for. Fraud, deception, deceit and hard bargaining are the watchwords, but so are value and exotic merchandise. There are no refunds, returns or exchanges. Private war lowers the barriers for entry and breeds war; anyone who can afford mercenaries will be tempted to go to war. As for states used to conventional warfare, they are totally unprepared for what is already happening. The inevitable consequences, not least in the Middle East and Africa, will be rewritten frontiers, greater violence and some unexpected losers.
*Francis Ghilès is an associate fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. He is a frequent contributor to The Arab Weekly.
 

Return to Iran nuclear deal would be disastrous for region
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/November 19/2020
Joe Biden’s victory in the US presidential election has again sparked heated debate about the future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.
To begin with, it is crucial to examine the Iranian regime’s stance toward the deal. Generally speaking, if Tehran desires a deal, it implies that it serves the interests of the regime. The position of the Iranian authorities is clear: They are desperate to return to the nuclear deal. President Hassan Rouhani has already urged Biden to return to the JCPOA when he takes office. The state-run IRNA news agency quoted him as saying: “An opportunity has come up for the next US administration to compensate for past mistakes and return to the path of complying with international agreements through respect of international norms.” Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reiterated the message on Twitter, advising Biden to abandon President Donald Trump’s Iran policy and seek international cooperation.
The desire of the Iranian president and foreign minister to go back to the 2015 deal suggests that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is also on board. This is due to the fact that Khamenei has the final say on Iran’s foreign policy. Rouhani and Zarif would not have signaled that they want a return to the nuclear deal without the supreme leader’s blessing.
The Iranian leaders are fortunate that Biden is also in favor of rejoining the nuclear deal. After all, the deal was reached when Biden was vice president in the Obama administration. In addition, his remarks about the nuclear deal indicate that rejoining it will be a top priority once he moves into the White House. In a September opinion piece for CNN, he wrote: “I will offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy. If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations. With our allies, we will work to strengthen and extend the nuclear deal’s provisions, while also addressing other issues of concern.”
Nevertheless, the US rejoining the JCPOA would have serious repercussions for regional stability and peace. First of all, it would mean that many of the current sanctions against Tehran would be lifted and the regime would be able to rejoin the global financial system. Through the nuclear deal, the regime will again be given a blank check to advance its aggressive, zero-sum policies across the Middle East, just as it did after the agreement was signed off in 2015.
The nuclear deal allowed the flow of billions of dollars into the Iranian regime’s treasury, providing the revenues Tehran needed to escalate its military adventurism and finance, arm and support its terror and militia groups in the region. After the agreement was signed, Iran’s meddling, interventions in the region and funding of militia groups escalated. It also increased its deliveries of weapons to its proxy militias, as the number of ballistic missiles they deployed rose to an unprecedented level.
Secondly, with the return of the nuclear deal, the regime would gain global legitimacy, making world leaders more reluctant to hold the Iranians accountable for their malign and destructive behavior, as well as their terror activities around the world.
Thirdly, the nuclear deal contains fundamental flaws, including the sunset clauses that will remove the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the agreement expires. Iran’s military sites, such as Parchin, which is reportedly where nuclear development and research is carried out, will also be out of the reach of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors. In addition, the nuclear deal contains no reference to Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is a core pillar of its foreign policy and appears to be linked to the nuclear program.
After the agreement was signed, Iran’s meddling, interventions in the region and funding of militia groups escalated.
Finally, rejoining the nuclear deal will again alienate other countries in the Middle East and inevitably lead to a worsening of relations with traditional US allies. When the JCPOA was being negotiated, Iran’s neighbors were needlessly excluded, despite living on the country’s doorstep and experiencing the consequences of Iranian proxy action more acutely than any of the deal’s signatories. This generated a flawed agreement that failed to recognize their rightful concerns about missile proliferation and the funding of violent proxies within and next door to their territories.
