English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For October 18/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
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Bible Quotations For today
Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 12/22-32:”Then they brought to him a demoniac who was blind and mute; and he cured him, so that the one who had been mute could speak and see. All the crowds were amazed and said, ‘Can this be the Son of David?’ But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, ‘It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this fellow casts out the demons.’He knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property, without first tying up the strong man? Then indeed the house can be plundered. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 17-18/2020

EMET Webinar – The Compelling Story Of Amer Fakhoury And His Daughters’ Fight For Justice
US meets with Lebanon security head to resolve Israel dispute
One year since the October 17 movement in Lebanon, what has changed?
Lebanon Marks First Anniversary of October 17 Uprising
Aoun: Reforms Only Possible Through Govt Institutions
Schenker Confirms to Aoun Ongoing US Mediation in Maritime Border Talks with Israel
Rampling Says ‘There is a Cause of Hope' in Lebanon
Kubis Marks 1st Anniversary of Popular Protests in Lebanon
Report: France Tells Lebanon Officials to Choose between ‘Growth or Paralysis’
Lebanon’s FPM Says Won't Back Hariri for Premiership
Lebanon’s largest Christian political party says won’t back Hariri for PM
Lebanon: Hariri’s Designation Stuck in Unlikely Meeting With Bassil
After Lebanese Revolt's Fury, Waning Protests Face Long Road
A Year on, Lebanon's Protests Have Faded and Life Has Got Worse
Is Hariri Returning to the Premiership of Lebanon?/Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al Awsat/October 17/2020

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 17-18/2020

Grisly Beheading of Teacher in Terror Attack Rattles France
After UN embargo expired, Iran says it will not go on an arms ‘buying spree’
Iran’s missiles need to be addressed to curb Tehran's ambitions in region: Study
UN's Guterres Says 130 Million People Face Starvation Risk by Year End
Europe Condemns Turkey’s Provocations in Eastern Med
Inmate Released from Kurdish Prison: ISIS Used Us as Human Shields
US Condemns Turkey over Test of Russian S400 System
Barzani Condemns Torching of Kurdish Party Offices in Baghdad
Israel Halts Visas for UN Rights Staff After Settlement Database
Iraq's Persecuted Yazidis Fear Going Back to Sinjar
ICC prosecutor heads to Sudan to discuss ex-President Omar al-Bashir case
Yemen’s Government, Houthis End Largest Prisoner Swap
Trudeau: Canada Won't Stop Calling for Human Rights in China
 

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 17-18/2020

U.S. Only Country to Hold Iran's Mullahs Accountable/Majid Rafizadeh/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/October 17/2020
Erdogan’s Wars… From Libya to Armenia/Jebril Elabidi/Asharq Al Awsat/October 17/2020
Italy Is Suddenly Looking Very French/Ferdinando Giugliano/Bloomberg/October 17/2020
You Can’t Blame the EU for Not Trusting Boris Johnson/Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg/October 17/2020
What Need Is There for Negotiations Between Syria and Israel?/Akram Bunni/Asharq Al Awsat/October 17/2020
Covid-19 Hits the Old Hardest, But the Healthy Longest/Therese Raphael/Bloomberg/October 17/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on October 17-18/2020

فيديو باللغة الإنكليزية يحكي من خلال مأساة عامر الفاخوري الذي خطف وسجن في لبنان الذي يحتله حزب الله وتعرض للتعذيب ولم يفرج عنه إلا بعد تدخل الرئيس ترامب نفسه
EMET Webinar – The Compelling Story Of Amer Fakhoury And His Daughters’ Fight For Justice
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/91377/%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%af%d9%8a%d9%88-%d8%a8%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%84%d8%ba%d8%a9-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a5%d9%86%d9%83%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%b2%d9%8a%d8%a9-%d9%8a%d8%ad%d9%83%d9%8a-%d9%85%d8%a3%d8%b3%d8%a7%d8%a9-%d8%b9%d8%a7/
Who is in Control in Lebanon?
Featuring Guila, Zoya, and Macy Fakhoury of the Amer Fakhoury Foundation
Amer Fakhoury was an American citizen who was born in Lebanon. He went back to Beirut to visit family, and on September 12th, 2019 was kidnapped by Hezbollah, imprisoned, abused, tortured and forced to sign false documents that he was an Israeli spy, which they used to detain him for 7 months. After the US government exerted tremendous pressure on the Lebanese government they finally released him and admitted that the arrest was illegal. Amer went to Lebanon with a healthy medical record weighing 225 pounds, but came back weighing 160 pounds, as well as facing stage 4B aggressive lymphoma cancer. He was released on March 19, 2020 and died on August 17, 2020.
Learn about the condition of human rights inside Lebanon and who really is in control of the Lebanese government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptcl0k9_qGM

US meets with Lebanon security head to resolve Israel dispute
Bloomberg /Sunday 18 October 2020
Lebanon’s security chief held talks with top administration officials in Washington this week as the US seeks to resolve his country’s energy dispute with Israel and free an American journalist kidnapped in Syria, according to people familiar with the matter. Abbas Ibrahim, the influential head of Lebanon’s General Security agency, spoke with Robert O’Brien, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, at a dinner on Friday night, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private meetings. He also met Central Intelligence Agency Director Gina Haspel. Amid the Trump administration’s push to shift broader US policy in the Middle East, the fate of Austin Tice remains unresolved some eight years after he was abducted in Syria while on assignment. Trump said in March that the US is working with Syria — Lebanon’s war-wracked neighbor — to secure the journalist’s release. O’Brien and Ibrahim also met at the White House during the Lebanese official’s visit, according to one of the people. The two know each from when O’Brien served as Trump’s hostage envoy in 2018 and 2019. Ibrahim played a role in the release of three hostages, including Sam Goodwin, a US citizen released from Syria last year, and Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese businessman and US resident who was let go by Iran and accompanied by Ibrahim on his return to Beirut. The White House and a CIA spokeswoman declined to comment. A General Security spokesman in Beirut said he had no information on any meetings.
Guests at the Friday night dinner included Diane Foley, the mother of American journalist James Foley, who covered Syria’s civil war and was beheaded by Islamic State in 2014. She presented Ibrahim with an award, according to one of the people.
Maritime Boundary. Lebanon and Israel this week began US-backed talks on resolving a maritime boundary dispute that has hobbled energy exploration in a part of the eastern Mediterranean rich with natural gas. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo praised both sides on Wednesday at a news conference where he also mentioned Foley, saying the US “is committed to serving justice for his family and those of three others killed in Syria by ISIS.”

One year since the October 17 movement in Lebanon, what has changed?
Fatima Al-Mahmoud, Al Arabiya English /Saturday 17 October 2020
Exactly one year ago today, massive protests swept across Lebanon in an unprecedented movement against government failure, poor living standards, rampant corruption, lack of basic services, overwhelming sectarian rule, and the imploding economy. While the movement marked a turning point in Lebanon’s history, as angry citizens denounced ruling parties and expressed shared concerns of socioeconomic troubles, very little has improved. In August, Beirut was decimated by a blast at its main port for which no one has yet been held accountable; the Lebanese pound has lost nearly 80 percent of its value; poverty levels have increased to 55 percent, according to a study by the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA); and inflation has soared by 120 percent, as per recent figures by the Central Administration of Statistics.
Lebanon is currently struggling under the weight of the worst economic crisis in its history, and while some believe it was provoked by the October 17 movement, researcher of finance at University College Dublin Mohamad Faour disagrees.
Are the protests to blame?
“The economic collapse in Lebanon had nothing to do with the protests,” Faour told Al Arabiya English. “To blame the protests is very unfair.” By early September 2019, Lebanese depositors were denied access to their dollars through ATMs and banks had started imposing arbitrary rules and withdrawal limits. Suppliers of fuel, gas, and medicine had sounded the alarm as they needed dollar bank notes to import these commodities, and citizens lined up for bread and fuel for fear of possible shortages. And while the dollar was and still is officially pegged at 1,507.5 at the Central Bank, it had already been selling for more in the black market. “The downfall of the economy was inevitable,” emphasized Faour. “The question was when it was going to happen. In simple terms, Faour explained that the economic and financial crisis in Lebanon was spearheaded by taking up too much debt. For years, Lebanon has borrowed and consumed way more than its means, with almost 85 percent of its resources being imported. These imports have long been covered by the Central Bank using depositors’ money in private banks. When the deposits decreased over time eventually reaching a complete halt, Lebanon had no more money coming in, but plenty of money being sent out to finance imports and maintain the value of the Lebanese pound to the dollar. But despite the predestined crash that had been looming ahead for the Lebanese economy, Faour explained it could have been mitigated with simple solutions and blamed government inaction for the current situation.
“The problem is not lack of reforms, it’s the lack of will to implement these reforms,” he clarified. Policy paralysis despite early warning signs of the inevitable predicament has driven the country into complete disarray.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” explained Faour. Lebanon’s gross domestic product (GDP) went from 57 million dollars to 30 million dollars, the unemployment rate jumped from 11-12 percent to 35-36 percent, the minimum wage of 675,000 Lebanese lira (previously $450) now equates to $80 - $100 based on the market exchange rate, and the poverty rate (now at 55 percent) is expected to reach 75 percent once subsidies are lifted. Despite the worsening situation, Lebanon’s streets have yet to witness protests as dynamic as those of October 17.
So why aren't people on the streets again? According to Dr. Imad Salamey, author of “Communitocracy” and associate professor of Middle East Political Affairs at the Lebanese American University (LAU), Lebanese people have recognized by now that the protest movement can only succeed with “radical eradication and uprooting of the political elite in power, even if violence is involved.”
After peaceful attempts to convince the ruling parties that their time is up did not yield expected results, it became apparent that the political establishment is reluctant in its response to the public’s demands and peaceful calls for change may not be the way forward. But “people are hesitant to take on that battle in the meantime for fear of civil war, knowing the stakes involved,” explained Dr. Salamey. The Lebanese Civil War lasted for 15 years and ended in 1990 but its social, political, and economic repercussions still live on to this day. Fighting militias during the war later reformed into political parties and have been ruling the country ever since, reinforcing their power via sectarian tensions that never subsided. One exception to the unfaltering political class, according to Dr. Salamey, was leader of the Future Movement party and former Prime Minister Saad Hariri who stepped down and resigned on October 29, more than ten days after ongoing protests. This came after he granted his ‘government partners’ 72 hours to show they are serious about reforms, to no avail.
His resignation prompted celebration among protestors, and law student Lyne Mneimneh who had been on the streets non-stop since October 17 described how crowds started to diminish in size after Hariri’s resignation, but she was one to stay. “I didn’t leave the streets because Hariri wasn’t the only target,” she told Al Arabiya English. “His resignation was just a show, and I personally want to see all warlords held accountable as well.”Now exactly one year after his resignation in compliance with the people’s demands, it seems Hariri is preparing to resume the role of prime minister once again, and protestors are not happy. “Hariri’s return is a sign of this political class's insensitivity to people's demands, and is a sign of how far away from political reality they are,” said social and political activist Widad Taleb, who had also been on the streets since day one. While October 17 presented a beacon of hope and possible change for both Mneimneh and Taleb, Hariri’s return may be a reality check that Lebanon is not there, not yet.

