English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For July 09/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
#elias_bejjani_news

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Bible Quotations For today
Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead
Letter of James 02/14-23/:”What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith without works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith without works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’, and he was called the friend of God.

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 08-09/2021
Health Ministry: 400 new Corona cases, 2 deaths
Al-Rahi Hails KSA, Urges New Govt., Timely Elections
Bukhari: Some Trying to Tamper with Lebanon's Close Ties with Its Arab Depth
Saudi Prince Discusses Lebanese File with U.S. Officials
Visit by Beirut-based Western ambassadors slated to be an irritant for Saudi Arabia
Reports: Hariri to Quit as Discussions over Successor Begin
Small Plane Crashes in Ghosta, Leaving Three Casualties
Protesters Storm Drug Warehouse in Tripoli
Gas Stations Say Will be Forced to Close if Not Protected
Israel needs to help Lebanon - editoria
Lebanese media react to an unprecedented crisis - analysis/Lauren Morganbesser/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Central Bank informs Health Minister financial transfers initiated in favor of pharmaceutical companies
Loyalty to the Resistance bloc holds periodic meeting, pushes for swift cabinet formation
Three victims in civilian training plane crash over Ghosta
USJ shares multidimensional study assessing Beirut Port explosion’s impact
Berri broaches general situation with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon
Families of port explosion victims gather outside Beirut Justice Palace in support of Judge Al-Bitar
Qatari plane carrying 70 tons in food donation to LAF lands at Beirut Airport
The Beirut Port Terrorist Attack, the Complicit Government and the Omertà Culture/
Charles Elias Chartouni/July 08/2021

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 08-09/2021
Pope ran brief fever but tests negative: Vatican
Morocco, Israel hold wide-ranging talks in Rabat
EU Parliament seeks sanctions on Iran officials for human rights abuse/Benjamin Weinthal/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Israel should push for US engagement on Iran if JCPOA rejoined - Jeffrey/Omri Nahmias/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Rockets Fired at U.S. Embassy in Iraq after Attacks on Bases
Dubai Authorities Probe Port Explosion that Shook the City
Israel Razes Home of Palestinian-American Shooting Suspect
Taliban Surround Afghan City as Commandos Launch Counterattack
Johnson confirms most British troops have left Afghanistan
Russia lifts ban on flights to Egypt boosting Cairo’s tourism hopes

Titles For The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 08-09/2021
Millions of Syrian civilians at grave risk if U.S., Russia fail to strike deal on U.N. aid deliveries/Kareem Fahim and Karen DeYoung/The Washington Post/July 08/2021
Iran has declared war on the US in Iraq through its proxies - analysis/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
The US Must Punish Iran’s Regime For Its Lethal Homophobia/Benjamin Weinthal/Iran International/July 08/2021
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons/Andrea Stricker/International Organizations Monograph/July 08/2021
Iran has declared war on the US in Iraq through its proxies - analysis/Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Canadian Leadership on the Torching of Dozens of Churches: ‘Burn It All Down!/Raymond Ibrahim/July 09/20

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on July 08-09/2021
Health Ministry: 400 new Corona cases, 2 deaths
NNA/July 08/2021
In its daily report, the Ministry of Public Health announced on Thursday the registration of 400 new Coronavirus infections, thus raising the cumulative number of confirmed cases to-date to 546,766. It added that two deaths were also recorded during the past 24 hours.

Al-Rahi Hails KSA, Urges New Govt., Timely Elections
Naharnet/July 08/2021
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi on Thursday hailed the historic ties with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, during a ceremony in Bkirki. “Saudi Arabia has not attacked Lebanon’s sovereignty and it has not violated its independence. It has breached its border and it has not entangled it in wars. It has not paralyzed its democracy and it has not ignored its state,” al-Rahi said at a ceremony celebrating the publication of the book “The Maronite Patriarchate’s Relation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”.
“Saudi Arabia has supported Lebanon at the Arab and international forums, offered it financial assistance and invested in the projects of its economic and real estate rise. It has sponsored reconciliations and solutions and it has welcomed the Lebanese and offered them residency and job opportunities,” the patriarch added. Commenting on the domestic situations, al-Rahi hoped the government will be formed soon and that the parliamentary and presidential elections will be held on time so that the Lebanese can become on the “path to salvation.”

Bukhari: Some Trying to Tamper with Lebanon's Close Ties with Its Arab Depth
Naharnet/July 08/2021
Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid Bukhari on Thursday called on the political parties to “put Lebanon’s interest first” as he criticized parties whom he said are trying to ruin Lebanon’s relations with the Arab countries. “We recommend preserving diversity and the coexistence whose foundations were established by the Taef Accord, which is entrusted with national unity and civil peace,” Bukhari said. He was speaking at a Bkirki ceremony celebrating the publication of the book “The Maronite Patriarchate’s Relation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”, which has been authored by the abbot Antoine Daou al-Antouni. “We urge the political parties to put the higher Lebanese interest first in order to confront the challenges that Lebanon is going through, including the attempt by some parties to tamper with the close relation between Lebanon and its Arab depth by trying to involve it other axes that contradict with the preamble to the Lebanese constitution,” Bukhari added. “There is no legitimacy for the rhetoric of sedition, partitioning and fragmentation and there is no legitimacy for a rhetoric that overlooks Lebanon’s Arab identity,” the ambassador went on to say.

Saudi Prince Discusses Lebanese File with U.S. Officials
Agence France Presse/July 08/2021
Saudi Arabia's deputy defense minister has discussed the Lebanese file with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and State Department officials during a low-key visit to Washington that tackled several regional issues. The State Department said the prince, Khalid bin Salman, met senior State Department officials Victoria Nuland and Derek Chollet and that Blinken participated in only part of the meeting. The group discussed, among other issues, "the need for economic reform and humanitarian relief for the Lebanese people," a State Department statement said.

Visit by Beirut-based Western ambassadors slated to be an irritant for Saudi Arabia
The Arab News/July 08/2021
In an unusual diplomatic move, two ambassadors of two major powers, the US and France, are visiting a third country outside their place of accreditation to urge it to provide aid to Lebanon.
BEIRUT – A statement issued by the embassies of France and the United States said that the two countries’ ambassadors in Beirut, Anne Grillo and Dorothy Shea, will travel to Saudi Arabia for meetings on Lebanon Thursday with Saudi officials.
Although the French embassy said prior arrangements were made at the diplomatic level and asserted that Saudi Arabia has not objected to receiving the two ambassadors, the visit is likely to provoke Riyadh’s ire.
The meeting to be held Thursday between the two ambassadors and Saudi officials is expected to discuss aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Internal Security Forces.
By dispatching two envoys outside their geographic mandate, instead of their chief diplomats, to discuss the Lebanese issue, Washington and Paris are signalling that they are still boycotting the Saudi leadership.
Washington believes that the experience of its ambassador in Tripoli, Richard Norland, as a roving envoy who visited the countries concerned with the Libyan crisis justifies using the same formula with Lebanon.
But if this is the case, Washington and Paris would each be showing extreme diplomatic naiveté both in their understanding of the Saudi-Lebanese relationship and Riyadh’s sensitivity to the implicit boycott by Paris and Washington.
Riyadh may not overtly express its discontent, but is most certainly unlikely to allow other countries to continue dealing with it at the level of envoys and ambassadors.
On the sidelines of the G20 summit held in Italy at the end of last month, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held a tripartite meeting on Lebanon with French Foreign Ministers Jean-Yves Le Drian and Saudi Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud.
It is likely that the tripartite meeting paved the way for the two ambassadors’ visit to Riyadh.
The visit of the two envoys coincides with the trip of Saudi Deputy Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman to Washington and his meetings with senior American officials. The talks would provide an opportunity to discuss the Lebanese issue if there is interest in Riyadh or Washington to discuss it at this stage.
A statement by the French embassy in Beirut indicated that Grillo would emphasise during the expected meetings, “the urgency for Lebanese officials to form an effective and credible government that works to achieve the necessary reforms in the interest of Lebanon.”The two ambassadors will also express their country’s desire to “work with their regional and international partners to put pressure on those responsible for the blockage.”Saudi Arabia is not particularly enthused by the prospect of coming to the aid of Lebanon as it believes Lebanese officials have handed over control of their country to Iran-backed Hezbollah. Riyadh has spared no effort in years past to support Lebanon and urge the political actors there to prevent its dependence on any foreign party.
But the Lebanese continued to view the kingdom as an financier whose sole task is to pump money into the country and revive the economy and tourist industry without political strings attached, a course of action that Riyadh no longer accepts.
An Arab diplomatic source in Beirut said that “Saudi Arabia has not yet shown an interest in getting involved in the details” of needed aid or the government formation process. It is clear that Washington and Paris are pressing Lebanon’s traditional donor countries to provide urgent aid to the Lebanese army and security forces.
The official Qatari news agency QNA said that Qatar will provide the Lebanese army with about seventy tons of foodstuffs per month. The initiative was announced on the sidelines of a visit by Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani to Beirut, Tuesday. Lebanese Army Commander General Joseph Aoun appealed to world powers, during a meeting in France last month, to help the troops whose salaries have plummeted with the collapse of the Lebanese pound and the spike of inflation.
On the eve of her Saudi visit, French ambassador to Lebanon, Wednesday, sharply criticised caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab for asserting that his country is “under siege”.Grillo said that mismanagement and the lethargy of the Lebanese leadership are the reason for the economic meltdown and that the collapse was caused by the “political class” itself.
“But what is frightening, Mr Prime Minister, is that today’s brutal collapse … is the deliberate result of mismanagement and inaction for years,” she said. “It is not the result of an external siege. It is the result of your own responsibilities, all of you, in the political class, for years. This is reality” she added. Despite international pressures led mainly by France, Lebanese officials are mired in sharp political disputes that have prevented the formation of a government to succeed Diab’s administration, which had resigned days after the Beirut port explosion. Meanwhile, the international community requires the formation of a government that will implement urgent reforms, in return for providing the necessary financial support to get the country out of the downward spiral of economic collapse.