The Iran nuclear deal was a political disaster. The US rejoining it would be a serious threat to regional peace and stability and would only embolden and empower the Iranian regime, its mercenaries and network of militia and terror groups throughout the region.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Trump or No Trump, Religious Authoritarianism Is Here to Stay
Katherine Stewart/The New York Times/November 19/2020
Ms. Stewart is the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism
Their unlikely ally may have lost the White House, but Christian nationalists still plan to win the war. Will President-elect Joe Biden’s victory force America’s Christian nationalists to rethink the unholy alliance that powered Donald Trump’s four-year tour as one of the nation’s most dangerous presidents? Don’t count on it.
The 2020 election is proof that religious authoritarianism is here to stay, and the early signs now indicate that the movement seems determined to reinterpret defeat at the top of the ticket as evidence of persecution and of its own righteousness. With or without Mr. Trump, they will remain committed to the illiberal politics that the president has so ably embodied.
As it did in 2016, the early analysis of the 2020 election results often circled around the racial, urban-rural, and income and education divides. But the religion divide tells an equally compelling story. According to preliminary exit polls from Edison Research (the data is necessarily rough at this stage), 28 percent of voters identified as either white evangelical or white born-again Christian, and of these, 76 percent voted for Mr. Trump. If these numbers hold (some other polls put the religious share at a lower number; others put the support for Mr. Trump at a higher number), these results indicate a continuation of support for Mr. Trump from this group.
The core of Mr. Trump’s voting bloc, to be clear, does not come from white evangelicals as such, but from an overlapping group of not necessarily evangelical, and not necessarily white, people who identify at least loosely with Christian nationalism: the idea that the United States is and ought to be a Christian nation governed under a reactionary understanding of Christian values. Unfortunately, data on that cohort is harder to find except in deeply researched work by sociologists like Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry.
Most pollsters shoehorn complex religious identities into necessarily broad labels, so they fail to separate out the different strands of Mr. Trump’s support. There are indications that the president in fact expanded his appeal among nonwhite evangelical and born-again Christians of color, particularly among Latinos. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, who made faith outreach a key feature of his campaign, appears to have done well among moderate and progressive voters of all faiths.
Conservative voters of faith “came in massive numbers, seven and a half million more above the 2016 baseline, which was itself a record,” Ralph Reed, head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a longtime religious right activist, said at a postelection press briefing. “We believe they’re the reason why Republicans are going to hold the Senate.”
In their responses to the election outcome, some prominent religious right leaders have enabled or remained true to the false Trumpian line of election fraud. Michele Bachmann, the former Minnesota congresswoman and 2012 presidential candidate, said, “Smash the delusion, Father, of Joe Biden is our president. He is not.” In Crisis Magazine, a conservative Catholic publication, Richard C. Antall likened media reporting on the Biden-Harris ticket’s victory to a “coup d’état.” Mat Staver, chairman and founder of Liberty Counsel, added, “What we are witnessing only happens in communist or repressive regimes. We must not allow this fraud to happen in America.”
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Even as prominent Republican figures like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney slowly tried to nudge Mr. Trump toward the exit, leaders of the religious right continued to man the barricades. The conservative speaker and Falkirk Center fellow David Harris Jr. put it this way:
If you’re a believer, and you believe God appointed Donald J. Trump to run this country, to lead this country, and you believe as I do that he will be re-elected the President of the United States, then friends, you’ve got to guard your heart, you’ve got to guard your peace. Right now we are at war.
Others stopped short of endorsing Mr. Trump’s wilder allegations of election fraud, but backed his right to challenge the results. Mr. Reed told Religion News Service, “This election will be over when those recounts are complete and those legal challenges are resolved.” The Rev. Franklin Graham tweeted that the courts will “determine who wins the presidency.” The conservative pastor Robert Jeffress, who gave a sermon before Mr. Trump’s inaugural ceremony in 2017, noted that a Biden win was “the most likely outcome.”