Lebanon Marks First Anniversary of October 17 Uprising
Naharnet/October 17/2020
Lebanon marks the first anniversary on Saturday of a non-sectarian protest movement that has rocked the political elite but has yet to achieve its goal of sweeping reform. A whirlwind of hope and despair has gripped the country in the year since protests began with an economic crisis and a devastating August 4 port explosion pushing Lebanon deeper into decay. Two governments have resigned since the movement started but the country's barons, many of them warlords from the 1975-90 civil war, remain firmly in power despite international as well as domestic pressure for change.
Demonstrators plan to march from the main Beirut protest camp towards the port -- the site of a devastating explosion, which has been widely blamed on the alleged corruption and incompetence of the hereditary elite. There they will hold a candlelit vigil near ground zero at 6:07 pm (1507 GMT), the precise time when a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate fertiliser exploded, killing more than 200 people and devastating swathes of the capital. Activists have installed a statue at the site to mark the anniversary of their October 17 "revolution". "We still don't recognise" our political leaders as legitimate, said one prominent protester, who gave her name only as Melissa. "We are still on the street... standing together in the face of a corrupt government," the 42-year-old said.
'Between two Octobers'
The immediate trigger for last year's protests was a government move to tax Whatsapp calls, but they swiftly swelled into a nationwide movement demanding an end to the system of confessional power-sharing it says has rewarded corruption and incompetence.
The country's deepest economic downturn since the civil war has led to growing unemployment, poverty and hunger, pushing many to look for better opportunities abroad. A spiralling coronavirus outbreak since February prompted a ban on public gatherings but even without protesters on the streets public resentment has grown. "Between two Octobers': bankrupcy and humiliation" read the main headline in Lebanon's Al Joumhouria newspaper. The explosion at Beirut port served as a shocking reminder to many of the rot at the heart of their political system. It prompted protesters to return to the steets in its aftermath but the movement then shifted most of its energy to relief operations to fill in for what it sees as an absent state.  The political class has since failed to form a new government that can meet the demands of the street and international donors who have refused to release desperately needed funds. French President Emmanuel Macron who visited Lebanon twice in the aftermath of the port blast said Lebanon's ruling class had "betrayed" the people by failing to act swiftly and decisively.
- 'Year two' -
President Michel Aoun will hold consultations with the main factions in parliament next week before designating a new prime minister for the third time in less than a year. Saad Hariri, who bowed out in the face of the first protests last October, is expected to make a comeback in an appointment that activists are likely to reject. The protest movement, meanwhile, has maintained a loose structure that some analysts believe could be an impediment to change. "The lack of political programmes and leadership have made the process and progress rather daunting and difficult," said Jamil Mouawad, who teaches political science at the American University of Beirut. The protest movement is eager to show it has not lost momentum. "Year two of the Thawra," read the main headline in the French-language daily L'Orient-Le Jour, using the Arabic word for 'revolution' which for most Lebanese has become synonymous with the protest movement. In the northern city of Tripoli, which saw some of the most vibrant protests last year, activists started gathering on Friday night. "We salute our revolution, which we believe is still continuing and will not die until we achieve our demands," said 37-year-old protester Taha Ratl. "We want all of them to quit."
 

Aoun: Reforms Only Possible Through Govt Institutions
Naharnet/October 17/2020
President Michel Aoun marked the first anniversary of the popular movements in Lebanon on Saturday and stressed that reforms are only possible through the government institutions. “A year has passed since the popular movements began, and my hand is still extended to work together in order to achieve demands for demands,” said Aoun in a tweet. “No reform is possible outside the government institutions, it is not too late,” he added. Lebanon marks the first anniversary on Saturday of a non-sectarian protest movement that has rocked the political elite but has yet to achieve its goal of sweeping reform. Demonstrators plan to march from the main Beirut protest camp towards the port -- the site of a devastating explosion, which has been widely blamed on the alleged corruption and incompetence of the hereditary elite.
 

Schenker Confirms to Aoun Ongoing US Mediation in Maritime Border Talks with Israel
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker told Lebanese President Michel Aoun that Washington would continue to play its mediating role in the negotiations on the demarcation of Lebanon’s southern maritime border, Baabda Palace announced Friday.
On the second day of talks with Lebanese officials Friday, Schenker also met with former prime ministers Saad Hariri and Najib Miqati, and the head of Marada Movement, former MP Suleiman Franjieh. The presidential statement said Aoun informed Schenker that Lebanon is hinging on the US mediating role to reach just solutions in the negotiations, which started this week, to demarcate the maritime border with Israel. “This role can help overcome difficulties which may hinder the negotiation process,” Aoun added. The president also thanked the US for the support it gave to Lebanon after the devastating Beirut Port explosion on Aug. 4. He assured Schenker that officials were trying to establish a government which would focus on achieving necessary reforms. Schenker praised Aoun’s role in the fight against corruption and expressed hope that a productive government would be formed to implement the reforms. While Schenker met most Lebanese officials during his visit to Beirut, he shunned Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil, who is Aoun’s son-in-law. US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale had also excluded Bassil from his talks with Lebanese figures during a trip to Beirut in Aug.

Rampling Says ‘There is a Cause of Hope' in Lebanon
Naharnet/October 17/2020
UK Ambassador to Lebanon Chris Rampling marked the first anniversary of the popular protests in Lebanon on Saturday. He said in remarks on Twitter: It is 1 year since the Lebanese people took to the streets demanding a better future, a prosperous economy & the rule of law, through peaceful demonstration. There was such a mood of hope, and so much energy. Lebanese of all ages, sects, religions & backgrounds stood together. For most, hope is now despair. The last year has seen unprecedented challenges: inflation, poverty, unemployment, COVID, & the unspeakable tragedy of. We have not seen serious progress on accountability and transparency. The future is uncertain: very many are very anxious. Lebanon must find its path back to stability/prosperity. All know what must be done and the international community remains united: the leaders must deliver where so far they have failed. Urgent reforms, under an effective govt, putting aside self and community interest. There is cause for hope. There is now open discussion about the scale of the changes necessary, and about issues that had for too long been taboo. There are good people in parts of the administration, and they need support (which we will continue to provide). Most Lebanese people are driven by decent values. It is not for nothing that activism has been overwhelmingly peaceful, and men on motorbikes driving through crowds have been rejected. Other countries would have (and indeed have) seen more violence. My team at @ukinlebanon have been incredible. They have supported each other and listened, adjusted to today's challenges, and thought ahead to tomorrow's. We are supporting new areas (eg health), while doubling down in those we know, like security, education, humanitarian. The UK has been for many decades, and will remain, by the side of the Lebanese people. To drive the future you deserve, and for security and sustained stability. And supporting those most vulnerable and in need, throughout Lebanon.

Kubis Marks 1st Anniversary of Popular Protests in Lebanon
Naharnet/October 17/2020
UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Jan Kubis released a statement marking the first anniversary of the October 17 uprising in Lebanon. A year ago, a massive wave of national protests started, that at some point brought to the streets hundreds of thousands, even millions of Lebanese across the whole country, across all sectarian and political divides and affiliations, with women and young people at the center, the statement read. Deeply disappointed in the ruling political elites and confessional system of politics and administration that perpetuate corruption and nepotism, they have raised their voice against the corrupt practices of the past and for deep systemic reforms. They have called for justice, transparency, accountability, equal rights, protection and opportunities for all, for a proper and effective governance, functioning democracy and secular civil state. They shattered many taboos and common myths about what they need and want – and what they reject. In this truly national uprising, the people of Lebanon have stood up for their legitimate aspirations and rights with courage and determination, demanding dignified lives for themselves and their families, a brighter future for their country. After this patriotic awakening, the people’s commitment to and yearning for deep reforms and changes continues to be strong, even if the momentum has receded. They have planted the seeds for systemic changes. One year on, their struggle continues.
We pay tribute to the people of Lebanon and remember the martyrs and injured from among the protesters and the security forces. Yet the legitimate grievances and needs of the Lebanese have gone unheeded during a harrowing year of ever deepening socio-economic crisis, a deadly pandemic, a traumatic explosion, a steep currency decline, inflation, blocked access of depositors to their money in the Lebanese banks, a collapse of the economy and of businesses amidst political and governance paralysis and the resignation of two governments. All of that has further deepened the lack of trust of Lebanese in their leaders and country, led to widespread angst, demoralization and loss of perspective mixed with anger, opens doors to extremism. The reforms that Lebanon needs are well-known. The ruling political elites have repeatedly committed to implement them, without delivering on their pledges, thus perpetuating the status-quo and paralysis. Among the urgent needs is social protection for the quickly surging numbers of the poorest and most vulnerable in Lebanon, including women and youth, disproportionately affected by these devastating crises.
To protect and develop Lebanon’s democracy, judicial independence must be more than a repeatedly declared aim. The country cannot start addressing the existential challenges that Lebanon faces without an effectively functioning pro-reform government that is able, willing and empowered to carry out urgently needed essential reforms on the basis of a clear action plan that will guarantee their implementation and that will work with full transparency and accountability to the people. Lebanon’s international friends also urgently need such committed, credible and reliable partner. On this day, we recall the freedoms of expression and of peaceful assembly that are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Lebanon itself co-authored. We underscore the UN’s full support for the right to peaceful protests as part of freedom of assembly and of expression that must be protected, allowing the people to fully exercise these rights within the rule of law. The United Nations will continue to stand closely by Lebanon and its people in their pursuit of a just, dignified, prosperous, stable and peaceful future.
 

Report: France Tells Lebanon Officials to Choose between ‘Growth or Paralysis’
Naharnet/October 17/2020
France has reportedly renewed calls on Lebanese officials to agree on the formation of a reform government, considering that it was time to "choose to rise up rather than paralysis and chaos,” LBCI reported on Saturday. LBCI said the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “the formation of a mission government capable of implementing the necessary reforms is still postponed, despite the commitments made and reaffirmed by all Lebanese political forces,” in Lebanon. The statement blamed Lebanese officials for the “prolonged obstruction preventing any response for the demands long expressed by Lebanese,” affirming that Paris “is ready to help Lebanon with reforms that alone would mobilize the international community." “It is up to Lebanese officials to choose to rise up instead of paralysis and chaos. The supreme interest of Lebanon and the Lebanese people requires that," added the statement. Lebanon must appoint a new prime minister, following an unsuccessful first attempt to form an "independent" government demanded by the street and the international community. After weeks of negotiations, Prime Minister-designate Mustafa Adib, who was chosen at the end of August, abandoned the task of forming a government in the absence of national consensus. Had a new government been formed, it had to carry out necessary reforms to release international aid within two weeks, according to an announcement made by French President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to Lebanon in early September. Exceeding that deadline angered the French president, who considered what happened "a collective betrayal" in a speech he gave the day after Adib resigned.

Lebanon’s FPM Says Won't Back Hariri for Premiership
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
The Free Patriotic Movement said on Saturday it would not back the nomination of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to lead a government to tackle Lebanon's crises, further complicating efforts to agree on a new premier. Hariri, who quit as prime minister last October in the face of nationwide protests, has said he is ready to lead a government of experts to implement reforms proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron as a way to unlock badly needed international aid. But Hariri has failed to win backing from the two main Christian parties - the FPM and the Lebanese Forces.
Parliamentary consultations to name a new prime minister were due to be held last Thursday, but President Michel Aoun postponed the discussions after receiving requests for a delay from some blocs. The FPM, which is led by Aoun's son-in-law Gebran Bassil, said Saturday it could not back a political figure such as Hariri because Macron's proposal had called for a reformist government made up of and led by "specialists.” As a result, the party's political council "decided unanimously not to nominate Hariri", a statement said, adding that Aoun's week-long postponement would not lead the party to reconsider its position. Hariri could still secure a parliamentary majority if Hezbollah and its ally Amal movement led by Speaker Nabih Berri endorse him for the premiership. But the absence of support from either of the main Christian blocs would hand him at best a fragile mandate to tackle Lebanon's crises.
The country has plunged into financial turmoil and the value of the Lebanese pound has collapsed. The coronavirus pandemic and a huge explosion at Beirut's port on Aug. 4 have compounded the crises and increased unemployment and poverty. Hariri, who has served twice as prime minister, resigned two weeks after huge protests erupted against the ruling elite exactly a year ago. Early this year, PM Hassan Diab formed a government that collapsed after the devastating Aug. 4 blast. Mustafa Adib, Lebanon's ambassador to Germany, was tasked last month with forming a cabinet of experts in line with Macron's plan, but he gave up the mission after Hezbollah and Amal insisted on naming the Shiite ministers and wanting to keep the finance portfolio with the Shiite sect.