Reports: Hariri to Quit as Discussions over Successor Begin
Naharnet/July 08/2021
Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has decided to step down and he is seeking an appropriate exit, media reports said on Thursday. “There is lack of a real political will to from a government and there is an intention not to form the government,” Lebanese journalist Johnny Mounayar said in an interview with al-Jadeed TV. “PM-designate Hariri has decided to quit… and the decision is not to form a government with or without Saad Hariri,” Mounayar added. “From now until the date of the parliamentary elections, we will witness the most dangerous months of the Lebanese crisis,” the journalist went on to say, warning that the country will witness further deterioration. Center House sources meanwhile told MTV that “the issue of accepting an alternative PM-designate is being discussed by (Speaker Nabih) Berri, Hariri and the ex-PMs.”
“We have not heard of the report about (Free Patriotic Movement head Jebran) Bassil’s sadness over Hariri’s resignation and the presidential camp has done everything to prevent the government’s formation,” the sources added.

Small Plane Crashes in Ghosta, Leaving Three Casualties
Agence France Presse/July 08/2021
A small plane crashed Thursday afternoon in the Keserwan town of Ghosta, leaving three casualties, in a rare such accident in the Mediterranean country. Annahar newspaper said the jet fell in Ghosta’s Ain Waraqa area. Speaking to the daily, the town’s mayor identified the casualties as two young men and a young woman, adding that the plane that crashed was a civilian Cessna. “The plane malfunctioned and lightly collided with the rooftop of a house before crashing into the forest,” the mayor added. LBCI television meanwhile said that the plane belonged to the Open Sky Aviation company and that it fell after colliding with a mountain in Ghosta, resulting in the death of the three people who were on board. Other media reports described the jet as a training aircraft. A military source said those killed were the pilot and a man and woman with the same family name. Small planes in Lebanon are generally used for pilot training, or to take people on joyrides in exchange for a substantial fee.

Protesters Storm Drug Warehouse in Tripoli
Naharnet/July 08/2021
A number of protesters stormed a drug warehouse in Tripoli on Wednesday and found large quantities of medicines that are absent from pharmacies’ shelves. The aforementioned medicines included antibiotics, fever reducers, and blood pressure and cough medications. The protesters called on the minister of health and security and inspection agencies to intervene immediately and distribute the medicines to pharmacies, because “people are suffering and cannot find medication."

Gas Stations Say Will be Forced to Close if Not Protected
Naharnet/July 08/2021
The assembly of gas station owners demonstrated on Wednesday during which they "the difficulties they are facing” warning that they might be “forced to sell our stocks and close.”According to Rashad Msharrafiyeh, who spoke on behalf of the assembly, in a press conference, “the importing companies are unable to secure sufficient quantities,” and “have imposed on the stations to pay their bills in dollars.”"Citizens also have a hand in the crisis, as some of them are standing in queues to later sell the gasoline on the black market,” Msharrafiyeh said. He added that “authorities are absent except when it comes to inspections and raids,” claiming that these procedures are “harmful to the stations.”He called on authorities to take action to secure fair and daily distribution, and protect station owners from the problems they are facing daily, such as fistfights and shootings.

Israel needs to help Lebanon - editoria
Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Hezbollah is the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world, and has a stranglehold on part of Lebanon. However, every country has extremists and local problems. Israel’s neighbor is in trouble, and when a neighbor needs help – even if it’s an enemy state – it is incumbent to provide assistance.
In this case the neighbor is Lebanon, a state with which Israel shares many common attributes. Both Israel and Lebanon have diverse populations and complex histories. We are both part of the long trajectory of the Middle East and have civilizations that date back millennia. However, recent political divisions and the hijacking of Lebanon’s politics by Hezbollah have made relations difficult. Now amid an unprecedented crisis, Lebanon deserves aid, and there is no better country well-placed to give that aid than Israel. Defense Minister Benny Gantz has offered to assist Lebanon as it continues to suffer from a worsening economic crisis. “As an Israeli, as a Jew and as a human being, my heart aches seeing the images of people going hungry on the streets of Lebanon,” he wrote Sunday on Twitter. “Israel has offered assistance to Lebanon in the past, and even today we are ready to act and to encourage other countries to extend a helping hand to Lebanon so that it will once again flourish and emerge from its state of crisis.”
The next day, Gantz sent a formal proposal to UNIFIL to provide aid to Lebanon. Israel’s neighbor is in trouble, and when a neighbor needs help – even if it’s an enemy state – it is incumbent to provide assistance. In this case the neighbor is Lebanon, a state with which Israel shares many common attributes. Both Israel and Lebanon have diverse populations and complex histories. We are both part of the long trajectory of the Middle East and have civilizations that date back millennia. However, recent political divisions and the hijacking of Lebanon’s politics by Hezbollah have made relations difficult. Now amid an unprecedented crisis, Lebanon deserves aid, and there is no better country well-placed to give that aid than Israel. Defense Minister Benny Gantz has offered to assist Lebanon as it continues to suffer from a worsening economic crisis. “As an Israeli, as a Jew and as a human being, my heart aches seeing the images of people going hungry on the streets of Lebanon,” he wrote Sunday on Twitter. “Israel has offered assistance to Lebanon in the past, and even today we are ready to act and to encourage other countries to extend a helping hand to Lebanon so that it will once again flourish and emerge from its state of crisis.”The next day, Gantz sent a formal proposal to UNIFIL to provide aid to Lebanon.

Lebanese media react to an unprecedented crisis - analysis
Lauren Morganbesser/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Sources not affiliated with Hezbollah highlighted different components of the crisis, while some observers criticize focusing solely on the economic dimensions in the country. As Lebanon nears the brink of collapse both politically and economically, news outlets within the country vary widely in coverage of the issue.
According to Prime Minister Hassan Diab, Lebanon is days away from a “social explosion.”Defense Minister Benny Gantz tweeted on Tuesday that Israel sent an offer of aid to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon to help with the “dire economic situation,” especially given “Hezbollah’s attempts to deepen Iranian investments in the country.” The home page of Al-Akhbar’s website, a news site that has been criticized for its support of Hezbollah, featured comments from Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai. Rai focused his blame on Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri and President Michel Aoun, calling on them to form a government, “because Lebanon is a victim of this delay,” and adding that “everyone is violating the constitution.”
Another pro-Hezbollah outlet, Al Mayadeen, had no mention of the situation in the country on its home page, focusing instead on missiles in Iraq and the strength of new weapons of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
At the “Palestine is Victorious” conference on Monday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah blamed the US for the worsening economic crisis, saying that “the Americans want to besiege, punish and prevent any aid that comes to Lebanon.”
On the other hand, sources not affiliated with Hezbollah highlighted different components of the crisis. The home page of The Daily Star, the leading English-language paper in Lebanon, focused on the economic dimensions, featuring articles on the weakness of the currency and incoming Qatari food aid for the Lebanese army.
However, some observers criticize focusing solely on the economic dimensions in the country.Hanin Ghaddar, the Friedmann fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tweeted on Tuesday: “It’s fascinating that some still look at #Lebanon as an economic crisis. It’s fascinating that some still refuse to look at the elephant in the room. Lebanon is under an Iranian occupation – nontraditional, and via proxy – but an occupation indeed.” A leading Arabic-language daily paper not affiliated with Hezbollah, An-Nahar, spotlighted articles on the international response to the crisis, including an explanation of Saudi Arabia’s “refusal to help Lebanon” and a feature on US President Joe Biden’s reaction. Another Arabic-language online paper, Al-Mustaqbal, highlighted the fuel crisis in the country, including an interview with gas station owners who described “queues of humiliation” in order to get gas and the crippling effects of the currency depletion. Luna Safwan, an independent journalist based in Lebanon, has been tweeting about violent incidents at gas stations amid fuel shortages, including burning cars and shootings around the country. Other reports in the country heavily criticize the political situation. Zeina Khodr, a senior correspondent at Al Jazeera television and media company, tweeted photos on Tuesday of billboards of the head of General Security, Abbas Ibrahim, being put up along the highway, even though he is a main suspect in the Beirut Port blast investigation that killed 207 people. The billboards featured a photo of Ibrahim with the words “With you, the noblest of men.”According to Khodr, the “battle for justice is hard when those in power battle against accountability.”

Central Bank informs Health Minister financial transfers initiated in favor of pharmaceutical companies
NNA/July 08/2021
Caretaker Minister of Public Health, Dr. Hamad Hassan, on Thursday chaired a meeting by the ministerial committee tasked to follow-up on the medicine dossier.
Discussions reportedly touched on the details of the agreement previously clinched with the Central Bank and its Governor, Riad Salameh, who had informed Minister Hassan about the Central Bank’s initiation of financial transfers in favor of pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, Minister Hassan pushed for intensive inspection of pharmaceutical institutions to prevent medicine monopoly, especially since a number of these institutions await full lifting of subsidies, and refrain from selling medicine, in an attempt to benefit from higher prices. Hassan finally underlined the importance of rationalizing the sale of medicines in pharmacies and implementing the previously issued memoranda to provide eligible citizen with their share of medicines.