After processing their disappointment, Christian nationalists may come around to the reality of Joe Biden’s victory. There is no indication, however, that this will temper their apocalyptic vision, according to which one side of the American political divide represents unmitigated evil. During a Nov. 11 virtual prayer gathering organized by the Family Research Council, one of the key speakers cast the election as the consequence of “the whole godless ideology that’s wanted to swallow our homes, destroy our marriages, throw our children into rivers of confusion.” Jim Garlow, an evangelical pastor whose Well Versed Ministry has as its stated goal, “Bringing biblical principles of governance to governmental leaders,” asserted that Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are at the helm of an “ideology” that is “anti-Christ, anti-Biblical to its core.”
The comments pouring in from these and other figures may be forgotten when Mr. Biden takes office. But they are worth paying attention to now for what they say about the character of the movement. While many outsiders continue to think of Christian nationalism as a social movement that arises from the ground up, it is in fact a political movement that operates mostly from the top down. The rank-and-file of the movement is diverse and comes to its churches with an infinite variety of motivations and concerns, but the leaders are far more unified.
They collaborate in a densely interconnected network of think tanks, policy groups, activist organizations, legal advocacy groups and conservative pastoral networks. What holds them together is not any centralized command structure, but a radical political ideology that is profoundly hostile to democracy and pluralism, and a certain political style that seeks to provoke moral panic, rewards the paranoid and views every partisan conflict as a conflagration, the end of the world. Partisan politics is the lifeblood of their movement.
If one considers the movement from the perspective of its leaders, it is easier to see why it is unlikely to change in the new political circumstances we find ourselves in. The power of the leadership is the function of at least three underlying structural realities in America’s political and economic life, and those realities are not going to change any time soon.
The first is the growing economic inequality that has produced spectacular fortunes for the few, while too many ordinary families struggle to get by. Leaders of the movement get much of the support for their well-funded operations from a cadre of super-wealthy individuals and extended families who are as committed to free-market fundamentalism as they are to reactionary religion. The donors in turn need the so-called values voters in order to lock down their economic agenda of low taxation for the wealthy and minimal regulation. These donors include, among many others, the Prince-DeVos family, the fracking billionaire Wilks brothers, and members of the Green family, whose Hobby Lobby fortune helped build the Museum of the Bible. The movement gets another big chunk of its funding from the large mass of people who are often in the middle rungs of the economic spectrum and whose arduously cultivated resentments toward those below them have been turned into a fund-raising bonanza.
The second structural reality to consider is that Christian nationalism is a creation of a uniquely isolated messaging sphere. Many members of the rank and file get their main political information not just from messaging platforms that keep their audiences in a world that is divorced from reality, but also from dedicated religious networks and reactionary faith leaders. The fact that Mr. Trump was able to hold on to a high percentage of the vote in the face of such overwhelming evidence of malfeasance is proof enough that the religious-nationalist end of the right-wing information bubble has gotten more, not less, resistant over time.
The third critical factor is a political system that gives disproportionate power to an immensely organized, engaged and loyal minority. One of the most reliable strategies for producing that unshakable cohort has been to get them to agree that abortion is the easy answer to every difficult political policy question. Recently, religious right leaders have shifted their focus more to a specious understanding of what they call “religious freedom” or “religious liberty,” but the underlying strategy is the same: make individuals see their partisan vote as the primary way to protect their cultural and religious identity.
Republicans have long known that the judiciary is one of the most effective instruments of minority rule. Mr. Trump’s success in packing the federal judiciary — as of this writing, 220 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices — will be one of his most devastating legacies. The prospect of further entrenching minority rule in the coming years will keep the alliance between Republicans and the religious right alive.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Christian nationalist response to the 2020 election is that we’ve seen this movie before. The “stolen election” meme won’t bring Mr. Trump back into the Oval Office. But then, the birther narrative never took President Barack Obama out of office, either. The point of conspiratorial narratives and apocalyptic rhetoric is to lay the groundwork for a politics of total obstruction, in preparation for the return of a “legitimate” ruler. The best guess is that the religious authoritarianism of the next four years will look a lot like it did in the last four years. We ignore the political implications for our democracy at our peril.