Lebanon’s largest Christian political party says won’t back Hariri for PM
Reuters/Saturday 17 October 2020
Lebanon’s largest Christian political party said on Saturday it would not back the nomination of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to lead a government to tackle a deep economic crisis, further complicating efforts to agree a new premier. Hariri, who quit as prime minister last October in the face of nationwide protests, has said he is ready to lead a government to implement reforms proposed by France as a way to unlock badly needed international aid. But Hariri, Lebanon’s most prominent Sunni Muslim politician, has failed to win backing from the two main Christian parties - the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) and Lebanese Forces. Parliamentary consultations to name a new prime minister were due to be held last Thursday, but President Michel Aoun postponed the discussions after receiving requests for a delay from some parliamentary blocs.
The FPM, which is led by Aoun’s son-in-law Gebran Bassil, said it could not back a political figure such as Hariri because French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal had called for a reformist government made up of and led by “specialists.”As a result, the party’s political council “decided unanimously not to nominate... Hariri to lead the government,” a statement said, adding that Aoun’s week-long postponement would not lead the party to reconsider its position. Hariri could still secure a parliamentary majority if the powerful Shia group Hezbollah and its ally Amal endorse him for premier.
But the absence of support from either of the main Christian blocs would hand him at best a fragile mandate to tackle Lebanon’s gravest crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. The country has plunged into financial turmoil and the value of the Lebanese pound has collapsed. COVID-19 and a huge explosion at Beirut’s port two months ago have compounded the crisis and pushed many Lebanese into poverty. Hariri, who has served twice as prime minister, resigned two weeks after huge protests erupted exactly a year ago.
The demonstrations, triggered by plans to tax voice calls made through the Facebook-owned WhatsApp messaging application, grew into wider protests against Lebanon’s political elite.

Lebanon: Hariri’s Designation Stuck in Unlikely Meeting With Bassil
Beirut- Caroline Akoum/Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
A new node emerged in the designation of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri to lead the new government, with the insistence of the head of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Gebran Bassil to meet with Hariri, while the latter rejects such encounter. The former premier justified his position, saying that he already met with President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri and sent a delegation from his parliamentary bloc to meet with the heads of the different political parties. Despite Aoun’s announcement that the new government would be formed within the next few days, sources close to the presidency told Asharq Al-Awsat that no progress has been achieved in the past few hours. The sources pointed to contacts held away from the spotlight and the possibility to postpone for the second time the binding parliamentary consultations, which were scheduled on Thursday. In this context, a member of Hariri’s Al-Mustaqbal party, former MP Mustafa Alloush, told Asharq Al-Awsat that Aoun has delayed the consultations upon a request by Bassil, who insisted on meeting with Hariri. But the latter insists that such an encounter “is unlikely and will not happen,” according to Alloush. Deputy Speaker of Parliament, MP Elie Ferzli, said there was no alternative to Hariri to form the government at this stage, stressing that he was the only candidate and enjoyed local, French, and American support. During a meeting on Friday with Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, Arancha Gonzales Laya, Aoun said: “The formation of the government will take place in the coming days after the Lebanese parties reach a consensus on it.”He also stressed the importance to adopt the required reforms to overcome the difficult economic conditions in the country.

After Lebanese Revolt's Fury, Waning Protests Face Long Road
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
A year ago, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese took to the streets protesting taxes and a rapidly deteriorating economic crisis. A spontaneous and hopeful nationwide movement was born, denouncing an entire political establishment that had for decades pushed Lebanon toward collapse.
Today, as crises multiply and the country dives deeper into uncertainty and poverty, protests seem to have petered out. Even widespread anger over a devastating explosion at Beirut´s port on Aug. 4, blamed on government negligence, failed to re-ignite the movement. It is both bewildering and frustrating for those who believe only a sustained popular uprising can bring change in Lebanon. Some argue the protests lost momentum because of the political elite´s moves to hijack and weaken the movement. Protesters have been met with violence, arrest, and intimidation. Others say Lebanese have become numb to incompetence and corruption among the political class. But Lebanon´s confessional-based power-sharing system also proved difficult to bring down. A revolt against the status quo means breaking a sectarian patronage network cultivated by the ruling elite that many in the divided population benefit from. Even if dissatisfied, some blame other factions for the country´s problems or fear change will give another sect power over them - a fear politicians eagerly stoke.
"We don´t have one head of state, it´s a group of men, they have agreed to divide the spoils of the state at every level. It´s a system that you can hardly topple," said Carmen Geha, associate professor in public administration and an activist. She compared the dismantling of Lebanon´s system to the dismantling of Apartheid in South Africa, a long and arduous process. For all its limitations, the protest movement that erupted on Oct. 17, 2019, had successes. Even after street demonstrations dissipated, grassroots networks quickly mobilized following the Beirut explosion, which killed nearly 200 and wrecked tens of thousands of homes. Authorities almost completely left the public on its own to deal with the aftermath, with no government clean-up crews in the streets and little outreach to those whose homes or businesses were wrecked.
So activists stepped in and took charge of rebuilding. "You find people more mobilized toward helping each other ... that is another face of the revolution," Geha said. "We need to show people how inept politicians are and provide them with an alternative system, one focused on services." The protests showed Lebanese could march against politicians of their own sect. In unprecedented scenes, large crowds turned out even in cities like Tripoli, Sidon, and Nabatiyeh, which have been strongly affiliated to traditional sectarian parties, including Hezbollah. Politicians considered untouchable gained something of a pariah status, named and shamed in public, or even chased out of restaurants.
"We broke the sectarian barriers and the taboo of opposing these warlords, we broke their halo," said Taymour Jreissati, once a prominent protester, now living in France. Jreissati left in the summer, for the sake of his children, he said, and after being threatened by politicians and security agencies.
Two governments were toppled under the pressure of the streets -- one last October, the other right after the Beirut explosion. Jad Chaaban, an economist and activist, says the protest movement was thwarted by the political elite. "The politicians cemented their alliances again and distributed the roles to protect each other," he said. "The counter-revolution was at the level of the economy, allowing it to deteriorate .. (and) on the streets through a fierce police crackdown."
The political factions in power have generally claimed to support the protesters´ goals of reform and an end to corruption. At the same time, they have made no move to enact reform, often depicting the protesters as agents of instability. In a speech to his party faithful last week, former Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil -- who is the son-in-law of the president and who was particularly vilified in protesters´ chants as a symbol of the ruling class -- called on "the true, sincere movement" to join his party in forming a program of change. But he also warned that Lebanese are threatened "with being brainwashed by `revolutions´ fabricated and financed from abroad."The protest movement also failed to offer solid leadership. From the start, protesters shunned calls to do so, worried leaders could be targeted or co-opted. With time, that absence became a constraint.
Some experts see the protesters´ chief demand as unrealistic - typified in the chant, "All of them means all of them," meaning all politicians in the establishment must step down. That addressed the wrong issue and was "a dilution of the problem," said Nadim Shehadi, from the London-based think tank Chatham House. "The problem in Lebanon is not the system of governance, it has its flaws but it is not the cause of the problem, Hezbollah is," said Shehadi, who is also executive director of the New York headquarters and academic center at the Lebanese American University.
At various protests, supporters of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and its Shiite ally Amal attacked demonstrators. Hezbollah and its political allies have also snarled efforts to form a more reformist government since the port explosion - wary, critics say, of changes that could impact its strength as an independent armed force and support system for its Shiite community. The uprising tripped over a myriad of crises. The coronavirus pandemic undermined turnout. The breakdown of the economy - and then the port explosion - threw people into survival mode, drained by their inability to make ends meet. People may eventually go back to street protests. The Central Bank is expected to end subsidies of basic goods in coming weeks, throwing more people into poverty. But many activists now focus on the grassroots level, building an alternative to the patronage system to deliver basic needs. With time, they hope more people will break with their traditional leadership. "It´s a long road," says activist Lina Boubess, a 60-year-old mother who has not missed one protest since October. "I am the civil war generation, but this new generation gives me hope. I believe in a tomorrow, I don´t want to give up."

A Year on, Lebanon's Protests Have Faded and Life Has Got Worse
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
One year after Lebanese erupted in rage against politicians they blamed for economic collapse, squares once packed with angry demonstrators are empty and camps set up to shelter the protesters lie deserted.
While the anger has not gone away since mass protests swept the country late last year, there is little energy left as the pandemic spreads, unemployment rises and the capital city reels from a huge explosion in August that left thousands homeless. Some of those who did demonstrate against the authorities in the aftermath of that accident were met with teargas and police batons. Dany Mortada, a 28-year-old activist, was among hundreds of thousands people who marched through the streets of Beirut and other cities for weeks in 2019. As he looked across a Beirut square at the center of the uprising, he believes the spirit of protest lives on, Reuters reported. “The revolution still exists in the heart of many people,” Mortada said from in front of the government headquarters, where he once camped out night after night. Concrete blocks were installed there last year by security forces to keep protesters away. Dubbed “the wall of shame” by demonstrators, they have turned into a canvas for anti-government graffiti and slogans.
Lebanon still has no government to confront the worst emergency it has faced at least since the 1975-90 civil war, as rival political factions fail to agree on how to divide power. Meanwhile, its cash reserves are running dangerously low, hunger stalks middle class families, the currency has collapsed and there is not enough money to clean up the devastation – human and material – left by the Aug. 4 port blast. After that tragedy, which killed nearly 200 people and injured thousands, it fell to young volunteers to help clear the rubble and provide support to 300,000 people made homeless.
Those hit by joblessness, poverty and hunger rely on relief agencies, local philanthropy and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with no way out of the crisis in sight.
Maya Ibrahimchah founded Beit el Baraka, a local NGO, in 2018 to serve Beirut’s poor, initially by finding homes for evicted tenants and opening a free supermarket. But in the year since last October’s uprising, the NGO has grown to help 220,000 people. Ibrahimchah quickly found that she was providing food and shelter to members of Lebanon’s shrinking middle class.
“Now we’re also fixing 3,011 homes in the devastated (blast) zones,” Ibrahimchah said. “We get 95% of our funding from Lebanese in the diaspora.” One family she encountered in Mar Mikhael, a part of Beirut shattered by the blast, summed up how the crisis has hit the whole of society, not just the poor. In the house live a grandmother, one of the first women to graduate from the American University of Beirut, her daughter, also a graduate from an elite university, the daughter’s husband who lost his job in a pharmaceutical company and three children.
The kids, aged 7, 10 and 11, are losing their teeth because the family cannot afford dental care. “It’s three generations that portray what happened to us,” Ibrahimchah said. “When I got into this house, I cursed the governments and our officials.” Rita Oghlo’s husband, a mechanic by trade, lost his last job at a restaurant because of the financial crisis. After the coronavirus pandemic struck, he found it impossible to find work. His leg was badly injured in the port explosion, and the family’s apartment was destroyed.
Struggling to get by on Rita’s income as a beautician, the family depends on donations. “Honestly, in the past year, our lives have been upended, not just me, everybody. Now it’s just a catastrophe,” she said. “And nobody thinks about us, in the state, they don’t care.”
It is little better for those with savings. Beirut’s banks, paralyzed after lending to the central bank and the state, have shut depositors out of their accounts for much of the past year. “I have 12,000 families on the waiting list who need to buy laptops for their children” to study online during the lockdown, said Ibrahimchah. “How can the parents pay?”
Mortada, the protester, has been unemployed since before last year’s demonstrations began, but is going to stay in Lebanon where he wants to see people back on the streets, united in defiance against politicians they blame for Lebanon’s crisis. Many do not expect that to happen, as the struggle to make ends meet takes over and people look for a better life elsewhere. According to Reuters, the annual Arab Youth Survey showed this month that whereas two out of five young Arabs are considering emigrating, that figure doubles to nearly four out of five in Lebanon.
According to the United Nations, 55% of the population lives below the poverty line, while the Beirut-based research firm InfoPro said a third of all private sector jobs have been lost. “I think young people are trying to survive, that’s why they’re not going to the streets. I think they’ve been frightened because they’ve been threatened,” said Nasser Saidi, a leading economist and former minister. “We’ve never had anything this bad.”

