LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
April 06/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Time to curb Khamenei’s power with financial sanctions
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/April 05/18
He frequently preaches about how his subjects must be less greedy and materialistic and more modest, but this should not mislead people about the reality of the life of Iran’s supreme leader.
Ali Khamenei is the second longest-ruling autocrat in the Middle East, who gained most of his wealth after he became Iran’s second supreme leader. His financial empire is proven to be worth at least $95 billion. Not only does this make Khamenei the richest autocrat Iran has ever had, but most likely the richest man in the world. Leaked reports have also revealed that Khamenei, his son Mojtaba and other family members keep billions of dollars in foreign banks.
Little attention has been paid to the nuances of Khamenei’s wealth and how he has accumulated it. This is probably due to several reasons, including Khamenei’s strategy of preventing state-owned media outlets from truly covering stories on his organizations and assets. Another factor relates to how his organizations operate in the shadow of secrecy and through third parties or front companies. In addition, his misleading religious appearance diverts attention from the reality on the ground by depicting him as a “spiritual” person and “a man of God.”
One of Khamenei’s major organizations, which is rarely spoken of, is Ejraiye Farmane Emam (Setad). Setad is worth at least $95 billion. Roughly half of its holdings are invested in the corporate field and the other half in real estate, mainly through “the systematic seizure of thousands of properties belonging to ordinary Iranians,” mostly from dissidents and foreign expatriates. Setad enjoys the advantage of monopolizing economic sectors, exploiting the nation’s wealth and bending the law in order to maximize its profits.
Khamenei’s increasing wealth leads to the empowerment of militias, hardliners and extremist forces, and further destabilization of the region.
Such secrecy about Khamenei’s wealth and his organizations’ activities helps him evade accountability. The secrecy is also aimed at preventing potential uprisings directed at Khamenei due to such obvious economic inequality and injustice. Such a financial empire gives him critical economic and political leverage over the regime’s apparatuses, politicians, and opposition. This allows him to expand his circle of loyalists and foreign proxies, and easily crush dissidents by exploiting the nation’s wealth.
Formerly, the EU sanctioned the president of Setad, Mohammad Mokhber, for involvement in “nuclear or ballistic missile activities.” The United States Department of the Treasury called Setad a “massive network of front companies” and sanctioned it. But these sanctions were lifted as part of the nuclear deal.
After the lifting of sanctions thanks to the nuclear agreement, it has become much easier for Khamenei’s organization to expand its networks, business deals and revenues. Khamenei’s increasing wealth leads to the empowerment of militias, hardliners and extremist forces, and further destabilization of the region.
The EU and the US ought to reconsider restricting Khamenei’s illicit routes for accumulating wealth. One measure would be to reimpose the sanctions on Setad due to its illegal activities. In addition, the international community ought to support the Iranian people whose properties and wealth have been confiscated by Khamenei’s organization. Governments and companies should refrain from doing business with Setad or its front companies. Finally, Khamenei and his family’s assets in foreign banks ought to be frozen. These methods can lay the first steps in promoting stability and justice in the region, as well as curbing Khamenei’s power and his relentless pursuit of regional hegemony.
• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist.

Act a certainty should US withdraw
Diana Moukalled/Arab News/April 05/18
So American President Donald Trump has surprised the world once again, this time by declaring his intention to withdraw US troops from Syria. It is true that most of what Trump does seems surprising. However, the announcement on the withdrawal from Syria was not expected at all, especially since the American president seems on the verge of a confrontation with Iran over the future of the nuclear deal and Tehran’s meddling in the region. Is the withdrawal from Syria a step back from that confrontation?
Days have passed since Trump’s declaration but nothing is clear yet. Hence it is hard to picture the future of Syria and the region amid this new void if the US really does withdraw. If it happens, it would pave the way for countless confrontations, and the regional divisions would see new forms of conflict.
The US withdrawal from Syria would mean a certain confrontation between Turkey and the Kurds, which would also mean an increase in the confrontation between Israel and Iran.
Above all, an American withdrawal would allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to be the biggest player and maybe even the only one in Syria, which would have repercussions for Syrians and the region as a whole. Most importantly, the American withdrawal would mean keeping Bashar Assad in power despite all his crimes.
Trump’s decision is not at all similar to that of former President Barack Obama when he withdrew US troops from Iraq, which led to handing the country over to Iran. Despite the disastrous decisions of both Obama and Trump — handing over the region to international and regional powers with hegemonic ambitions like Russia and Iran — the circumstances of the decisions differ.
Obama tried to say that the American mission in Iraq had ended, while Trump seems to want to leave Syria to fall into chaos and cause hostilities among the rival parties.
The US withdrawal from Syria would mean a certain confrontation between Turkey and the Kurds, which would also mean an increase in the confrontation between Israel and Iran.
By this decision, Trump seems like he wanted to say that the world’s biggest power is not responsible for what is happening and can withdraw at any moment, thus leaving the field to several evil powers.