Loyalty to the Resistance bloc holds periodic meeting, pushes for swift cabinet formation
NNA/July 08/2021
The “Loyalty to the Resistance" Parliamentary bloc on Thursday held its periodic meeting headed by MP Mohammad Raad. A statement issued in the wake of the meeting said, “All the developments, disappointments, and transformations that we are witnessing on the Lebanese arena necessitate accelerating the formation of a government in order to prevent a complete and comprehensive collapse of the state’s structure, and what remains of its highly structured institutions.”“We see that the horrific deterioration of the state's conditions, the structure of its institutions, and its role, has failed to stir up the available alternatives among those concerned so far; dealing with government blunders has become a very normal matter that the Lebanese have become accustomed to, and they have been adapting to the disruption caused by it." The statement added: "The Loyalty to the Resistance bloc that shares the citizens' concerns about the failure of efforts to form a government, the people’s aspirations towards finding solutions to problems that have been lingering over the past period at the economic, monetary, and social levels, not to mention the exorbitant price hike of food and basic foodstuffs, or the difficulty of obtaining medicine, gasoline, and diesel.” Consequently, the bloc pushed for more efforts to form a new cabinet, deeming it an opportunity to salvage the nation from the current dire situation. It also called for the adoption of the required precautionary measures to curb the spread of the rampantly spreading Covid-19 variant “Delta”.

Three victims in civilian training plane crash over Ghosta
NNA/July 08/2021
A civilian training plane crashed over Ghosta woodlands, which led to the death of the captain and two passengers on board, due to poor visibility, NNA Correspondent reported on Thursday.The army imposed a security cordon at the scene.
The Lebanese Red Cross transported the victims of the accident to the hospital.

USJ shares multidimensional study assessing Beirut Port explosion’s impact
NNA/July 08/2021
Saint Joseph University in Beirut (USJ) on Thursday shared a Beirut Port explosion impact assessment report; it's a multidimensional study of the socio-economic impacts of Beirut Port blast which rocked the city on August 4, 2020, coordinated by: Nizar Hariri and Raymond Bou Nader.
The report was presented during a conference organized by the Institut Français du Proche Orient, on Monday July 5, 2021 at 4 p.m. via zoom, in partnership with the USJ’s Observatory of Socio-Economic Reality.
The full report could be found at the following link: https://www.usj.edu.lb/intranet/actu/pdf/10771_1618.pdf

Berri broaches general situation with UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon
NNA/July 08/2021
House Speaker, Nabih Berri, on Thursday welcomed at the Second Presidency in Ein El-Tineh, the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Ms. Joanna Wronecka, with whom he discussed the general situation and the latest developments.

Families of port explosion victims gather outside Beirut Justice Palace in support of Judge Al-Bitar
NNA/July 08/2021
A number of families of the victims of the Beirut port explosion and activists staged a sit-in outside the Palace of Justice in Beirut, in support of judicial investigator, Judge Tarek Al-Bitar, and the recent measures he took.
Protesters called for "lifting immunities off deputies and security chiefs."

Qatari plane carrying 70 tons in food donation to LAF lands at Beirut Airport
NNA/July 08/2021
The Qatari embassy in Beirut announced in a statement, "within the framework of the State of Qatar's continued support for Lebanon and its brotherly people to get out of the current crisis, and its announcement of support for the Lebanese Army with 70 tons of food per month for a full year, an aircraft belonging to the Qatari Emiri Air Force landed this Thursday 8/7/2021 at Rafic Hariri International Airport, loaded with 70 tons of food as a donation to the Lebanese Army. The plane was received by a diplomatic delegation from the Qatari embassy and a military delegation from the Lebanese Army Command."

The Beirut Port Terrorist Attack, the Complicit Government and the Omertà Culture
Charles Elias Chartouni/July 08/2021
شارل الياس شرتوني: الهجوم الإرهابي على مرفأ بيروت، الحكومة المتواطئة وثقافة السكوت المافياوية
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/100458/charles-elias-chartouni-the-beirut-port-terrorist-attack-the-complicit-government-and-the-omerta-culture-%d8%b4%d8%a7%d8%b1%d9%84-%d8%a7%d9%84%d9%8a%d8%a7%d8%b3-%d8%b4%d8%b1%d8%aa%d9%88%d9%86%d9%8a/
The presumed arrest mandates ordered by Judge Tarek Bitar, the open defiance of the convicts (Abbas Ibrahim, Ali Hassan Khalil, Ghazi Zeaiter… ) and the support campaign orchestrated by Shiite fascists, follow a well patterned script since August 4th 2020: the trail of tampering with the crime scene, the realtors targeting the devastated landscapes and property owners, the flaunted official moral apathy towards the victims, the string of assassinations, the ostensible disengagement from reconstruction and reparation undertakings, the utter rejection of international investigation and the shadowy legal modus operandi are quite indicative of the criminal complicities, and the deliberate ambiguities are conveying clear messages pointing towards a fully assumed subversive strategy. The Shiite fascists have sent straightforward messages, the criminal complicity of subservient State institutions, and the Omertà political culture which have relayed, define altogether the coordinates of a mounted judicial process following a predetermined scenario.
The recalcitrance of the whole political class to take responsibility for the legal, administrative and moral omissions, their faked legal immunities, moral and legal extraterritorial statuses and due complicities, put them beyond the realm of the law, and undermine the very foundation of the constitutional State. The discretionary and instrumental relationship to State institutions are the hallmarks of Lebanese statehood under the Taef regime, the path to its progressive unraveling throughout the three decades, and barely depart from the initial scheme which has led to its implosion under the concurring strategies of internal and external power politics. The Port Terrorist attack Scenario cannot be set apart from the overall political scheme which aims at subverting the geopolitical, economic and ecological dynamics that have been operating since the beginning of the nineties. It’s a methodological flaw to separate the terrorist attack from its political framing and narrow the investigation scope to the pitfalls of a corrupt and politically manipulated administration.
The secretive nature of the ongoing investigations are far from being due to professional considerations, they were intentionally contrived to blur the road but mostly set an environment of fear and uncertainty, pursue the strategy of systemic destruction and institutional unraveling, and consolidate the state of moral helplessness. The vindication of the basic Human Rights and moral claims of the voiceless victims and defrauded areas is not only a legal and moral duty, but a lucid and firm civic and political stand against an unequivocal strategy which aims at destroying the political and moral leverage of the Christian community, and put the politics of subversion on an irreversible course.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 08-09/2021
Pope ran brief fever but tests negative: Vatican
AFP/July 08/2021
Pope Francis temporarily ran a fever while in hospital after his operation, but a chest and abdomen scan and other tests revealed no particular abnormalities, the Vatican said Thursday. The 84-year-old pontiff has been in Rome's Gemelli hospital since Sunday, when he underwent planned surgery for an inflammation of the colon. "His Holiness Pope Francis spent a quiet day (on Wednesday) eating and moving unassisted," Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in his daily update. In the afternoon, the pope sent his "affectionate greetings" to young patients in the nearby paediatric oncology and children's neurosurgery wards. "In the evening he temporarily ran a temperature. This morning he underwent routine and microbiological examinations, and a chest and abdomen scan, which proved negative," Bruni said. "The Holy Father is continuing with his planned treatment and (is) eating by mouth." Bruni said on Monday that the pope was expected to stay in hospital for around seven days as long as there were no complications. He later said tests had confirmed the pope was suffering from "a severe diverticular stenosis with signs of sclerosing diverticulitis".Diverticula are small bulges or pockets that develop in the lining of the intestine. Diverticulitis occurs when they become inflamed or infected. Sclerosis is normally defined as a hardening of tissue. Francis is in the same suite on the 10th floor of the Gemelli hospital used by Pope John Paul II. The late pope underwent surgery there a number of times, including after an attempt on his life in 1981, and for a tumour in the colon in 1992.-

Morocco, Israel hold wide-ranging talks in Rabat
The Arab News/July 08/2021
Morocco’s foreign ministry director general Fouad Yazourh hosted his Israeli counterpart Alon Ushpiz, Wednesday.
RABAT - In the latest step in the normalisation of ties, Moroccan and Israeli officials have discussed regular air links between two countries, the first of which could be up and flying before the end of July. Two Israeli airlines, El Al and Israir might be running direct flights to Morocco as early as July 25 following talks in Rabat between Israeli and Moroccan government officials. The air link, which could include flights by Royal Air Maroc, was among a broad range of issues discussed on Wednesday when foreign ministry director general Fouad Yazourh hosted his Israeli counterpart Alon Ushpiz in Rabat.An Israeli foreign minister spokesman told the Jerusalem Post: “The flights operated by Israeli and Moroccan airlines will significantly promote tourism and business traffic between the countries.”The two delegations reviewed their bilateral relations and ways to foster cooperation in political, economic and cultural fields, in line with the Morocco-US-Israel trilateral agreement signed in December 2020, Said Morocco’s official news agency MAP. The wide-ranging talks also covered terrorism, global warming and sustainable development, it added. Ushpiz and his delegation had earlier had talks with Moroccan businessmen and government institutions. Morocco is one of four Arab countries, along with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, to normalise ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered by former US president Donald Trump. Rabat insists however that normalisation of ties with Israel should go hand in hand with its support for Palestinian national rights. The pace of normalisation has been more advanced with the UAE and Bahrain, less so with Morocco and Sudan.