Is Hariri Returning to the Premiership of Lebanon?
Eyad Abu Shakra/Asharq Al Awsat/October 17/2020
A couple of days ago, against the background of devastation, political vacuum, and crippling economic and health crises, the former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri shocked his audience when he said during a lengthy TV interview that he was a ‘natural candidate’ for the post.
In ‘natural’ circumstances, such a declaration is also ‘natural’; since he heads the biggest Sunni parliamentary bloc, as per Lebanon’s sectarian criteria. Moreover, he still enjoys the backing of four former prime ministers (himself included) who have represented the Sunni Muslims at the highest levels of the constitutionally recognized politico-sectarian national leadership.
Yet what is important, for any serious political analyst is what may have changed Hariri’s position of ‘disinterest’, when he positively reacted to the popular uprising of October 2019th by submitting the resignation of his cabinet.
Indeed, three significant events happened parallel to the rapid financial and economic collapse, including the free fall of the Lebanese Pound’s exchange rate against the US Dollar:

1- Following the resignation of the Hariri ‘coalition’ cabinet, which suffered from dissent, disrespect to the idea of the state, the constitution, and the national consensus, the naïve revolutionary slogan “All means All” disintegrated. Actually, the uprising only brought down the Sunni Prime Minister who was the weakest member of the ruling ‘Triumvirate’, that also includes the Christian President and the Shiite Speaker. The latter, both of whom are supported by Hezbollah, the de facto supreme power in the land, not only kept their positions, but also appointed a weak Sunni Prime Minister from their political camp.
2- Covid-19 has hit Lebanon, like it did in the rest of the world since early 2020; however, its effect in Lebanon has been particularly bad due to the country’s fragile living conditions. The pandemic has been almost fatal to the services’ sectors such as tourism, and quite catastrophic to Arab and international financial and investment activities.
3- In August 2020, the Beirut port was devastated by a massive explosion that killed around 200, injured no less than 5000, and damaged about half of the Lebanese capital’s buildings, at an estimated 5 billion US dollars. The Beirut port disaster brought forward the demise of the cabinet imposed by the de facto power in Lebanon, with the intention of circumventing and aborting the people’s uprising. In the light of the above, there was an urgent need for an initiative to deal with the accelerating collapse and political blockage in a bankrupt, cabinet-less country, whose citizens’ dream has become emigration. A country that lies in a region facing political and military crossroads, during an American election year... with all its possible repercussions.
While Donald Trump’s Washington was busy confronting Covid-19 and its economic effects inside America, and conducting brisk political business in the Israeli and Iranian files – both of which crucial for Lebanon –French President Emmanuel Macron launched his own initiative.
Macron made two visits to Lebanon, carrying with him a settlement draft calling for the formation of a ‘mission government’. His hope has been that could save the country; supposedly far from the destructive ‘smartness’ of its political elite, which has been responsible for Lebanon’s misfortune since 1990.
Furthermore, for as yet unclear reasons, Macron’s endeavor has been shadowed by an American ‘follow up’ move carried out by two senior State Department figures; David Hale and David Schenker. This move has come right after Washington’s successful sponsorship of opening up the Arabian Gulf for Israeli diplomatic relations.
As we know, Macron’s initiative managed a breakthrough, resulting in asking Mustafa Adib, the Lebanese ambassador to Germany, to form the non-political ‘mission government’. However, since Lebanon is full of devilish details, the de facto movers and shakers, succeeded in sabotaging Adib’s efforts through insisting on their sectarian and political demands that undermined and ridiculed the French initiative. Salvaging his self-respect, Adib announced his disinterest and returned to Berlin. This sad experiment has proven the futility of shallow approaches that intentionally avoid dealing with the root cause of the problem, The French President, like the US administration, has ignored the basic fact about what the Lebanese are suffering from. In fact, while it has always been true that there are internal reasons behind Lebanon’s problems, these problems were almost always influenced by regional interventions and international catalysts. In other words, the essence of Lebanon’s conflicts has been internal; more specifically, sectarian and factional in the first place. However, the game of ‘political dissimulation’, long mastered by Lebanon’s factions, has allowed these factions to agree on long truces before one of them exploits a shift in the regional balance of power to subdue other factions inside the country. Thus, all previous factional truces collapsed due to regional and international shifts. Today, we are witnessing a huge shift that has effectively established a ‘state within a state’ situation in Lebanon.
President Macron believes that the Iranian regime is a regional reality in the Middle East that must be tolerated and lived with. He also believes that Hezbollah (not the Shiite community) is a Lebanese essential constituent that must be recognized. As a result, the French President has simply ignored the ‘organic’ relationship between the Iranian regime and its Lebanese armed militia, and their mutual plan for the whole Middle East. Meanwhile, if Hariri sincerely believes that the only solution is embodied in Macron’s initiative; then, does he believe that those who have sabotaged that initiative after undermining him several times would be truthful and cooperative? Moreover, didn’t he clearly say in his TV interview that “some are using their excess military might to impose new formulae on the Lebanese against their free will… and that there were two projects in the country; the first, is the Hezbollah and Amal’s project backed by foreign powers; the second, is the one that seeks to solve the country’s problem, liberate it from the parties’ stranglehold, and insists that the Lebanese citizen comes first?
These two questions deserve clear answers!

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 17-18/2020

Grisly Beheading of Teacher in Terror Attack Rattles France
Agence France Presse/October 17/2020
For the second time in three weeks, terror struck France, this time with the gruesome beheading of a history teacher in a street in a Paris suburb. The suspected attacker was shot and killed by police.
French President Emmanuel Macron denounced what he called an "Islamist terrorist attack" and urged the nation to stand united against extremism. The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam's Prophet Muhammad with his class, authorities said. The French anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive. Four people, one a minor, were detained hours later, the office of anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said without elaborating. Police typically fan out to find family and friends of potential suspects in terror cases. Macron visited the school where the teacher worked in the town of Conflans-Saint-Honorine and met with staff after the slaying. An Associated Press reporter saw three ambulances at the scene, and heavily armed police surrounding the area and police vans lining leafy nearby streets. "One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught ... the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe," Macron said. He said the attack shouldn't divide France because that's what the extremists want. "We must stand all together as citizens," he said. The incident came as Macron's government works on a bill to address Islamist radicals who authorities claim are creating a parallel society outside the values of the French Republic. France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with up to 5 million members, and Islam is the country's No. 2 religion. A police official said the suspect, armed with a knife and an airsoft gun — which fires plastic pellets — was shot dead about 600 meters (yards) from where the male teacher was killed after he failed to respond to orders to put down his arms, and acted in a threatening manner.
The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion "for a debate" about the caricatures about 10 days ago, the police official told The Associated Press. The parent of a student had filed a complaint against the teacher, another police official said, adding that the suspected killer did not have a child at the school. An ID card was found at the scene but police were verifying the identity, the police official said. French media reported that the suspect was an 18-year-old Chechen, born in Moscow. That information could not be immediately confirmed. France has seen occasional violence involving its Chechen community in recent months, in the Dijon region, the Mediterranean city of Nice, and the western town of Saint-Dizier, believed linked to local criminal activity. It was not known what link, if any, the attacker might have with the teacher or whether he had accomplices. Police were fanning out on searches of homes and potential family and friends of the man in question, the police official said. The two officials could not be named because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing investigations.
"We didn't see this coming," Conflans resident Remi Tell, who as a child had attended the Bois D'Aulne middle school, said on CNews TV station. He described the town as peaceful.
It was the second terrorism-related incident since the opening of an ongoing trial for the January 2015 newsroom massacre at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had published caricatures of the prophet of Islam.
As the trial started, the paper republished caricatures of the prophet to underscore the right of freedom of expression. Quickly, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing two people with a meat cleaver outside the newspaper's former offices. They did not suffer threatening injuries.The 18-year-old told police he was upset about the publication of the caricatures. In a video posted recently on social media, a man describing himself as a father at the school said the teacher who was slain had recently shown an offensive image of a man and told students it was "the prophet of the Muslims." Before showing the images, the teacher asked Muslim children to leave the room because he planned to show something shocking, the man said. "What was the message he wanted to send these children? ... Why does a history teacher behave this way in front of 13-year-olds?" the man asked. He called on other angry parents to contact him, and relay the message.
 

After UN embargo expired, Iran says it will not go on an arms ‘buying spree’
Tuqa Khalid, Al Arabiya English Sunday 18 October 2020
Iran will not go on a weapons “buying spree” after the five-year United Nations arms embargo expired, the foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday. Tehran did highlight that it is now able to “procure any necessary arms and equipment from any source without any legal restrictions and solely based on its defensive needs, and may also export defensive armaments based on its own policies.” However, it added in the statement that “Iran’s defense doctrine is premised on strong reliance on its people and indigenous capabilities... Unconventional arms, weapons of mass destruction and a buying spree of conventional arms have no place in Iran’s defense doctrine. The country’s deterrence stems from native knowledge and capability, as well as our people’s power and resilience.” "Today's normalization of Iran’s defense cooperation with the world is a win for the cause of multilateralism and peace and security in our region," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter. The UN arms embargo on Iran expired on Sunday despite US efforts to extend it, giving the regime the freedom to purchase military equipment.
The expiration of the embargo was part of the 2015 nuclear deal among Iran, Russia, China, Germany, Britain, France and the United States that seeks to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief. After failing to pass a resolution to extend the embargo, the US triggered a “snapback” of all sanctions on Iran. However, 13 out of 15 council members expressed their opposition to a return of all UN sanctions on Tehran because there was no consensus in the body. The US administration has repeatedly argued that should the embargo fail to be extended, it would strengthen Iran’s capability to further arm its proxies in the region and eventually destabilize the Middle East. Washington also believes that Iran’s ballistic missile program is used by the regime to further its influence in the region and is not for “peaceful” purposes as Tehran claims. However, the Iranian regime has repeatedly over the years claimed that its missile program was for “peaceful purposes” and for defense only and refused to even negotiate curbing the program. - With Agencies

Iran’s missiles need to be addressed to curb Tehran's ambitions in region: Study
Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya English/Saturday 17 October 2020
The UN arms embargo on Iran is set to expire Sunday despite US efforts to extend it, giving the regime the freedom to purchase military equipment. This will compound the danger its current missile program already poses in the Middle East. The embargo is due to expire on October 18, as agreed under the 2015 nuclear deal among Iran, Russia, China, Germany, Britain, France and the United States that seeks to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief. After failing to pass a resolution to extend the embargo, the US triggered a “snapback” of all sanctions on Iran. However, 13 out of 15 council members expressed their opposition to a return of all UN sanctions on Tehran because there was no consensus in the body. The US administration has repeatedly argued that should the embargo fail to be extended, it would strengthen Iran’s capability to further arm its proxies in the region and eventually destabilize the Middle East. Washington also believes that Iran’s ballistic missile program is used by the regime to further its influence in the region and is not for “peaceful” purposes as Tehran claims. The Iranian regime has repeatedly over the years claimed that its missile program was for “peaceful purposes” and for defense only and refused to even negotiate curbing the program. A study by the Riyadh-based think tank International Institute for Iranian Studies (Rasanah) stated that nuclear deal alone was not enough to curb the dangers posed by Tehran to the region. It highlighted Iran’s capabilities when it comes to missile production. “Iran can produce hundreds of sophisticated, reverse-engineered improvised missiles. Through black-market or top-secret unannounced purchases, Tehran is suspected of building a missile force capable of evading the radars of its neighbors with speed and in-flight maneuverability. Considering the short flight duration between its adversaries, the threats from Iran’s government to the region cannot diminish with the existing nuclear deal as it does not cover Iran’s missile capability,” the study said. Iran also has a long history of arming and financially supporting its network of proxies – Shia militias across the Middle East – to further its influence in the region. “Iran’s reliance on its missile force makes it highly probable that it will face a high degree of escalation and pay severe retribution. It has [therefore] successfully managed threats by deploying its missiles via its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen,” the study adds. “Iran found great potential in projecting its influence and power through the use of non-state armed actors, civil society groups, emerging media platforms, unmanned aerial vehicles and missile forces.” “Reverse-engineered or locally assembled missiles” have been smuggled to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shia militias in both Syria and Iraq. “Drones have worked well for Iran, from Yemen to Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. A sanction-stricken country like Iran, without its many missiles and numerous drones, cannot project power and implement deterrence measures thousands of kilometers away.” After the embargo is lifted “Iran’s arms shopping list will include missile defense systems, fighter jets and submarines.”