Why the Muslim Brotherhood does not represent Islam
Heba Yosry/Al Arabiya/November 19/2020
As an Egyptian Muslim woman who lived under the Muslim Brotherhood, I have seen the damage done by the organization first-hand. Saudi Arabia’s Council of Senior Scholars recently issued a statement announcing that the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, an announcement that Egyptians welcomed.
Saudi Arabia’s declaration confirmed that the Brotherhood does not represent Islam and that its actions are not motivated by Islam. It is this leadership that will help our region become free from religious extremism and terrorism.
While Saudi Arabia officially designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization in 2014, as did the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom’s Council of Senior Scholars has now also branded the group as terrorists, saying they run “contrary to the guidance of our graceful religion, while taking religion as a mask to disguise its purposes in order to practice the opposite such as sedition, wreaking havoc, committing violence and terrorism.”
This statement comes at a time when European countries are still floundering, trying to find a proper strategy to uproot homegrown extremism.
Some voices will grow louder calling for the Brotherhood’s right to exist, for their members’ right to retain their ideology. Those voices, who believe that they are upholding the values of equality and human dignity, are wrong.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s ascent to power in Egypt shows the organization’s danger. The Brotherhood came to power in June 2012, but was removed by July 2013, following widespread protests against its rule.
During their reign, the Brotherhood tried to suppress Egyptian women. We shouldn’t be distracted by the botched economic strategies that they employed, their failure to provide reliable utilities or the embarrassment they caused Egypt in mishandling our foreign relations, or even the general victimhood narrative and underground mentality that they couldn’t transcend, even though they held the highest office in the country.
Beyond all these aspects of the Brotherhood’s time in power, their women’s rights record is abysmal.
When the Brotherhood ruled Egypt, women’s rights regressed in two main areas: legislative and sociocultural. The Brotherhood sought to decriminalize Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), a practice that is outlawed in Egypt and various Muslim countries. They argued that the matter should be decided within the family unit. In one case, in Al Minya, an Egyptian village, the Brotherhood circulated flyers offering subsidized female circumcision procedures as part of their 2012 election campaign. The Brotherhood, however, denied they did this.
How is Qatar supporting the Muslim Brotherhood global network? Follow the money The Brotherhood proposed legislation to lower the age of legal marriage from 18 to 13, but some clerics in the movement proposed that girls should be able to be married at 9.
Under the Brotherhood, women and girls are viewed as the private property of the family, rather than their own agents, and the state shouldn’t interfere because her father knows best.
On the social front, the Muslim Brotherhood emphasized that women in the public sphere was inappropriate, saying they “naturally belong in the home.”
Accordingly, under the auspices of the Brotherhood a systematic and systemic campaign of sexual harassment, and sometimes rape, was launched against female activists who dared to show up in Cairo’s Tahrir square and defy their rule.
Female activists weren’t the only targets of systemic sexual violence. In 2013, sexual violence was prevalent throughout Egypt. A 2013 poll by Reuters showed that Egypt was the worst country for women in the Middle East due to the spike in sexual harassment, increase of FGM and overall decay of women’s rights.
The Muslim Brotherhood has abused Islam for too long with their slogan “Islam is the solution!” The statement made by the Council of Senior Scholars further dissociates and distances Islam from their “solutions.” This statement is a triumph for enlightenment, progress, equality and most importantly a triumph for Islam.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Saudi Arabia was recognized as the top reformer regarding women’s rights by the World Bank in 2019, and they have made steady progress over the last decade regarding women’s rights. Denouncing the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization entails a rejection of their entire world view, including their perception of women, and this statement from Saudi Arabia is perhaps a step toward emancipating women from the patriarchal views that are enshrined in religious dictums.