EU Parliament seeks sanctions on Iran officials for human rights abuse
Benjamin Weinthal/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Lawmaker wants Iranian regime president Raisi investigated for crimes against humanity
The European Parliament passed a resolution dated Wednesday, urging that sanctions be imposed on Iranian regime officials for the imprisonment and executions of EU nationals. According to the resolution’s language, the EU Parliament called on the European Council, “to consider further targeted sanctions, including freezing the assets of the Iranian regime officials and entities involved in the arbitrary detention and sentencing to death of EU nationals, including, in the event of Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali’s continued detention, either using the current EU human rights sanctions regime against Iran or the EU’s global human rights sanctions regime (EU Magnitsky Act).” Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers on Thursday wrote on Twitter: “Delighted that EU Parliament supported @ecrgroup demand for sanctions against Iranian regime officials. We will also push for President Raisi to be investigated for crimes against humanity, including murder, forced disappearance and torture.” The ECR group is the abbreviation for the European Conservatives and Reformists in the Parliament. The Post reported over the last week that both the Austrian and Swiss presidents congratulated Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi, sparking outrage among Iranian human rights experts and dissidents. European leaders have showed scarce appetite to sanction Iran's regime for its human rights and nuclear program violations. The major European powers, France, Germany and Britain, along with the US, are negotiating with Iran in Vienna about Tehran's return to the atomic accord. The nuclear deal would restrict the Iranian regime's ability to build nuclear weapons for 10 years in exchange for sanctions relief. The European powers would gain access to Iran's markets for valuable trade deals with as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the formal name for the Iran nuclear deal. The resolution noted that the "Swedish-Iranian national Dr Ahmadreza Djalali, who specializes in emergency medicine and is a scholar at Belgium’s Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Italy’s Università del Piemonte Orientale, was arrested on April 24, 2016 by the Iranian security forces; whereas he was sentenced to death on spurious espionage charges in October 2017 following a grossly unfair trial based on a confession extracted under torture.” The resolution demanded Djalali's immediate release. The Post reported on the Iranian regime’s kidnapping of Jamshid Sharmahd, a 66-year-old German political dissident and legal California resident. Human Rights Watch urged the German government in July to secure Sharmahd’s release. The EU resolution noted that “Iran has been actively imprisoning foreign nationals in order to blackmail foreign governments” and “at least a dozen EU nationals are being arbitrarily detained in Iran.”
According to the resolution, “Iran is also arbitrarily detaining its own citizens in dire conditions” and courts often deny defendants the right to a fair trial and restrict legal counselling and visits from consular authorities and UN and humanitarian organizations.”
The European parliament's resolution against the Iranian regime's human rights violations is non-binding. The Islamic Republic of Iran has “the world’s highest number of executions per inhabitant,” wrote the lawmakers in the resolution. The EU parliament demanded that Iran implement "an immediate moratorium on the use of the death penalty as a step towards abolition." The resolution also called on Iran to "release political prisoners, including human rights defenders, as they have been arbitrarily detained solely for exercising their fundamental rights to the freedoms of expression, belief, association, publication, peaceful assembly and media freedom."Moreover, the resolution urged Iran "to properly investigate the officials responsible for serious human rights violations, including the use of excessive and lethal force on protesters; denounces the systematic use of prolonged solitary confinement in violation of Iran’s international obligations."

Israel should push for US engagement on Iran if JCPOA rejoined - Jeffrey
Omri Nahmias/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
James Jeffrey believes there is a strong commitment from US President Joe Biden's administration to rejoin the 2015 Iran deal.
WASHINGTON – Israel should push for serious American engagement against Iran in the region should the US return to the JCPOA, says Ambassador James Jeffrey, a former envoy to Iraq. “That’s not what Israel wants; it’s what its Abraham Accords partners want. You have a consensus [in the Middle East] that America needs to do more.”Jeffrey is the Chair of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center. He previously served as the Special Representative for Syria Engagement and the Special Envoy to the Global Coalition To Defeat ISIS during the Trump administration. Before that, he was Deputy National Security Advisor under the Bush administration and Ambassador to Iraq and to Turkey during the Obama administration.
Ambassador Jeffrey told The Jerusalem Post that he believes there is a strong commitment from the Biden administration to rejoin the JCPOA. The first reason, he said, is the fact that the 2015 nuclear agreement was signed during the presidency of Barack Obama. “That was his primary accomplishment, and this administration is, of course, made up of very close associates with President Obama.” The second reason, he said, is the desire to reverse the Trump era policies.
“But the third reason is a very specific one that I can sympathize with, having been deputy national security adviser in the Bush administration in the late years when we had to deal with the Iran problem,” said Jeffrey. The US government is interested “not to have a looming crisis, or war with Iran, constantly dominating our entire foreign policy,” he said. “That was true back in 2007-2008, it’s even more true now when we have far bigger threats than we had in 2007: climate change Covid, China, Russia. The mechanisms that you do, the coordination, particularly with the Israeli government, which, of course, gets very, very nervous and is capable of taking its own action; military requirements you have to have in place as [Iran] get close to a nuclear capability; the back and forth, is extremely fatiguing. It draws attention away from everything else, and there is a case that can be made that if you can push this back for the next 5 to 10 years that you’ve accomplished something, so I think those are the three reasons why this administration wants it.”He went on to say that the Iranians “want the agreement desperately because sanctions are crippling their economy.”AFTER leaving the White House last week, the outgoing Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin, told reporters that he was under the impression that the return to the JCPOA is not a done deal. According to Jeffrey, the administration is saying that “for public consumption.”
“In the last few weeks, the administration has been downplaying the JCPOA and talking about obstacles, ‘Maybe we won’t get it.’ That is, first of all, to put pressure on the Iranians who are demanding a great deal,” he said. “Secondly, it is also to justify far-reaching concessions that the administration has been considering. I think the administration is playing a double game a little bit here, because I do think that they are moving forward in the negotiations.”
“I think they expect that they will get a deal,” he continued. “But I think they realize they’ll have to make concessions and they’ll try to act as if the deal almost collapsed and it’s really important to get the deal. And these [concessions] aren’t all that big.
Here’s why they are big, and here’s what Israel should do: First of all, it would be good for the new prime minister to be invited to Washington. This is a very, very important relationship. Israel should push for serious American engagement against Iran in the region should the US return to the JCPOA. That’s not what Israel wants; it’s what its Abraham Accords partners want.”“You have a consensus [in the Middle East] that America needs to do more. The record has been mixed,” he said. “The Yemen approach of this administration, which is one of the areas where you need to contest Iran, was very weak. We just gave away all of our pressure points and expected the Houthis and Iran to compromise. Instead, they’re continuing their attacks on this major base in Yemen.” Do you see a scenario in which Biden walks away from the deal? “If he does, then Iran will very quickly get to a point where they will be weeks or less from having enough fissile material to build a nuclear device. And that will create a constant running military and diplomatic crisis for the Biden administration on an issue that they think is of second order. It’s not that it isn’t important, it is. But compared to Russia, China, Covid and climate, it’s less important and they do not want to be diverted by that. So therefore, they have tremendous incentive to get a deal.”
What is your understanding about the administration’s promise to have a ‘longer and stronger’ agreement?
“The administration has never, ever given any explanation of why it thinks Iran, which has made clear it does not want to negotiate [a different deal] would agree to do so.” “It’s a bit irritating because it’s immature and these guys are very experienced. They’re basically saying, ‘sure, there are flaws in the agreement, and we all know the flaws in the 2015 agreement. But it’s OK, we’ll just negotiate a new agreement that will fix all of those problems.’ And the difficulty with this is that the only way that even conceptually or theoretically that could be possible is to push the administration and the Europeans, who tend to think this way anyway, towards the fatal assumption that Iran is a normal state that really wants to be friends with the rest of the world. That is a fatal problem. That’s the worst thing about the JCPOA.”“You can do a deal with them on a technical issue, in this case, the nuclear one. But you cannot forget that you’re dealing with, again, to quote Kissinger, ‘a cause and not a state,’ a cause whose goal is to establish hegemony over the Middle East.”
Speaking about the situation in Lebanon, Ambassador Jeffrey said that “it’s a tragedy, but it’s also a lesson. And the key address for that is Baghdad.” “[The lesson is that] if you do not push back against the armed and political wings of essentially an Iranian state within your state now, you will soon wind up like Lebanon and Lebanon is a tragedy.”“It could be fixed,” he said. “But the consensus is it will not be fixed unless you have a functioning government that will take hard decisions. And the main obstacle to that, not the only one, but the main one, is Hezbollah and its hold on the state of Lebanon. And that is basically Iran’s hold on the state of Lebanon. That’s the future for Iraq. That’s the future for the other countries that allow themselves to be infiltrated by Iran. So therefore, it’s a lesson as well as a problem.”

Rockets Fired at U.S. Embassy in Iraq after Attacks on Bases
Agence France Presse/July 08/2021
Three rockets were fired at the U.S. embassy in Iraq early Thursday, the Iraqi army said, at the end of a day marked by rocket and drone attacks on bases hosting American forces in Iraq and Syria. The embassy itself was not hit, the army said, but three nearby places in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone were. A spate of recent attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq has been blamed on pro-Iranian armed groups within a state-sponsored paramilitary force. U.S. forces, who have 2,500 troops deployed in Iraq as part of an international anti-Islamic State group coalition, have been targeted almost 50 times this year in the country, but the last few days have seen an increase in the frequency of attacks. On Wednesday, fourteen rockets were fired at an air base hosting American troops in the western province of Anbar, causing minor injuries to two personnel, the coalition said. A Shiite militant group called Revenge of al-Muhandis Brigade claimed responsibility and vowed to defeat the "brutal occupation", according to the U.S.-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist groups. The militant group is named after Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis of Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary alliance, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike early last year along with the revered Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, SITE said. Late last month, the United States carried out air strikes against pro-Iran fighters in both Iraq and Syria. The rockets on Wednesday "landed on the base & perimeter" of the Ain al-Assad base, coalition spokesman Wayne Marotto tweeted, adding that local homes and a mosque were also damaged. Iraqi security forces said the rocket launcher had been hidden inside a truck carrying bags of flour. Similar attacks happened earlier this week. On Monday night, U.S. forces shot down an armed drone above the embassy, according to Iraqi security officials. American defense systems fired rockets into the air in the capital, said AFP reporters, with Iraqi security sources saying the salvos had taken out an explosive-laden drone. Just hours earlier, rockets had also been fired towards Ain al-Assad. Asked about the renewed violence, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters: "These attacks reflect and are representative of the threat that Iran-backed militias present fundamentally to Iraq's sovereignty and to Iraq's stability."
- Syria 'drone attacks' -
Across the border in Syria, where pro-Iran fighters have fought alongside the Damascus regime in the decade-old civil war, Kurdish-led forces also reported attempted attacks near a coalition base. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces said they repelled drone attacks near the base in the Omar oil field in the country's east, in the second such operation in days. "Our frontline forces against IS and coalition forces in the area of the Omar oil field dealt with drone attacks," it said, adding that the drones had caused no damage. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor with sources inside Syria, said pro-Iran militias had probably launched the drones from a rural area outside the town of Al-Mayadeen southwest of the oil field. It was the second such attack in days, after the SDF reported "two unidentified rocket-propelled grenades landed on the western side of the al-Omar oil field" late Sunday, which caused no casualties. Pro-Iranian militias also fired several shells at Al-Omar on Monday last week, causing damage but no casualties, the Observatory said. The United States had launched air strikes the previous night against three targets it said were used by pro-Iran groups in eastern Syria and western Iraq. The Observatory said at least five "Iran-backed Iraqi militia fighters" were killed in the strikes on the Syrian side of the border.