UN's Guterres Says 130 Million People Face Starvation Risk by Year End
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that efforts must be made to ensure sustainable and healthy diets for all and to minimize food waste. "We need to ensure sustainable and healthy diets for all, and to minimize food waste," the UN chief said in a message for the World Food Day, which falls on Oct. 16. "In a world of plenty, it is a grave affront that hundreds of millions go to bed hungry each night," said the secretary-general, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic has further intensified food insecurity to a level not seen in decades. "Some 130 million people risk being pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of this year," said Guterres. "This is on top of the 690 million people who lready lack enough to eat." "At the same time, more than 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. As we mark the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, we need to intensify our efforts to achieve the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals," said the UN chief. "That means a future where everyone, everywhere, has access to the nutrition they need."Noting that he will convene a Food Systems Summit to inspire action towards this vision next year, the secretary-general said that "we need to make food systems more resistant to volatility and climate shocks.""And we need food systems that provide decent, safe livelihoods for workers. We have the know-how and the capacity to create a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable world," said the UN chief. "On this World Food Day, let us make a commitment to 'Grow, Nourish, and Sustain. Together.'"World Food Day is an international day celebrated every year around the world on Oct. 16 in honor of the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945. The day is celebrated widely by many other organizations concerned with food security, including the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. The World Food Programme got the Nobel Prize in Peace for the year 2020 for its efforts to combat hunger, contribution to make peace in conflicted areas, and for playing role of driving force to stop the use of hunger in the form of a weapon for war and conflict.
 

Europe Condemns Turkey’s Provocations in Eastern Med
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
EU leaders on Friday condemned "unilateral actions and provocations" by Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean, where it is locked in a standoff over energy resources with Greece and Cyprus. European leaders discussed the dispute at a summit in Brussels, after Turkey sent a research ship back to contested waters in defiance of international calls to withdraw. The European Union "deplores renewed unilateral and provocative actions by Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean, including recent exploratory activities," the 27 leaders said in their summit communique. They urged Turkey to reverse its recent activity and reiterated their "full solidarity" with EU members Greece and Cyprus. eed that the recent unilateral measures taken by Turkey, which are of course provocative, are now increasing tensions again instead of easing them," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said.
"I think this is very regrettable, but it is also not necessary. We should work on the positive aspects of our agenda." EU leaders had a lengthy discussion of their relations with Ankara at a summit just two weeks ago, but Athens and Nicosia put grievances over Turkish energy exploration in the eastern Mediterranean back on the agenda. After a similar row in August, Ankara has redeployed the research ship Oruc Reis to strategic waters between Cyprus and the Greek islands of Crete and Kastellorizo. The United States and Germany, both NATO allies of Greece and Turkey, have labelled the gas exploration mission a "provocation" and urged Ankara to recall the ship. On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also criticized the self-styled state in northern Cyprus for reopening public access to Varosha, a seaside town that had been deserted since Turkish forces seized the north of the island in 1974. Pompeo, in a telephone conversation with Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides, "expressed deep concern and noted such a move was provocative and inconsistent" with UN Security Council resolutions and urged a reversal of the reopening, the State Department said.
Despite EU leaders' strong rhetoric in their statement, AFP quoted EU Council President Charles Michel as saying there would be no change to the strategy agreed at the last summit.Under this plan, the EU will closely monitor Turkey's actions in the eastern Mediterranean and decide on possible action at a summit in December. The bloc has warned Turkey that all options are on the table, including sanctions. Since it has no armed forces, military action is not an option. French President Emmanuel Macron, who has strongly supported Greece, even to the extent of holding joint war games in the Mediterranean as a show of strength, said Europe was ready to talk to Ankara. But he warned "we will not concede anything to these provocations".

Inmate Released from Kurdish Prison: ISIS Used Us as Human Shields
Hasakah - Kamal Sheikho/ Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
A Syrian man released this week from the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration prisons in northeast Syria admitted that ISIS forced him to collaborate with the organization, saying he was unable to escape from areas controlled by the group. “I was placed in prison for being an ISIS fighter. However, I was a civilian employee working with the organization. They forced us to leave with their fighters every time they lost new territory, the last time in the Baghouz area,” Khodr, 23, told Asharq Al-Awsat on Friday. After spending 19 months in prison, the young Syrian who is from the village of Shaddadi, south of Hassakah, was released as part of an amnesty deal issued by the Autonomous Administration last Saturday for a number of ISIS militants from prisons in northern Syria. “ISIS used us as human shields and they prevented us from escaping,” Khodr, 23, said. Amid tight security measures, hundreds of prisoners were seen Friday leaving the Sanaah Prison in the city of Hassakah. Some were carrying small handbags and others were walking on crutches. Family members waited to welcome them. Hussein, from the town of Bassira in the countryside of eastern Deir Ezzor, was waiting with the crowd for the release of his brother. “After the Baghouz battle ended, my brother was arrested. He has been in prison for one year and a half on charges of ties to the ISIS organization,” he said. On Thursday, the Syrian Democratic Council announced the release of 631 prisoners charged of committing terrorist acts out of the 12,000 Syrian suspects who are accused of collaborating with ISIS. Amina Omar, co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Party (SDC), said that the Council released Syrians who collaborated with ISIS but had not committed criminal acts. Around 253 others would also benefit from the amnesty and would be released once they complete half of their sentences. Hamdan, from the villages of Jabal Abdulaziz in western Hassakah, was waiting in front of the prison to welcome his son. “My son and dozens of others were put in jail for membership to ISIS based on false reports. As a result, he unjustly remained in prison for one year,” he said.

US Condemns Turkey over Test of Russian S400 System
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
The United States on Friday condemned Turkey after it reportedly carried out its first test of a highly advanced Russian air defense system in defiance of US warnings. The Turkish army conducted the test firing of the S400 missile defense system in the northern province of Sinop by the Black Sea, according to the pro-government television station A Haber. Other Turkish media have shared an amateur video showing a white streak in the sky. The defense ministry refused to confirm or deny the test firing. In Washington, the State Department said that it had warned its NATO ally at high levels that the acquisition of the S400s was "unacceptable.”"If confirmed, we would condemn in the strongest terms the S400 test missile launch as incompatible with Turkey's responsibilities as a NATO ally and strategic partner of the United states," State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said. In response to the delivery of the first battery last year, the United States suspended Turkey from the production program of F-35 fighter jets. Washington also threatened Ankara with sanctions if the S400s were activated -- but had held out hope that Turkey would "keep it in the box." "The United States has been clear on our expectation that the S400 system should not be operationalized," Ortagus said. "We have also been clear on the potential serious consequences for our security relationship if Turkey activates the system," she said.Despite repeated warnings, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly asserted that the S400s will be deployed.

Barzani Condemns Torching of Kurdish Party Offices in Baghdad
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
Kurdish President Nechirvan Barzani condemned on Saturday the torching of the main Kurdish party's headquarters in Baghdad after Iraq's longtime former foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari criticized the Popular Mobilization Forces.Supporters of PMF, an Iraqi paramilitary network dominated by Iran-backed factions, burned down Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)'s headquarters in Baghdad. Hundreds of PMF demonstrators swept past a security detail and stormed into the offices of the KDP, which runs the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, and torched them. Protesters burned Kurdish flags while others carried posters of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport last January. Earlier this month, Zebari, a key Kurdish power-broker, said the government needed to "clean up the Green Zone (in Baghdad) from the presence of PMF militias." They were operating "outside the law", Zebari, a KDP member, said in comments. Barzani condemned Saturday's vandalism as "an act of sabotage.” Massoud Barzani, the KDP's veteran head, also called on the Baghdad government to hold the assailants accountable.
"Those who attack the KDP and make a mockery of the values of Kurdistan's people will pay the price for their actions," he said. Vian Sabry, head of the KDP bloc in the Iraqi parliament, blamed "unaccountable factions for being behind such acts," without elaborating.

Israel Halts Visas for UN Rights Staff After Settlement Database
Tel Aviv/ Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
Israel, which was angered in February by the UN listing companies with activities in illegal Israeli settlements, has granted no visas to UN rights staff for months, the agency said Friday. "Visa applications have not been formally refused, but the Israeli authorities have abstained from issuing or renewing any visas since June," UN rights office spokesman Rupert Colville told AFP in an email. He stressed that Israel had not formally refused any of the office's visa applications, but had simply not acted on new requests or requests for renewal. "The first international staff member had to leave in August after her visa expired," he said, adding that nine international staff members had been forced to leave so far after their visas were not renewed. And "three newly appointed international staff have not been able to deploy because they have not received their visas," he said. Only three international staff members of the agency still have valid visas to work in the country. This, Colville lamented, was creating a "highly irregular situation and will negatively impact on our ability to carry out our mandate." Israel has not provided an official explanation, but the blockage comes after the UN rights office in February released a list of over 100 companies with activities in Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal under international law. Israel at the time slammed the move as "shameful", warning the list could be used to boycott firms with ties to the settlements, and announced it would suspend its relations with the UN rights office. And in June, the country reiterated its decision to "freeze ties" with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and her office. When contacted by AFP Friday, the Israeli foreign ministry said it had nothing to add to a statement it issued in February when it vowed to "take action" to prevent the implementation of "discriminatory anti-Israel" decisions at the UN. Colville stressed that the UN rights agency's offices in Israel and the Palestinian territories remained open, with 26 national staff members and the remaining three international staff onsite. The remainder of the international staff were working remotely, he said, adding that this was not having a big impact on operations yet, since remote work had become a norm in many places anyway due to the ongoing pandemic. "We continue to hope that this situation will be resolved soon, and we are actively engaged with various relevant and concerned parties to that end," Colville said.

Iraq's Persecuted Yazidis Fear Going Back to Sinjar
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
The Yazidis of northern Iraq, an ancient religious minority brutally persecuted by ISIS, want nothing more than peace, security, and a better life in their home town of Sinjar - but they want it on their terms. Many there distrust a new security and reconstruction plan unveiled this week by the Baghdad government and Kurdish regional authorities which hailed it as a “historic” agreement. “The deal could pacify Sinjar - but it might also make the situation even worse,” said Talal Saleh, a Yazidi in exile in nearby Kurdistan. The Yazidis have suffered since ISIS marauded into Sinjar in 2014, one of the Sunni extremist group’s conquests that shocked the West into military action to stop it. ISIS viewed the Yazidis as devil worshippers for their faith that combines Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish, and Muslim beliefs. It slaughtered more than 3,000 Yazidis, enslaved 7,000 women and girls, and displaced most of its 550,000-strong community. Since ISIS was driven out of Sinjar by US-backed Kurdish forces in 2015, the town and its surrounding areas are controlled by a patchwork of armed groups including the Iraqi army, Shi’ite Muslim militia, and Yazidi and Kurdish militants with different loyalties. The government plan would enforce security and allow the return of tens of thousands of Yazidis afraid to go back because of a lack of security and basic services, according to the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. But many Sinjar natives feel the plan is vague, dictated by Baghdad and the Kurdish capital of Erbil. They say it has not included them and entails security reforms that could mean more division and violence. “The PKK and their Yazidi allies are not just going to leave Sinjar without a fight,” Saleh said. The security arrangements include booting out the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that has fought a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and bases itself in northern Iraq. It would also drive out PKK “affiliates”, an apparent reference to a Yazidi force of hundreds of fighters.
ESCAPE
The PKK with Yazidi volunteers helped thousands of Yazidis escape the IS onslaught to Syria after the Iraqi army fled many areas of Nineveh province and Erbil’s peshmerga forces retreated. The peshmerga returned to help recapture Sinjar‮‮ ‬‬with US air support. The PKK is under attack by Turkish forces in Iraq and exists uneasily alongside the peshmerga and the Iraqi army. The army and the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), Iraq’s state paramilitary body dominated by Shiite militias, would oversee the ejection of the PKK, according to a copy of the plan seen by Reuters.
Some locals fear this could split up families where siblings sometimes belong to different militias, forces, and groups. The Yazidis also have their own force in the PMF, separate to the Yazidi PKK affiliate. “There are about six political groups in Sinjar now. Brothers belonging to the same family each join different parties,” said Akram Rasho, another displaced Yazidi in Kurdistan.
Baghdad and Erbil defend the plan.
“This is a good step to solve problems,” said Kurdistan government spokesman Jotiar Adil. Sinjar has also been caught up in a territorial dispute between Baghdad and Erbil since a failed Kurdish bid for full independence in 2017. Under the plan for Sinjar, the Baghdad and Erbil governments would choose a new mayor and administrators and appoint 2,500 new local security personnel. Supporters of the PKK suspect those would include returning Yazidis affiliated with the peshmerga. At a demonstration against the deal in Sinjar on Sunday, Yazidi tribal leader Shamo Khadida shouted, “Sinjar belongs to its people and we are the people.”Others distance themselves from the politics and simply want to see delivery of services on the ground. “If actual efforts are made to improve our situation, the people of Sinjar will find agreement,” said Rasho.

ICC prosecutor heads to Sudan to discuss ex-President Omar al-Bashir case
AFP/Saturday 17 October 2020
International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda will arrive Saturday in Sudan to discuss the potential extradition of former president Omar al-Bashir, the government said. The toppled autocrat is wanted by the ICC on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in the western region of Darfur. A delegation led by Bensouda “will discuss cooperation between the International Criminal Court and Sudan regarding the accused, against whom the court has issued arrest warrants,” a statement from the office of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said.
The office said that the delegation would stay until October 21 and meet with senior Sudanese officials. A government source told AFP that Bensouda would arrive in Khartoum on Saturday “to discuss the extradition of former president Omar al-Bashir and others to the court.”
Al-Bashir ruled with an iron fist for 30 years until his overthrow on April 11, 2019, following unprecedented youth-led street demonstrations. The United Nations estimates 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in the Darfur conflict since 2003.
Sudan’s transitional government has agreed that al-Bashir would stand trial before the ICC. However, in an August peace deal with rebels, the government agreed to set up a special court for crimes in Darfur and that al-Bashir should also face that court. Hamdok told the Financial Times earlier this month that he had spoken with the ICC about the option of trying al-Bashir in Sudan, potentially in a “hybrid court.” Al-Bashir, 76, is currently held in Khartoum’s tough Kober prison. He was convicted last December for corruption, and is now on trial for the 1989 coup that brought him to power. If convicted al-Bashir and 27 other co-accused - including former top officials - could face the death penalty.n June, Ali Kushayb, the head of the Janjaweed militia accused of carrying out some of the worst atrocities in Darfur, surrendered to the ICC and is now in custody.

Yemen’s Government, Houthis End Largest Prisoner Swap
Aden - Ali Rabih/ Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) completed on Friday the last phase of a prisoner exchange deal, considered the largest between the Yemeni legitimate government and Houthi militias since the coup in late 2014. The ICRC and both government and Houthi sources confirmed the release of 151 prisoners held by the militias transported on two flights that took off from Sanaa, Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, and landed in Aden in exchange for 201 rebel prisoners, who were also transferred in two batches from Aden to Sanaa. "We're encouraged by this success and hope that it leads to more steps towards the transfer and release of more detainees," tweeted the ICRC. A huge public rally was held Friday in the city of Marib to celebrate the arrival of the first group of detainees released Thursday. A large number of people lined up on the roadsides and main streets to welcome the prisoners of war. The governor of Marib, Maj. General Sultan al-Arradah, along with General Chief of Staffs Lt. Gen. Sagheer bin Aziz, the governors of Saada, Ryma and Sanaa were the first to welcome the released detainees. Meanwhile, the Joint Forces in the west coast are planning for a ceremony Saturday to welcome the released detainees who were captured during fierce battles around the strategic city of Hodeidah. The exchange is the result of negotiations that took place over the last few months in Switzerland under UN sponsorship and based on the Stockholm Agreement, a deal signed between the Yemeni government and Houthis in 2018. War prisoners released on Thursday included 470 Houthis, 221 government soldiers, 15 Saudis and four Sudanese. The prisoners were transported on 11 flights, which took off or landed in five different cities - Sanaa, Seiyun and Aden in Yemen; and Riyadh and Abha in Saudi Arabia.

Trudeau: Canada Won't Stop Calling for Human Rights in China
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 17 October, 2020
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday his government will not stop standing up for human rights in China.
On Thursday, the Chinese ambassador to Canada warned Ottawa against granting asylum to Hong Kong residents fleeing the situation. Cong Peiwu said if Canada cares about 300,000 Canadian citizens in Hong Kong - and Canadian companies doing business there - it should support efforts to fight what he called fight violent crime. "We will stand up loudly and clearly for human rights," Trudeau said. "Whether it´s talking about the situation faced by the Uighurs, whether it´s talking about the very concerning situation in Hong Kong, whether it´s calling out China for its coercive diplomacy."
Trudeau said Canada stands with allies around the world and the United States, to Australia, to Great Britain, to European nations to many nations around the world who share these concerns. Canada´s opposition Conservative leader said the Chinese ambassador should apologize or be expelled from Canada. "The Chinese ambassador has decided to engage in belligerent rhetoric unbecoming of his office," Conservative leader Erin O´Toole said in a written statement. "To be clear, this was a threat to the 300,000 Canadians in Hong Kong. And a barely veiled one at that. It was of the kind of tone and tenor one would expect from someone seeking protection money - not someone who is the official emissary of a member of the United Nations Security. The government should also swiftly set up a "path" for political refugees to come to Canada from Hong Kong and impose sanctions on Chinese officials over the national security law, O´Toole added. Protests against the Hong Kong and mainland Chinese governments swelled last year, and Beijing clamped down on expressions of anti-government sentiment in the city with a new national security law that took effect June 30.
The law outlaws subversive, secessionist, and terrorist activity, as well as collusion with foreign powers to interfere in the city´s internal affairs. The US, Britain, and Canada accuse China of infringing on the city´s freedoms.
Trudeau also said China is engaging in coercive diplomacy by imprisoning two Canadian men in retaliation for the arrest of a Chinese Huawei executive on an American extradition warrant. In December 2018, China imprisoned two Canadian men, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, and charged them with undermining the country´s national security.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 17-18/2020