Dubai Authorities Probe Port Explosion that Shook the City
Agence France Presse/July 08/2021
Dubai authorities were Thursday investigating an explosion on a container ship carrying flammable materials, which unleashed a fireball at one of the world's busiest ports and sent shockwaves through the city. Firefighters rushed to the scene at Jebel Ali Port to tackle the blaze that broke out on a large vessel stacked with containers which authorities said had been preparing to dock.
Flames and smoke poured from the ship but authorities said it was doused within 40 minutes and that there were no casualties, with all 14 crew members evacuated in time before the explosion. "Thank God, everything is safe. But this is a natural accident that happened in one of the containers, which was also carrying some flammable materials. There was no other reason," Mona Al Marri, director of the Dubai Media Office, told Al-Arabiya television. She said there will be an investigation into the cause of the blast. Police vehicles and fire trucks were Thursday still parked close to the heavily damaged vessel, with burned containers visible on the quayside. Residents of apartment towers and villas that line the city's coast reported hearing a loud bang in the night and then felt windows and doors shaking after the fireball shot into the sky, with some filming the spectacle from their balconies.
An AFP correspondent at the scene saw a helicopter circling overhead as columns of smoke rose from the tightly secured facility after the blast. Dubai police said three of the 130 containers on the ship held flammable materials. "Initial reports indicate that... friction, or heat, may have led to the blast", Dubai police chief Abdullah al-Marri told Al-Arabiya, adding that there were no radioactive substances or explosives present in the containers. Such events are a rarity in the ultra-secure Gulf emirate, one of seven which make up the wealthy United Arab Emirates. Jebel Ali port is capable of handling aircraft carriers and was the US Navy's busiest port of call outside of the United States in 2017, according to the US Congressional Research Service. The port authority said it was "taking all necessary measures to ensure the normal movement of ships in the port continues without any disruption", according to the Dubai Media Office.
'Windows shaking' -
"I was outside on my balcony. My friend saw something yellow coming (like) the sun. I took the picture and after (there was) a sound," said Clemence Lefaix, who was staying near the blast site and posted a photo of a bright orange light against the night sky in front of apartment buildings.
"I was really scared."A resident of Dubai's Marina district, close to Jebel Ali port, told AFP that they "saw the windows shaking". "I have been living here for 15 years and this is the first time I've seen and heard this."There are 8,000 companies based in the Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA) which contributed 23 percent of Dubai's gross domestic product last year. It is the Middle East's largest trade zone. The glitzy Gulf emirate of Dubai transformed itself over the past 50 years from a sleepy port town to a regional travel, trade and financial services center.
The city state is now home to more than three million people, mostly foreigners, compared with only 15,000 inhabitants in the 1950s. Unlike Abu Dhabi, the leading member of the UAE that sits on large reserves of petroleum, Dubai has dwindling oil resources and has worked to develop non-oil industries, becoming a hub for services and tourism for the region.

Israel Razes Home of Palestinian-American Shooting Suspect
Agence France Presse/July 08/2021
Israel's army said Thursday it had demolished the home of a Palestinian man with U.S. citizenship accused of fatally shooting a Jewish student in the occupied West Bank.
The move was denounced by the United States, which said the punitive demolitions of Palestinian homes "exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution". An Israeli army spokesman confirmed that "troops demolished the residence of the terrorist [Montasser] Shalabi, in the village of Turmus Ayya, northeast of Ramallah". Shalabi, 44, was arrested by Israeli forces in May after he allegedly fired on waiting passengers at a bus stop at Tapuah junction south of Nablus in the northern West Bank. The attack killed Yehuda Guetta, 19, a student at a seminary in the Itamar settlement, and wounded two of his friends. Shalabi is in detention but has not yet been convicted. The demolition came after Israel's top court rejected an appeal by Shalabi's estranged wife, who claimed that his life centered on the U.S. and that he made only occasional visits to the West Bank house. The Supreme Court accepted the state's position that the home belonged to Montasser Shalabi and that he spent time in it when he was in the West Bank, ruling that the army was therefore justified in carrying out a punitive measure at the property. Sanaa Shalabi, 40, told AFP that troops first arrived at 1:00 am to place explosives around her home. The demolition operation lasted through the night and into the morning. "This is our life. What happened to us is normal. We were prepared for it," she said, and called her husband a "hero".
'Security needs'
Israel believes that demolishing homes of assailants deters such attacks in the future, but critics denounce the practice as unjustified collective punishment that often sees children lose their homes over the conduct of a parent or other relative. The army said that during the demolition "approximately 200 rioters hurled rocks and launched fireworks" at troops, who responded with "riot dispersal means". Montasser Shalabi did not live in the home that was destroyed, according to the Israeli human rights organization Hamoked, which unsuccessfully contested its demolition before Israel's Supreme Court with Sanaa Shalabi. Executive director Jessica Montell said the couple were estranged. Sanaa Shalabi lived in the home with three of their seven children. The whole family are also U.S. nationals. "The man accused of the attack doesn't live in the house," Montell said, adding that he lived in the US and would come "once or twice a year." Sanaa "was not in any way involved and didn't know anything about the attack. We thought this should be grounds for not demolishing or just demolishing one room," she added. She said Montasser Shalabi suffered from mental illness, a claim that was raised in the court petition as well but was rejected by the justices, who said he was examined after the attack and found to be mentally sound. The demolition of homes and Israel's overall conduct in the occupied West Bank is likely to cause friction between US President Joe Biden's administration and Israel's new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a hardline nationalist who previously ran a West Bank settler lobby council. The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem said: "The home of an entire family should not be demolished for the actions of one individual." A source in Bennett's office said that while the premier "respects and appreciates the US administration", his decisions were guided solely by "the security needs of Israel and to protect the lives of Israeli civilians."

Taliban Surround Afghan City as Commandos Launch Counterattack
Agence France Presse/July 08/2021
Taliban fighters on motorbikes roamed a provincial Afghan capital Thursday after a day of heavy fighting that saw them storm the city in their most brazen assault since the United States stepped up its troop withdrawal. The government flew in hundreds of commandos to Qala-i-Naw in Badghis, the first provincial capital to face an all-out assault by the Taliban since May 1 when the insurgents launched a blistering campaign to capture new territory. With the U.S. troop pullout "90 percent complete", according to the Pentagon, fears are mounting that Afghan forces will be stretched without the vital air support of the U.S. military. Residents in Qala-i-Naw had either fled the city or stayed indoors Thursday after more than 24 hours of intense fighting that saw the Afghan air force launch strikes on Taliban positions. "The Taliban are still in the city," resident Aziz Tawakoli told AFP. "You can see them going up and down the streets on their motorcycles." He said many of the city's 75,000 people had fled their homes -- either to neighboring districts or to Herat. "The shops are closed and there is hardly anyone on the streets," Tawakoli said, adding that helicopters and planes had bombed Taliban targets through the night. Badghis provincial council member Zia Gul Habibi said the Taliban suffered casualties, but also surrounded the city. "All districts are under their control... People are really in fear," she said. "All shops and government institutions are closed. There are still reports of sporadic fighting."
- 'Women will not be able to work' -
Parisila Herawai, a rights activist in the city, expressed concern for the safety of women in particular. "It is an emergency situation for all women, especially activists," she told AFP. "If the Taliban plan to remain in the city, we will not be able to work."
On Wednesday, the Taliban briefly seized the police headquarters and the local office of the country's spy agency but were later pushed back. As news of the assault spread, social media was flooded with videos of clashes -- with some showing armed Taliban fighters on motorbikes entering the city, as onlookers cheered. Local officials said some security officers had surrendered to the Taliban, and the insurgents opened the gates of the city jail, freeing hundreds of prisoners. Most had since been recaptured, officials said. Overnight, the defense ministry said it rushed hundreds of commandos to the city to launch a "large scale operation", spokesman Fawad Aman said on Twitter. The attack on Qala-i-Naw comes as the Taliban carry out a blistering campaign across the country but mostly in the north, capturing dozens of districts since early May.
The fighting appeared to be spreading in neighboring Herat province where officials acknowledged losing two districts to the insurgents. Rights group Human Rights Watch said the insurgents were forcing people from their houses in northern areas that they have captured.
"The Taliban's retaliatory attacks against civilians deemed to have supported the government are an ominous warning about the risk of future atrocities," said HRW associate director Patricia Gossman. "The Taliban leadership has the power to stop these abuses by their forces but haven't shown that they are willing to do so," she said.

Johnson confirms most British troops have left Afghanistan
Associated Press/July 08/2021
Prime Minister Boris Johnson confirmed Thursday that most British troops have left Afghanistan, almost 20 years after the U.K. and other Western countries sent troops into the country to engage in what they described as a “war on terror.”
The prime minister declined to give details about the troop withdrawal, citing security reasons. But he said that “all British troops assigned to NATO’s mission in Afghanistan are now returning home,” adding that “most of our personnel have already left.”
Most U.S. and European troops have also pulled out in recent weeks.— Associated Press

Russia lifts ban on flights to Egypt boosting Cairo’s tourism hopes
The Arab News/July 08/2021
The resumption of flights would be key for Egypt’s tourism sector, which has been dealt another blow by the coronavirus pandemic over the past year. MOSCOW – President Vladimir Putin scrapped Russia’s ban on charter flights to Egypt on Thursday, six years after suspending them for national security seasons in the aftermath of a plane crash. The move is expected to be a boon for Egypt’s year-round resorts in Sharm al-Sheikh and Hurghada which attracted large numbers of Russians in the past. The flights were stopped after a Metrojet plane taking Russian holiday makers back from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg broke up over the Sinai Peninsula in October 2015, killing 224 people. Russia concluded the plane was destroyed by a bomb. A group affiliated with Islamic State (ISIS) extremists claimed responsibility. The attack was a serious blow to Egypt’s vital tourism industry, which was also affected by the unrest following its 2011 popular uprising. Egyptian authorities have since spent millions of dollars to upgrade security at its airports, hoping to get Moscow to change its mind. The resumption would be key for Egypt’s tourism sector, which has been dealt another blow by the coronavirus pandemic over the past year. It has kept looser restrictions in the Red Sea resort towns to try to attract foreign visitors. Earlier in May, Egypt’s Tourism and Antiquities Minister Khaled El-Enany said the country is optimistic about welcoming more visitors this year with numbers increasing steadily since January to around half a million tourists a month. Tourism revenue, an important source of foreign currency for Egypt, plunged by 70% in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tourism usually accounts for up to 15% of the country’s gross domestic product. Monthly tourism revenues stood at about $500,000, half of what they were before the pandemic. But Egypt hopes for a recovery by the end of the year when it aims to have vaccinated tourism staff in resorts along the Red Sea and name the area a COVID-free destination, Enany said. Egypt and Russia in April agreed to resume all flights between the two countries in a call between their presidents, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Vladimir Putin, Egypt’s presidency said in a statement. Until 2015, Russian nationals made up the largest segment of visits with around 3.5 million visitors a year.

The Latest The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 08-09/2021
Millions of Syrian civilians at grave risk if U.S., Russia fail to strike deal on U.N. aid deliveries
Kareem Fahim and Karen DeYoung/The Washington Post/July 08/2021
REYHANLI, Turkey — Parts of northern Syria will quickly face a massive and deadly humanitarian crisis if the U.N. Security Council fails this week to extend a resolution allowing the United Nations to deliver aid across the Turkish-Syrian border, according to relief workers, Syrian civilians and the Biden administration.
The resolution, which allows the United Nations to coordinate aid shipments to Syria through only one border crossing, is set to expire Saturday. Millions of Syrians dependent on the U.N.-led relief effort would immediately be put at risk if it lapses, aid workers say.
Russia has promised for nearly a year to veto any resolution allowing cross-border aid to continue, viewing its distribution to areas held by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Moscow, as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty. The Biden administration favors expanding cross-border aid to Syria, and the debate over the resolution has emerged as a high-profile test of whether the United States and Russia, at a moment of escalating tensions, can identify issues on which to forge common ground.
Administration officials from President Biden on down have described the aid issue as an example of the kind of cooperation they want from Russia as they seek a path toward longer-term strategic accords on cyber and nonproliferation issues.
Biden raised the border crossings at his summit last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin, citing the “urgent need to preserve and reopen the humanitarian corridors in Syria so that we can get food — just simple food and basic necessities — to people who are starving to death.”
Inside Idlib province: A Syrian offensive wreaks terror on children
While Putin made no commitment, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said later: “We believe that there is scope for the U.S. and Russia to work together on a positive outcome so that resolution gets passed, that crossing gets sustained, and that other measures to alleviate the suffering of the people of Syria are also adopted with the U.S. and Russia working together.”
At the Bab al-Hawa crossing Tuesday, Syrians preparing to return home from Turkey described the overwhelming reliance of relatives on humanitarian aid. “There is no work” in Syria’s northern Idlib province, said a 31-year-old man, sheltering from the sun under a tree along a road divider as a convoy of U.N. vehicles sped by.
His relatives in Idlib, displaced by a large-scale Syrian government offensive, received “everything” from aid agencies, he said, including cash, food, detergent and clothes. “The aid from the U.N., from Turkey, is the reason people there are alive,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid attracting attention from authorities on either side of the border.
“I am one person providing assistance to 26 people,” said the man, who worked construction jobs in Turkey. “I cannot provide for this number of people. I am not a working machine.”
The U.N.-coordinated aid operation began in 2014 after the Security Council authorized the provision of supplies through four border crossings into Syria from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Last year, the council removed three of the authorized crossing points after Russian and Chinese vetoes.
The United Nations’ shrinking access coincided with a surge in demand for humanitarian aid over the past year in Idlib and nearby areas, said Mark Cutts, the U.N. deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis. “There’s been a serious economic crisis in all of Syria on both sides of the front lines. We’ve had covid, and we’ve had flooding in the northwest, as well as continued airstrikes and shelling and further displacement.”
The loss of border crossings meant that aid provision is “logistically a lot more complicated,” he said. “Journeys that used to take one or two hours sometimes take five times as long.”
With about 1,000 trucks carrying aid a month, the U.N. operation through Bab al-Hawa “is one of the biggest aid operations anywhere in the world,” Cutts said. If the resolution expires Saturday, “a lot of people are going to suffer. Lives will be lost,” he said.
The health-care system in northwest Syria relied on the United Nations for about 40 percent of its services, according to Mahmoud Daher, the World Health Organization’s emergency team lead based in Gaziantep, Turkey. The WHO, like other U.N. agencies, is pre-positioning supplies in northwest Syria, including emergency kits for surgical interventions and supplies for coronavirus outbreaks — stocks that could last four to six months.
But they would not be sufficient if medical needs in the province surge, he said.
The debate over the resolution has also been a test of the Biden administration’s ability to muster a broad coalition on an issue that it knew would be contentious. The thrust of its argument has been that human suffering in Syria has increased exponentially since Russia insisted that the 12-month extension expiring Saturday would be the last.
In Syria’s Idlib province, death and displacement stalk aid workers, too
While the months-long U.S. diplomatic effort to marshal most, if not all, of the Security Council to object to the Russian position has been largely successful, there has been no public or private sign that Moscow has changed its mind.
The draft resolution, sponsored by Norway and Ireland, calls for two border crossings — Bab al-Hawa, as well as Yaroubia from Iraq into northeast Syria — to remain open for 12 months. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, visited the Bab al-Hawa crossing last month and has said that three are needed to keep more Syrians from dying.
After a closed-door council meeting on the subject Tuesday, at which diplomats said the Russians stuck to their negative line, they did not show up for a working group session for further discussions.
As it did twice last year, when its veto brought the number of crossings down to two, then one, Russia has argued that insisting that aid come across the border from Turkey is a violation of Syrian sovereignty and little more than assistance to terrorists interspersed among the millions of displaced Syrians in Idlib. Instead, it wants all international aid to travel through the Assad government.
The Biden administration and the United Nations have said that “cross-line” aid, distributed through and by Damascus into areas not under Assad’s control, should also be increased, a concession the Russians have largely ignored.
With the vote scheduled for Thursday, there is a strong likelihood that the draft will be rewritten or that others will introduce a pared-down version to include Bab al-Hawa alone. Russia may then insist, as it did last year, on only a six-month extension. That could set up more tense negotiations, this time in the midst of Syria’s brutal winter

Iran has declared war on the US in Iraq through its proxies - analysis
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Iran has done this before, using pro-Iranian groups in Iraq to wage an insurgency against America after the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Daily rocket and drone attacks on the US in Iraq are no longer just the harassment that began in May 2019. The targeted attacks are increasing and they also involve more sophisticated drones than in the past. While there have been no American deaths from these attacks since the spring of 2020, the overall picture is of a rising conflict in which Iran has declared war on the US in Iraq.
The latest attack was on the US embassy in Baghdad on Thursday morning. This follows daily attacks against US forces in Erbil, Al-Asad base and the targeting of US forces in Syria since July 4.
Iran has done this before, using pro-Iranian groups in Iraq to wage an insurgency against the US after the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a twist of irony, Washington had gone into Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. Saddam was a vicious opponent of Iran, who also genocided Iraqis, targeting Kurds and Shi’ites.
Once he was gone, however, the Iranians moved into Iraq using pro-Iran Shi’ite groups, such as the Badr Organization. They then mobilized proxies to attack the US. This resulted in hundreds of American soldiers being killed. But the US did not retaliate, preferring the illusion that these were some kind of indigenous attacks.
Iran aided its pro-Iranian militias in Iraq with weapons, including 107mm rockets and also explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs). Reports say that the EFPs killed at least 196 American troops. That appeared to end in 2011 when the US left Iraq. It returned in 2014 to fight ISIS – and for a while, the US was not targeted. However, in 2017, the pro-Iran militias, led by Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and others, said that America should leave Iraq. It did not leave, since it had been invited by the Iraqi government. THE OFFICIAL line of the US-led coalition is that the attacks against the US in Iraq are endangering Iraqis. This is true: Some Iraqis have been injured and even killed.
“Each attack against the Government of Iraq, Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Coalition undermines the authority of Iraqi institutions, the rule of law and Iraqi National sovereignty,” tweeted US-led coalition spokesperson Col. Wayne Marotto on Thursday. "These attacks endanger the lives of Iraqi civilians, and the partner forces from the Iraqi Security Forces, Peshmerga and Coalition."
However, the larger context is that this is not just harming Iraqis. This is a concerted and coordinated campaign against the US. It is not a simple campaign, either. The use of drones in attacks is part of a new strategy. The strategy appears so far designed not to inflict many casualties on the US. In fact, the barrages of rockets have been relatively small, sometimes up to a dozen rockets, but usually just a few.
A drone struck a CIA hangar in April in Erbil, appearing to send a message that Iran knows where America’s secrets are hidden. Drones also targeted an area where the new US consulate is being built near Erbil in the Kurdistan region. The message is that the US is not safe in Kurdistan, a peaceful and usually safe area.
Iran’s use of drones and rockets, provided to the militias in Iraq against diplomatic sites and also against the US military is unprecedented. While Iran has supplied rockets and drones to Hamas and Hezbollah, here in Iraq the role of the IRGC and Iran’s guidance appears more closely linked to Tehran.
This is because it is clear that Tehran can dial up the attacks when it wants to. This time the increase began with July 4. This was a message, which coincides with the US leaving Bagram base in Afghanistan. Iran thinks it can push the US out of Iraq at the same time.