U.S. Only Country to Hold Iran's Mullahs Accountable
Majid Rafizadeh/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/October 17/2020
د. مجيد رافيزادا/معهد كيتستون: أميركا هي الدولة الوحيدة التي تحاسب ملالي أميركا على ممارساتهم وتحملهم مسؤولياتها
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/91398/dr-majid-rafizadeh-gatstone-institute-u-s-only-country-to-hold-irans-mullahs-accountable-%d8%af-%d9%85%d8%ac%d9%8a%d8%af-%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%81%d9%8a%d8%b2%d8%a7%d8%af%d8%a7-%d9%85%d8%b9%d9%87%d8%af/
Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death."
Holding the Iranian leaders accountable only for human rights violation is not enough. Pressure must be imposed on the regime to stop its military adventurism.
Iran has also, since the beginning of the JCPOA, brought terror and assassination plots to the EU. If the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, they will not even need to use them; just the threat to European cities should be enough to produce instantaneous acquiescence. German intelligence has acknowledged that more than 1,000 members of Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, use the country to recruit, raise money and buy arms.
The EU needs to stop its appeasement policies with Iran's mullahs. It needs to join the US in holding the Iranian leaders accountable.
The only Western government taking concrete steps to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its human rights violations, destabilizing behavior and aggressive policies in the Middle East is the Trump administration. On September 24, the United States blacklisted and slapped sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities over gross violations of human rights. Sanctions were also imposed on the judge who was involved in issuing the death sentence for the Iranian wrestling champion, Navid Afkari.
The EU, the UN and human rights organization have not taken any tangible action, even after Amnesty International released its report on Iran's shocking human rights violations. Amnesty International warned that the Iranian regime has committed unacceptable atrocities, including victims being frequently "hooded or blindfolded; punched, kicked and flogged; beaten with sticks, rubber hosepipes, knives, batons and cables; suspended or forced into holding painful stress positions for prolonged periods; deprived of sufficient food and potable water; placed in prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks or even months; and denied medical care for injuries sustained during the protests or as a result of torture."
The United States also imposed sanctions on Judge Seyyed Mahmoud Sadati, Judge Mohammad Soltani, Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Shiraz, and Adel Abad, Orumiyeh for being responsible for gross human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary detentions and unjustified executions. Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
"The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death."
Afkari, like many other people who participated in protests against the regime, was brutally tortured. He explained in a letter:
"For around 50 days I had to endure the most horrendous physical and psychological tortures. They would beat me with sticks and batons, hitting my arms, legs, abdomen, and back. They would place a plastic bag on my head and torture me until I suffocated to the very brink of death. They also poured alcohol into my nose."
Holding the Iranian leaders accountable only for human rights violation is not enough. Pressure must be imposed on the regime's military adventurism. Unlike the EU, the US is taking concrete steps in countering this rogue regime in other arenas as well. On September 21, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a new executive order targeting Iran-related conventional arms transfers, aimed at targeting those who seek to make arms deals with the Iranian regime and skirt the UN arms embargo. Although the US recently drafted a resolution at the UN to extend the arms embargo on Iran, Russia and China exercised their security council vetoes. The other 11 members abstained.
Russia's leaders appear more than willing to help Iran. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, said in January 2020 that Russia needs to "offer Iran an agreement on military cooperation and urgently sell the most modern weapons so that no one dares throw anything in the direction of Iran." In the end, the UN Security Council voted on August 14 to permit the 13-year arms embargo on the Iranian regime to expire. This means that the Iranian regime will be permitted freely to buy, sell, import and export weapons.
To prevent Iran from making arms deals, sanctions have been effectively imposed on several significant organizations and individuals including Iran's Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics; Iran's Defense Industries Organization and its director, Mohammad Ghannadi Maragheh; the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran's (AEOI) Deputy Head of Nuclear Planning and Strategic Supervision, Mohammad Qannadi as well as Javad Karimi Sabet, AEOI's Deputy Head and the head of its Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute; and Mammut Industrial Group and its subsidiary, Mammut Diesel, for being "key producers and suppliers of military-grade, dual-use goods for Iran's missile programs".
The sanctions are evidently intended to make companies and governments think twice about dealing with the mullahs and thereby risk doing business with the US. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, apparently feeling the pressure of the sanctions, lashed out at the US; in televised remarks, he angrily accused the US of "savagery".
Aside from risking doing business with the US, the European countries need to stop doing business with Iran because they are empowering a regime that is setting up terror cells on the European soil. Iran has also, since the beginning of the JCPOA, brought terror and assassination plots to the EU. If the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, they will not even need to use them; just the threat to European cities should be enough to produce instantaneous acquiescence. German intelligence has acknowledged that more than 1,000 members of Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, use the country to recruit, raise money and buy arms.
In October last year, the Albanian General Police Director Ardi Veliu revealed that an active cell of the foreign operations unit linked to the Iranian Quds Force had been detected by Albania's security services. In recent years, a series of assassination and terrorist plots took place across Europe -- some successful, others not, but all were committed in the EU by Iran's agents, and traced back to Tehran. In July 2018, a foiled a terrorist attack in Paris targeted a large convention which included not only this author, but also many high-level speakers such as former Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird, former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
A few months later, in October, an Iranian diplomat and several other individuals of Iranian origin were arrested in France, Belgium and Germany for what French intelligence officials concluded was a foiled bomb plot, behind which was the Iranian regime. Iran's regime has also been murdering dissidents on European soil. Ahmad Mola Nissi, a Dutch citizen of Iranian origin and a critic of the Iranian regime, was gunned down at his front door in November 2017. The Dutch authorities publicly acknowledged that it had "strong indications" that the Iranian government had commissioned the murder.
The EU needs to stop its appeasement policies with Iran's mullahs. It needs to join the US in holding the Iranian leaders accountable.
*Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu
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Erdogan’s Wars… From Libya to Armenia
Jebril Elabidi/Asharq Al Awsat/October 17/2020
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s covetous ambitions are various. From seeking gas in the Mediterranean and the “Blue Nation” lie, to his aspirations for Libya's oil crescent, his intervention in the Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh, coveting Azerbaijan’s oil, and his adventures in Iraq and Syria, his greed has led him to adopt belligerent policies. Turkey is consequently quarreling with and making enemies out of everyone and playing a malicious role in Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and even Armenian.
Erdogan has opened several fronts, from getting Turkey tangled up in Iraq with his attacks on the Kurds, as well as Syria and Libya, to supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and seeking to enable them to control most of the Middle East. Turkey’s blatant interventions escalated after the fall of the Brotherhood’s rule in Egypt, dealing a devastating blow to Turkish plans to control the Middle East and subsequently bring the project for a second Ottoman Empire to life.
Erdogan, out of frivolity and political ignorance, drained Turkey’s economy by opening political as well as military fronts against major Arab and Islamic, rather, Sunni states, especially Egypt and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. At the same time, he aligned himself with the Iranian axis of evil. Indeed, Turkey’s hopeless attempts at playing a role it is not equipped to fulfill took him as far as Yemen and Somalia, while Erdogan’s defeats and losses almost bankrupting Turkey’s treasury. It was only saved by Qatari resuscitation and his imposition of royalties on some of those he supports, such as the Government of National Accord in Libya, which paid to rent Erdogan’s mercenaries in dollars taken from the Libyan treasury.
Artsakh, as it is referred to in Armenia, also known as the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which translates to the black garden in the mountains, is a mountainous region, part of which is in the South Caucasus, where the overwhelming majority of the population, about 95 percent, is Armenian. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting over the contested area since the fall of the Soviet Union, and several attempts have been made to quell tensions and resolve the matter through negotiation, given the region’s delicacy. But Turkey’s intervention foiled all the attempts to compel a rapprochement between the two sides and settle the dispute over the area that either calls itself the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh or Artsakh.
Erdogan, who is supporting Azerbaijan, said that “Turkey will not hesitate to stand against any attack on Azerbaijan’s rights and land”, although the disagreement is geographical, over where to draw the borders, and has been on-going since the Soviet era. Redrawing the borders is being proposed by both countries, but Turkey’s intervention in support of oil-rich Azerbaijan is what ignited the war in the region, especially given the historical hostility between Armenia and Turkey because of the 1915 Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan’s Turkey's ambitions for the Caucasus’ oil are obviously the real reason for Turkey’s conspicuous alignment with Azerbaijan and its intervention in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
In light of the reports confirming that Turkey had transferred Syrian mercenaries from Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia’s prime minister accused Turkey of directly intervening in the conflict and sending and transporting fighters and drones to Azerbajain, saying: “The international community cannot but view these actions as ethnic cleansing, and we will not allow for a second genocide to be committed against us”.
The Russian Interfax news agency quoted the Armenian ambassador Vardan Tajanyan as saying: “Turkey has transferred about four thousand fighters from northern Syria to Azerbaijan,” in a repeat of Turkey’s intervention in Libya.
Turkey’s Erdogan seeks to bring a second Ottoman Empire to life in the Caucuses and repeat the Armenian genocide. Turkey’s intervention in favor of Azerbaijan cannot enhance the region's stability; indeed, it will complicate the situation, as stressed by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who said that “Turkey’s military intervention might exacerbate and internationalize the conflict.” In fact, Turkey has sabotaged all attempts at a peaceful settlement of the conflict in the disputed Armenian-majority region.
Erdogan’s multiple fronts are all being fought for oil, demonstrating that the Turkish president is merely greedy for it. He had been taking it from Syrian, buying it from ISIS at the cheapest of prices, and he tried to steal it from Libya and the countries of the Mediterranean by drawing and conjuring up fanciful maps that disregard history and geography. But he doesn’t stand a chance… Reality will trump his covetous ambitions soon.

Italy Is Suddenly Looking Very French
Ferdinando Giugliano/Bloomberg/October 17/2020
The pandemic has prompted governments to take a more active role in managing their economies. Politicians are giving out generous loan guarantees and subsidizing wages to reduce the risk of a wave of bankruptcies and mass unemployment. The next step is taking over companies directly. After a spree of recent acquisitions — from payment systems to airlines — Italy appears to be headed in this direction already.
It’s a troubling prospect.
For much of the past three decades, Italy had shifted decisively away from the command economy model that dominated the country after the late 1930s. Under Mario Draghi’s stewardship, Italy’s Treasury embarked on one of the largest privatization programs in western Europe, encompassing everything from banks to utilities. Public spending still accounted for 48.7% of gross domestic product last year. But from left to right successive governments tried to introduce structural reforms and open up to private investment.
The present coalition government of the left-of-center Democratic Party and the populist Five Star Movement has put a stop to all that. Last week it unveiled the new board of Alitalia, the chronically unprofitable airline, and will spend 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) nationalizing the company.
Meanwhile, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti SpA, Itay’s state lender, has acquired a 7.3% stake in Euronext as part of the latter’s takeover of exchange operator Borsa Italiana. Similarly, CDP has become the top investor of Nexi SpA following the digital-payment company’s purchase of SIA SpA.
CDP is also involved in the negotiations to strip the billionaire Benetton family of its controlling share in motorway operator Autostrade per l’Italia SpA, after the 2018 collapse of Genoa’s Morandi Bridge. The state lender is also investing in a string of smaller companies, and stewarding efforts to create a single Italian broadband network.
This sharp change in direction is only partly a response to the pandemic. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s economic adviser is University College professor Mariana Mazzucato, a long-time supporter of government intervention. Five Star has advocated the nationalization of banks, utilities and other public infrastructure since its creation in 2009. The Democrats have followed suit, abandoning the reformist instincts of former party leader Matteo Renzi.
Italy’s record on state intervention is mixed, at best. After the Great Depression, the Fascist regime created the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, which dominated the post-war economy. Some economists credit IRI with prompting Italy’s remarkable catchup during the 1950s and 1960s — while others believe this was a natural consequence of postwar reconstruction and the transition from an agricultural economy. In the 1980s, many state-owned companies became bastions of inefficiency and privilege, leading to privatization.
Rome hopes its new round of nationalizations, allied with new EU pandemic funds, will spur public investment after a decade of contraction. It believes having a long-term investor like the state or CDP will force companies to pursue broader objectives such as fighting climate change, rather than simply rewarding shareholders.
Unfortunately, pursuing efficiency while keeping a government happy is often incompatible. For example, the state is almost certain to resist calls to cut jobs at Alitalia, even if that’s needed for an effective turnaround. If Italy’s motorway network is nationalized, the government and CDP will find it hard to increase tolls, an important source of funds for maintenance work. More generally, foreign investors may get the impression that they need to team up with a state-controlled entity if they’re to pour money into Italy. That’s not an attractive vision.
Neither is the lack of independence in running these enterprises. CDP is struggling to keep its distance from Italy’s politicians as they demand its involvement in more and more companies. The coalition has stuffed loyalists onto the boards of state-owned entities such as defense group Leonardo SpA and oil giant ENI SpA.
Italy isn’t alone in the shift towards big government. France has never really moved away from dirigisme. But even Britain’s Conservatives, the champions of free markets, are abandoning Thatcherism to hold onto the support of working class Brexit voters in the north of England. Running an ever-growing state with ever-growing public debt will be an enormous challenge after the pandemic. One hopes politicians realize the implications.

You Can’t Blame the EU for Not Trusting Boris Johnson
Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg/October 17/2020
This is not the Brexit endgame Boris Johnson expected.
Thursday was supposed to be the UK prime minister’s make-or-break moment for reaching a trade deal with the European Union before the transition period ends on Dec. 31. Without an agreement by then, both sides should just “move on,” he said last month. It was part of a hardball strategy that also involved a proposed law that set the UK on course to breach the Brexit departure terms it agreed to barely a year ago.
Yet as with previous attempts by Johnson to split the EU’s 27 members — notably France and Germany, the “bad” and “good” cops of Brexit — it backfired.
European leaders gathered in Brussels decided that as far as Brexit was concerned there wasn’t much to discuss after all. They agreed they would keep negotiating on the same basis as before, and called on the UK to make the next move. The issue of fishing rights, a bone of contention between France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel, failed to produce much in the way of a public clash. “We are 100% united,” said European Council President Charles Michel.
Johnson's response on Friday was blustery but ultimately inconclusive: He heaped scorn on the EU for not giving the UK the free-trade deal it wanted and warned it was time to prepare for a “no-deal” outcome, but he also kept the door open for further talks.
UK negotiator David Frost had earlier said he was “surprised” and “disappointed” by the EU’s stance. But this rings hollow. It shouldn’t shock anyone that the EU tends to stick together when Johnson tries to divide and conquer, especially with a threat to pull the plug on talks (which he’s made before). There’s a lack of trust here, made worse by Johnson’s Internal Market Bill, which has both angered the EU and stoked divisions within British politics. There is no incentive for the bloc to sell French (and Irish) fishing boats down the river for a deal.
Hence why we seem to be stuck in an eternal time loop. Brexit isn’t a celebratory trade negotiation between two actors pursuing mutually beneficial comparative advantage by knocking down barriers. It’s the reverse: A once free flow of trade between both sides ($570 billion in 2019) must now be governed by new terms, with the UK tempted to compete aggressively on tax and regulation, while the EU tries to protect its single market from commercial “dumping.” Brexit is for London to exult in, and Brussels to defend against.
The trust deficit has made things worse. The UK has treated questions of regulatory alignment and state aid as an affront to its sovereignty, which only confirms Brussels’s fears that post-Brexit Britain wants to maximize market access and minimize pesky rules of engagement. Although both sides have softened their positions somewhat, Johnson’s cavalier attitude to respecting the Brexit terms he signed up to — including when he breezily stated he would enforce an agreed customs border in the Irish Sea over his “dead body” — casts doubt on the ability to enforce future agreements.
In an ideal world, rather than engaging in more no-deal brinkmanship, the UK and EU would keep edging towards compromise — especially when both sides need to focus on battling Covid-19’s second wave. A strong mechanism to settle disputes and a shared state-aid oversight body should be to the UK’s benefit, not just the EU’s. As for the fight over fishing, given the UK exports 75% of its catch to the EU, it is surely in British interests to keep its neighbors on-side with access agreements that last longer than one year.
But until the UK shows itself willing to back down on positions like its breach of international law, the issue of trust will remain a sticking point. The EU won’t rush through a trade deal only to have it knocked down by the European Parliament. EU lawmakers have already warned that ratifying any agreement would be conditional on the UK’s respect for Brexit terms agreed last year.
If Brexit has taught the EU anything, it’s that it pays to stick together in an uncertain world. Donald Trump’s presidency and the assertiveness of China have pushed the Europeans to circle the wagons in defense of their greatest asset: A barrier-free single market promoted by Margaret Thatcher, expanded eastward under Tony Blair, and governed by financial and antitrust rules influenced by British civil servants. Johnson’s legacy, unwittingly, may be only to further strengthen a trading giant the British helped create.