The US Must Punish Iran’s Regime For Its Lethal Homophobia
Benjamin Weinthal/Iran International/July 08/2021
As LGBTQ Pride Month concludes in the free and democratic world, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s totalitarian regime continues to violently oppress and eliminate sexual minorities.
The existence of the Iranian regime’s death penalty targeting gays and lesbians should prompt democracies to impose economic and human rights sanctions on the clerical regime for its failure to decriminalize homosexuality. The Biden administration can take the lead.
Writing last month on the website of the National Union for Democracy in Iran, the attorney Ally Bolour said: “As a gay Iranian American, I implore my fellow queer and progressive community not to compartmentalize human rights based on fictional distinctions of borders and national origin. There is nothing ‘woke’ about justifying persecution based on culture. Please join me in demanding that our respective governments seek justice and dignity for our community in Iran, because the LGBT community is not free anywhere until we are free everywhere.”
America’s former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, was the first U.S. official to launch a global campaign to decriminalize same-sex relations in 2019 after the Islamic Republic of Iran executed a man based on its anti-gay law.
Yet Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s recent tweet underscored the disconnect between US rhetoric on human rights and the reality on the ground for the LGBTQ community: “I was honored to speak today as the progress flag was raised over @StateDept headquarters for the first time-demonstrating to people everywhere that the United States is committed to fighting for LGBTQI+ rights at home and abroad. #PrideMonth2021.”
Regrettably, Sherman’s tweet represents the kind of empty foreign policy virtue signaling that fails to influence any change in the behavior of Iran’s regime—arguably the world’s worst state-sponsor of lethal homophobia and LGBTQ persecution.
To Biden’s credit, he appointed on Friday Jessica Stern as the State Department’s special envoy for LGBTQ rights. The White House said the special envoy’s role will be to “play a vital role in leading the implementation of the Presidential Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of LGBTQ+ Persons Around the World.”
One place to start is the Islamic Republic of Iran. In May, three men murdered 20-year-old Alireza “Ali” Fazeli-Monfared in the Iranian city of Ahvaz, allegedly because they learned the military had exempted him from service due to “moral and sexual depravities such as transsexualism.” Family members were involved in the killing. The Islamic Republic of Iran has executed between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians since the nation’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to a 2008 British WikiLeaks cable.
In January 2019, I brought to the attention of the English-speaking world the Iranian regime’s public hanging of a man based on its anti-gay law. In a response to a gay German reporter’s question in Tehran in June of the same year about why the clerical regime proscribes the death penalty for gays, its so-called moderate Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif defended the policy.
“Our society has moral principles, and according to these principles we live,” Zarif said, adding, “These are moral principles regarding the behavior of people in general. And that’s because the law is upheld and you abide by laws.”
Sadly, when Zarif appears for Western media interviews, journalists (with the exception of the German BILD reporter in 2019) never asks him about his support for the execution of gays. Zarif, after all, is a self-described “human rights professor.” Surely, an interviewer can pose a question along these lines to him: “How can you be a professor of human rights when your policy is to wipe out the human rights of gays by execution?”
While the US does not have an embassy in Iran, America could have requested that the Swiss embassy in Tehran, which represents US interests in the Islamic Republic, hoist the Pride flag. Regrettably, Switzerland’s President Guy Parmelin delivered a congratulatory message to the Iranian regime’s new President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, a hardliner cleric accused of mass murder.
In addition, the US could have used its diplomatic muscle to get other Western embassies in Tehran to raise the Pride flag in Tehran.
Another example of the West delivering a free pass to a country that codifies the death penalty for gays is Qatar’s monarchy, which has supported Tehran’s rulers over the years, including the Iranian regime’s chief proxy, Hezbollah. The International Federation of Association Football awarded the tiny oil-rich Gulf country the right to host the prestigious 2022 FIFA World Cup without any human rights strings attached.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in March 2021 that, “President Biden has committed to putting human rights back at the center of American foreign policy, and that’s a commitment that I and the entire Department of State take very seriously.”
Sadly, that commitment remains an empty pledge as far as Iran’s LGBTQ community is concerned, because the Biden administration has not taken the battle to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nothing short of economic and human rights sanctions targeting Iran’s regime, which oppresses and obliterates its LGBTQ community, can send a signal that the US. is in the business of protecting LGBTQ persons.
The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily the views of Iran International.
*Benjamin Weinthal is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Follow him on Twitter @BenWeinthal. FDD is a nonpartisan think tank focused on foreign policy and national security issues.

Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons
Andrea Stricker/International Organizations Monograph/July 08/2021
CONTENTS
Introduction
In 1993, multilateral negotiations resulted in the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons, or Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The CWC entered into force in 1997, establishing the convention’s monitoring and implementation body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The CWC and OPCW currently have 193 members.1
The CWC and OPCW aim to achieve the worldwide elimination of chemical weapons. A state party to the CWC commits never to “develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain chemical weapons” and to declare and destroy existing chemical weapons stocks and production facilities.2 CWC parties must also declare annually their stocks and locations of sensitive chemicals and precursors listed in the CWC’s control annex. States’ commitments and activities are subject to OPCW monitoring, reporting, and on-site verification.
The OPCW, headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, has three main bodies: the Executive Council (EC), consisting of 41 elected member states; the all-member Conference of States Parties (CSP); and the Technical Secretariat, which carries out CWC implementation and verification activities. In 2017, the EC elected Director-General Fernando Arias to a four-year term. The United States contributes nearly $28 million annually to the OPCW, or about 22 percent of the organization’s budget.3
Problems
The OPCW and CWC have recently come under strain due to Russia’s and Syria’s uses of chemical weapons in violation of international norms and laws. Russia, a CWC signatory and OPCW member state, has used the organization to shield itself and its client regime in Damascus from accountability for their uses of chemical weapons. The CWC has few enforcement mechanisms, and some member states have been unwilling to challenge Moscow.4
In 2013, the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad began using chemical weapons against civilians during the country’s civil war. The regime briefly paused its chemical weapons attacks following a Russian-brokered agreement under which Damascus joined the OPCW in September 2013, thus enabling verification of the dismantling, destruction, or removal of Syria’s declared chemical weapons and production capabilities. An OPCW-UN Joint Mission stated in June 2014 that the verification of the destruction of Syria’s declared stockpile was complete.5
However, Damascus did not declare all its capabilities and stockpiles, and the OPCW later determined that Assad resumed using chemical weapons in April 2014. A July 2020 EC decision required Syria to fully declare its programs by October 2020 and to demonstrate compliance with the CWC.6 The OPCW director-general reiterated in February 2021 that Damascus had failed to do so.7 In April 2021, the CSP voted to restrict Syria’s rights and privileges at the OPCW – including its voting rights – until Damascus meets its CWC obligations.8
Russia has consistently questioned the validity of the OPCW’s technical conclusions on Syria and has encumbered the organization’s investigation of Moscow’s March 2018 Novichok attack in Salisbury, England, against former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal.9 Moscow even attempted to hack the OPCW headquarters in 2018.10
Russian (left) and Syrian (center-left) diplomats hold a press conference in The Hague on April 26, 2018, called by the Russian Embassy to present “witnesses” (right, center-right) purportedly “used to stage” videos depicting Assad regime chemical weapons attacks in Douma. (Photo by Bart Maat/AFP via Getty Images)
In an effort to placate U.S. and British concerns and obfuscate its role in the Salisbury attack, Russia participated in a November 2019 consensus vote in which, for the first time in CWC history, the CSP successfully moved to amend the CWC’s Schedule 1 control list to include some Novichok-family substances.11 However, this did not stop Moscow from using Novichok again in an August 2020 attack against Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.12 Moscow denied involvement despite clear evidence that Russia’s Federal Security Service was to blame.13
Since 2017, Moscow has also pressured some states to vote against U.S. interests or abstain in key OPCW decisions.14 The OPCW’s voting process, which features open ballots and requires a two-thirds majority to approve decisions, has resulted in Russia delaying, but not halting, the organization’s work.
Recommendations
The OPCW Technical Secretariat is tasked with verifying states’ declarations about their chemical weapons facilities, production capabilities, and stockpiles. The CWC does not empower the OPCW itself to request access to suspect sites or to investigate non-compliance at undeclared locations. Instead, member states can request OPCW investigations and fact-finding missions in states about which they have compliance concerns. Another mechanism, an OPCW “challenge inspection,” permits a state party to request an inspection of another state’s facility if the requesting state suspects that facility houses undeclared and banned chemicals, production capabilities, or chemical weapons stockpiles. Of course, target states can simply ignore their legal obligations, prohibit OPCW access, or withhold cooperation.15 The CSP can bring compliance matters to the attention of the UN General Assembly or UN Security Council, but actions by the latter body would be subject to Russian or Chinese veto.
With these practical constraints in mind, the Biden administration should lead a multilateral campaign within the OPCW to press the EC and CSP to vote at upcoming OPCW meetings to:
Condemn both Russian and Syrian violations and expose states that fail to uphold international norms and laws against the use of chemical weapons.
Require Russia to declare its Novichok production capabilities and stockpiles, since Russian production and possession of chemical weapons violate the CWC.
Establish a full OPCW technical investigation into the Navalny attack.
Revoke Russia’s voting rights and privileges at the OPCW if Moscow does not comply with the requirements noted above and if challenge inspections do not succeed in addressing Russia’s non-compliance.16
The Biden administration should also:
Continue to adopt unilateral sanctions, in consultation with Congress and in coordination with U.S. allies and partners, to prevent revisionist states from stockpiling or using chemical weapons.
Consult with Congress, which should hold hearings on the OPCW and chemical weapons-related issues and inform and enhance the administration’s efforts.
Support candidates for OPCW director-general who pledge to assume more responsibility for publicizing and redressing compliance failures. The next election for OPCW director-general will occur in the fall of 2021, with the winner assuming office in mid-2022.
The OPCW holds a special session in The Hague on June 26, 2018, at the United Kingdom’s request, focused on boosting the organization’s role in fighting chemical weapons. (Photo by Jerry Lampen/AFP via Getty Images)
Notes
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, “History,” accessed May 25, 2021. (https://www.opcw.org/about/history)
Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons, Paris, January 13, 1993. (https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/CWC/CWC_en.pdf)
U.S. Department of State, “Annex E FY 2019 Contributions to IOs All Sources Totals 003810,” September 15, 2020. (https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Annex-E-FY-2019-Contributions-to-IOs-All-Sources-Totals-003810-508.pdf)
Andrea Stricker, “OPCW Member States Must Counter Russian Obstruction,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies, April 8, 2021. (https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2021/04/8/opcw-member-states-must-counter-russian-obstruction)
United Nations, “Removal of Syria’s Chemical Weapons Material Complete, Announces OPCW-UN Joint Mission,” June 23, 2014. (https://news.un.org/en/story/2014/06/471392-removal-syrias-chemical-weapons-material-complete-announces-opcw-un-mission)

Iran has declared war on the US in Iraq through its proxies - analysis
Seth J. Frantzman/Jerusalem Post/July 08/2021
Iran has done this before, using pro-Iranian groups in Iraq to wage an insurgency against America after the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Daily rocket and drone attacks on the US in Iraq are no longer just the harassment that began in May 2019. The targeted attacks are increasing, and they also involve more sophisticated drones than in the past.
While there have been no American deaths from these attacks since the spring of 2020, the overall picture is of a rising conflict in which Iran has declared war on the US in Iraq.
The latest attack took place Thursday morning on the US Embassy in Baghdad. It followed daily attacks against US forces in Erbil, capital of the Kurdistan Region in Iraq; Al Asad base in western Iraq and the targeting of US forces in Syria since July 4.
Iran has done this before, using pro-Iranian groups in Iraq to wage an insurgency against the US after the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. In a twist of irony, Washington had gone into Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. Saddam was a vicious opponent of Iran, who also committed genocide against Iraqis, targeting Kurds and Shi’ites. Once he was gone, however, the Iranians moved into Iraq, using pro-Iran Shi’ite groups, such as the Badr Organization. They then mobilized proxies to attack the US. This resulted in hundreds of American soldiers being killed. But the US did not retaliate, preferring the illusion that these were some kind of indigenous attacks.
Iran aided its pro-Iranian militias in Iraq with weapons, including 107-mm. rockets and explosively formed penetrators (EFPs). The EFPs killed at least 196 American troops, according to reports.
That appeared to end in 2011 when the US left Iraq. It returned in 2014 to fight ISIS, and for a while, the US was not targeted. However, in 2017, the pro-Iran militias, led by Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and others, said the US should leave Iraq. It did not leave, since it had been invited by the Iraqi government.The official line of the US-led coalition is that the attacks against its forces in Iraq endanger Iraqis. This is true; some Iraqis have been wounded and even killed.
“Each attack against the Government of Iraq, Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Coalition undermines the authority of Iraqi institutions, the rule of law and Iraqi National sovereignty,” coalition spokesman Col. Wayne Marotto tweeted Thursday. “These attacks endanger the lives of Iraqi civilians, and the partner forces from the Iraqi Security Forces, Peshmerga and Coalition.”However, the larger context is that it is not just harming Iraqis. This is a concerted and coordinated campaign against the US. It is not a simple campaign, either. The use of drones in attacks is part of a new strategy. So far, the strategy appears to be designed not to inflict many casualties on the US. In fact, the rocket barrages have been relatively small, sometimes up to a dozen rockets, but usually just a few.
A drone struck a CIA hangar in Erbil in April, appearing to send a message that Iran knows where America’s secrets are hidden. Drones also targeted an area where the new US Consulate is being built near Erbil in the Kurdistan Region. The message is that the US is not safe in Kurdistan, a peaceful and usually safe area. Iran’s use of drones and rockets provided to the militias in Iraq against diplomatic sites and also against the US military is unprecedented. While Iran has supplied rockets and drones to Hamas and Hezbollah, in Iraq, the role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Iran’s guidance appears more closely linked to Tehran. This is because it is clear that Tehran can dial up the attacks when it wants to. This time the escalation began on July 4. It was a message that coincided with the US leaving Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Iran thinks it can push the US out of Iraq at the same time.

Canadian Leadership on the Torching of Dozens of Churches: ‘Burn It All Down!’
Raymond Ibrahim/July 09/201
“ريموند إبراهيم: القيادة الكندية بشأن إحراق عشرات الكنائس: “احرقوا كل شيء
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/100468/raymond-ibrahim-canadian-leadership-on-the-torching-of-dozens-of-churches-burn-it-all-down-%d8%b1%d9%8a%d9%85%d9%88%d9%86%d8%af-%d8%a5%d8%a8%d8%b1%d8%a7%d9%87%d9%8a%d9%85-%d8%a7/
In one nation, at least two dozen mostly Catholic and some Anglican churches have been vandalized or torched in recent weeks; and that nation’s leaders are either openly calling for more or shrugging their shoulders.
That nation is not Iraq, Syria, or Libya under ISIS, but rather Canada.
According to one recent report titled “Canada has become the church-burning centre of the western world,”
As of publication [July 2], there have been almost 23 attacks against churches—including at least five completely destroyed by fires, at least three damaged by fires, and more than 15 vandalized to varying degrees.
Two days after that report was published, on Sunday, July 4, another church was set on fire in southeast Calgary, and “countless have been vandalized,” says a July 6 report. After characterizing these ongoing attacks as a “shocking and unchallenged new reality” for Canada, the report adds:
There are currently no suspects for these arsons, but even more alarming, there is seemingly very little sympathy or care given to this vicious form of religious persecution.
Indeed, consider the reaction to these hate crimes coming from some of Canada’s leaders: Harsha Walia, the head of British Colombia’s Civil Liberties Association—which claims to “promote, defend, sustain, and extend civil liberties and human rights”—on June 30 tweeted, “Burn it all down,” in regards to the churches. So much for her zealous defense for the “civil liberties and human rights” of Canadians; apparently they only apply to some people, not others.
Although she appears to be a Hindu, this Walia’s place of birth (Bahrain) and her last name are curiously Islamic—not, of course, that it matters: India has become so anti-Christianity that it is currently the 10th worst persecutor of Christians in the entire world; being a Christian in India is actually worse than being a Christian in most Muslim nations—which is saying much.
If Muslims and Hindus hate Christians and attack their churches, Western elements—the media, politicians, and academia—increasingly sympathize and cover for them.
Thus, according to Gerald Butts, a close confidant of the Canadian prime minister, attacks on churches are “understandable.” Even more bizarre, Heidi Mathews of Harvard Law School described the vandalization and torching of churches as “the right of resistance to extreme and systemic injustice.”
As for the Prime Minister himself, Justin Trudeau, after offering the usual lip service and saying that ongoing church attacks are “unacceptable,” he offered this:
I understand the anger that’s out there … against institutions like the Catholic Church. It is real, and it is fully understandable given the shameful history that we’re all becoming more and more aware of.
So attacks on Christian churches are “unacceptable”—but they’re also “understandable.” Considering that these two words neutralize each other, Trudeau’s is a call for no action.
Tucker Carlson discussed all this in a segment yesterday, July 7. After quoting Harsha Walia—whom he referred to as “a monster” and a “dangerous lunatic”—he asked Canadian media personality Ezra Levant of Rebel News to comment. Levant referenced Kristallnacht—“the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’ in pre-Holocaust Germany where they smashed and burned and killed Jewish synagogues”—before continuing:
Obviously, we are not that far gone yet, but what do you call it when literally dozens of churches are being systematically vandalized, torched?… The crazy thing is that this is so explicitly an anti-church hate crime wave, and yet Justin Trudeau, who is normally the first and the wokest, waited a week before saying anything, and he literally said ‘that’s not the way to go.’ That was as tough as he got. He introduced an anti-hate crime bill in parliament that’s targeting mean tweets and Facebook posts, but literally you have church after church being torched by Antifa-style terrorists and he’s almost silent on the matter, and his right hand man [Gerald Butts] finds it understandable.
And so, what was once the preserve of the Islamic world in the modern era—hate for and attacks on churches—is now a regular and acceptable feature of Canada. Considering that radical Leftists and radical Muslims believe in the exact opposite things, rather tellingly, when it comes to torching churches, they are close allies. This speaks volumes about what truly animates them, and what is at the core of their belief systems.
https://www.raymondibrahim.com/2021/07/08/canadian-leadership-on-the-torching-of-dozens-of-churches-burn-it-all-down/
Picture enclosed: St. Theresa, one of dozens torched Canadian churches: Harsha Walia, Heidi Matthews, Gerald Butts, and Justin Trudeau