What Need Is There for Negotiations Between Syria and Israel?
Akram Bunni/Asharq Al Awsat/October 17/2020
On an autumn evening in 2011, we heard the sound of intense gunfire in the air, in what could have been a celebration. As a group of opposition intellectuals and politicians, we had become accustomed to meeting to discuss the developments of the peace movement in Syria and the regime’s assaults on defenseless protesters to break their will...The meeting was held in a house on the outskirts of the Qudsaya suburb, which is surrounded by neighborhoods inhabited by regime security and military cadres and officers. At first, it seemed strange and alarming, and we were skeptical that something extraordinary had occurred... We gathered our papers and rushed out of the area...The shock came when we looked into why those bullets had been fired; the regime issued a directive to celebrate a message of reassurance sent by Israeli leaders that they had not abandoned their preference for the current regime and were against toppling or changing it! A decade earlier, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine official was asked: Why don’t you make use of the Golan Heights to launch attacks on Israel? A frank answer came swiftly that perhaps it might be possible to evade the Syrian forces’ extreme surveillance there, for once! But after that, the Baathist regime would increase surveillance and harshly punish those who violate its stringent parameters of action and the integrity of its borders with Israel, and it would ravage our comrades and cadres in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, blocking the path of anyone who thinks, even merely, about crossing over through the Syrian border.
The mutually beneficial roles are transparent; there is no ambiguity or contention around them. They are contained by a wager, let us say an old reliance on the Syrian regime to satisfy the state of Israel so that the latter ensures the regime’s survival and perpetuity. The regime promotes itself as the best protector of border stability. Sometimes to avoid a direct war that could weaken its military and security pillars, and other times because it is aware of Tel Aviv’s apprehension of a change in Syria that would threaten its interests and security. Also, the Israelis have a strong influence on the international community’s stance on the future of the country that neighbors them and part of whose land it occupies. This is not to say that the regime in Damascus does not, from time to time, activate its political and media tools to raise the issue of the occupied Golan Heights and invigorate hostility to Israel or exploit this issue to establish a “national legitimacy” that allows it to rationalize its control of the country’s economy and appropriation of its wealth.
It also makes use of its alignment with the so-called “axis of resistance” to blackmail some Arab state, and more importantly, justify its repression and subjugation, not only of the Syrian society, which has suffered from both oppression and discrimination under the pretext of bogus nationalistic slogans, but also Palestinian and Lebanese forces, who were harnessed to enhance the regime’s regional influence. In some cases, going as far as waging proxy wars and battles. It did so in south Lebanon in 1978, 1982, 1996 and 2006, and in Gaza in 2008 and 2012.
On the other hand, Tel Aviv met this approach optimally. It chose the Syrian regime, seen as a time-tested protector of the Golan front, keeping it safe and stable for decades, since the 1974 Troop-Separation Accord. The Israelis did not hesitate to support or delay their support for its survival and perpetuity at several critical stages.
Whether this was done to alleviate the military and security burdens required to protect their border and its stability or to safeguard their deep interest in the continuity of oppression and corruption - being the tools of governance in Syria, with the containment of the society’s invigoration it entails, it is always accompanied by an inherent hostility to the emergence of a democratic regime in Syria that could trigger a strategic transformation of the status quo, and potentially develop the country and enhance its ability to genuinely demand the retrieval of the occupied territories.
An Israeli official explicitly referred to this issue, saying that what happened and is happening in Syria is priceless, as nothing could make Syrians forget the occupied Golan except for being mired to their ears in violence, disintegration and devastation!
From this angle, we can look into the explicit warnings raised by Israel leaders about the Syrian revolution’s victory and how it would threaten their security, in addition to the advice they gave to the White House to reduce the pressure being exerted on the regime, as well as Israel's push to limit arming the Syrian opposition with high-grade weaponry that would render it capable of altering the balance of power, and their rush to announce their total support for Russia’s military intervention and, before that, their views on the role of the Iranian regime and Hezbollah's decisive intervention in the Syrian conflict.
This reality does not negate, indeed it affirms, their wagering on the sectarian strife by killing off top Hezbollah cadres and whatever is left of its reputation as a resistance movement. It also does not negate their push to contain Iran’s influence in Syria, after Russia’s military weight increased, by launching airstrikes on the Revolutionary Guard’s most prominent site in rural Damascus, Daraa, Homs and Latakia, and preventing advanced weapons that could change the status quo from reaching Hezbollah.
There can be no smoke without a fire, and perhaps what has been said about secret negotiations between Israel and Syria or Moscow pressuring Damascus to negotiate with Te Aviv is true. Maybe it is true that the weak and besieged regime, today more ever before, needs to knock on the Israeli gate, seen as a quick and guaranteed way to open the door towards the West and to refurbish itself internationally. However, with its weakness and dependence, it is also true that it still needs nationalist demagoguery to promote itself to the people, its dubious alignment with Iran, and its heinous crimes against the Syrian people. This need explains the media campaigns against unilateral agreements and the reiteration of a holistic solution and the application of the land for peace principle as being requisites for normalization.
Everyone knows no agreement could give the Golan Heights back to Syria. Israel will not give the regime while it is weak that which Israel hadn’t been willing to grant when the regime was at its strongest. The potential for normalizing relations with Damascus to serve as a gateway to opening up to the Arab world has lost much capacity after the initiation of border demarcation talks with Lebanon. When we highlight the fact that nothing indicates a change in the implicit agreement between the Damascus and Tel Aviv’s rulers or their mutually beneficial arrangement, one would not be wrong to ask: What need is there, then, for negotiations between Syria and Israel?

Covid-19 Hits the Old Hardest, But the Healthy Longest
Therese Raphael/Bloomberg/October 17/2020
Before he had Covid-19, Brendan Delaney, the 57-year-old chair of medical informatics and decision making at Imperial College, could cycle 150 miles in a day. Covid changed that, but not because he had a severe case of the disease.
Delaney never got seriously ill from the virus. Like many healthy people, he figured his symptoms, a mild fever and a cough, would pass soon enough. Instead, he experienced debilitating aftereffects, such as fatigue and breathlessness, which many are now calling long Covid. Seven months later, he is still not back to normal. He can’t imagine getting back on a bike and says that if he pushes himself too hard, he ends up in bed with a fever for a couple of days. He considers himself lucky that he’s able to work. Many other long Covid sufferers cannot.
As a second wave of infections grows, so it follows that the number of long Covid cases is bound to increase. Although this clearly has implications for public health and the economy, it has been almost nowhere in the broader policy debate.
That narrative has focused largely on minimizing deaths and hospitalizations. But most long Covid patients weren’t hospitalized and didn’t have pre-existing conditions. This should throw some cold water on the idea of dispensing with restrictions and allowing immunity to build up among the young while shielding the vulnerable — an approach that won more adherents as lockdown fatigue set in. Going in this direction would be far more costly than many perhaps realize.
“We need to control this virus not because of the risk that Granny may catch it and die, or your uncle may end up in ICU, but because fit, healthy people without any comorbid conditions who are young can end up having their lives wrecked,” Delaney said during a conversation over Zoom.
We know from experience with other viruses — from the 2003 SARS outbreak to Ebola, MERS and glandular fever (caused by the Epstein-Barr virus) — that effects can be long-lasting. It’s similar with today’s coronavirus. Studies, including a new major report from the National Institute for Health Research, suggest a significant number of Covid-19 patients will have symptoms that linger and can affect different organs and systems, even rising in one area and then another.
Conventional medicine, however, doesn’t have a good record on responding to conditions where the cause can’t easily be isolated, which is the case with long Covid. For years, sufferers of chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, endometriosis and other conditions often fought lonely battles for recognition and medical care. The most reported symptoms of long Covid sound like they could be any number of illnesses: extreme fatigue, breathlessness, heart palpitations, gastrointestinal problems, joint pain and problems with memory and focus. A cross-party UK parliamentary group identified 16 common symptoms, but the full list is much longer. In many cases, sufferers never had a Covid test (they weren’t widely available) and blood tests and scans don’t reveal any major abnormalities.
The good news is that there are too many cases like Delaney’s to ignore, and so recognition and media attention is coming faster than it has in other cases. The UK is ahead in some ways. Health Secretary Matt Hancock, a slim 42-year-old who had Covid-19 back in March and recovered quickly, has spoken publicly about the long-term effects. The National Health Service created a support website and put aside 10 million pounds ($13 million) to set up a network of long Covid clinics in England. An official definition, expected this month from Britain’s standards-setting National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, will give a better indication on how seriously the condition is being taken.
Even so, existing UK measures will be small beer if the virus continues to spread and long Covid cases mount. Nailing down exact numbers isn’t easy, but 1 in 10 users of the Covid Symptom Study app, used by more than 4.3 million UK participants, reported symptoms persisting for more than three weeks after infection. Some 60,000 reported symptoms that lasted more than three months. Delaney says this may be an underestimation since symptom trackers are used largely during the acute stage of the virus.
This is already posing problems for health professionals. Shortages of personal protective equipment and inadequate guidance early in the pandemic put medical staff at greater risk of contracting the virus. When the British Medical Association asked 5,650 doctors about their experience, almost 30% of those who’d had Covid were left with physical fatigue and shortness of breath; 18% described some kind of cognitive impairment. About a fifth had taken sick leave to deal with the symptoms. Delaney says he knows of two doctors with long Covid symptoms who lost their jobs because they were unable to return to full-time work. (In France, a recent decree limits disability claims by health-care workers to those who required oxygen to treat the virus.)
Increasing infection rates have ushered in fierce debates over the relative costs, benefits and ethical considerations of various lockdown measures. Long Covid may alter that calculus further, depending on the impact on household income and productivity. A 2004 US study using cost-of-illness analysis to estimate the impact of chronic fatigue syndrome (which has similar symptoms to long Covid) concluded that it probably led to a 37% decline in annual household productivity and a 54% reduction in labor force productivity among sufferers, with a total annual lost value of $9.1 billion a year.
How the long Covid costs stack up will depend on various things including prevalence, duration of symptoms and the degree of incapacity. It does seem that symptoms slowly get better over time, though it’s too early for a tally of long-term effects such as fibrosis of the lungs or compromised immune systems. Although more research is needed, the existing picture warns against a view that divides the population into neat high- and low-risk categories. “Whether or not you think you are at risk of ICU admissions, anyone can be at risk of long Covid,” Delaney says.
That’s a sobering thought, but it may at least encourage a little more solidarity as we figure out how best to control a second pandemic wave.