Once again, Syrians are left highly vulnerable under a regime that killed them and destroyed their country, while Syria itself is left as a field of conflict for many forces and armies.
Interpreting this step as a prelude to a US confrontation with Tehran, especially amid a worsening in relations with Moscow after Washington expelled 60 Russian diplomats, means that we are on the verge of more wars in the Middle East.
The frightening thing is that the only possible result of this shocking step is an Israeli-Iranian war in the center of Syria and in its south, and Turkey swallowing up parts of the north and east.
Moscow will most likely not be able to manage this violence, and Washington, which is allowing matters to move out of its control, will most likely be unable to control the consequences.
By withdrawing its troops from Syria, the US is underestimating the lives and destinies of peoples and countries in crisis. This step also shows an inability to calculate the repercussions on Washington itself, in terms of the fall back in position, role and impact. But this is politics to Trump, who leads the world’s biggest state exactly how he leads his companies. To him, allies are just clients and wars are just business deals.
• Diana Moukalled is a veteran journalist with extensive experience in both traditional and new media.

Elections set to make Hezbollah model an inescapable reality in Iraq
Dr. Manuel Almeida/Arab News/April 05/18
On the 15th anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by US forces, Iraq is reaching another critical moment in its troubled history. The outcome of the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 12 could end the more positive trajectory under the current leadership and inaugurate yet another troublesome chapter. Possibly, perhaps even most likely, these elections will institutionalize Lebanon’s Hezbollah model (in the most negative of senses) in Iraq.
Iraq’s political system since the US invasion already replicates Lebanon’s. After one-and-a-half decades of civil war in Lebanon, the Taif Agreement of 1989 set the stage for the end of the conflict and reformed the power-sharing system between the country’s main religious communities. In retrospect, Taif contributed to Lebanon’s political dysfunctionality: Syria, designated Lebanon’s post-war power-broker, mostly exacerbated divisions between Sunnis and Shiites; the agreement required Lebanese militias to disarm but it exempted Hezbollah, a critical step for Tehran’s ally to impose the militia as a state above the state; and it did not achieve its goal of gradually eliminating political confessionalism.
As with Lebanon, Iraq’s political system is equally dysfunctional and prone to deadlocks, paralysis and behind the stage machinations. Iraq’s constitution of 2005 does not explicitly allocate key political posts on a sectarian basis, but the positions of president, prime minister and speaker of parliament are effectively reserved for Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis respectively. Iran today plays a role in Iraq that is as influential and intrusive as the one Syria played in Lebanon even after withdrawal following the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The fight against Daesh — a terrorist insurgency that the outright sectarian policies of former Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, backed by Iran, helped create — provided a further opportunity for Iran to expand its political and strategic leverage. The Popular Mobilization Units, formed in 2014 in response to a call to arms by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani to confront Daesh, became a double-edged sword: A formidable fighting force that helped push back Daesh when the Iraqi army was nowhere to be seen, but also a predominantly Shiite armed movement parallel to and often in competition with the state. Various of these militias, which taken together are given the umbrella name of PMUs, have close operational and even ideological ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and are outright loyal to Tehran.
As anticipated, after substantive progress in the fight against Daesh last summer, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider Abadi approved in early March a decree that formalized the inclusion of the PMU into Iraq’s security forces. But it is clear this process will not be all-encompassing. Some of these militias have heeded the call for disarmament and integration, while others have made no secret of their intention to remain outside the scope of Iraqi state control or supervision.
Iraq's elections in May are expected to provide a ticket to parliament for a substantial number of PMU leaders. If confirmed, the expansion of the Hezbollah model with both political and military wings will become an inescapable reality.
Last year, in a speech broadcast on Iraqi television, prominent Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr called on his fighters to return all weapons provided by the government and hand over territory to Iraq’s regular security forces. Yet the spokesman of Asa’ib Ahl Al-Haq, one of the militias with close ties to the IRGC, has rejected any possible integration into Iraq’s security forces while welcoming the salaries and other benefits guaranteed by March’s decree. The Iraqi state is now paying for armed groups that are loyal to a foreign government. In various cases, they have even fought in Syria to protect the murderous Assad regime alongside Iranian forces, Hezbollah and a whole array of Shiite militias loyal to Tehran.
The very short-lived electoral alliance between Abadi and the leaders of some hard-line militias attests to the growing political clout of these groups. Even more so when considering Abadi has proved his independence time and again, has voiced his opposition to Iran’s meddling in Iraqi affairs and has pursued a national reconstruction and reconciliation project.
However, the rapid unravelling of the alliance following a widespread outcry from Iraqis of all stripes also shows that Iraqi nationalism is alive and well.
The May elections are expected to provide a ticket to parliament for a substantial number of PMU leaders. If confirmed, the expansion of the Hezbollah model with both political and military wings will become an inescapable reality in Iraq.
In any scenario, the Iraqi militias loyal to Tehran will hardly be able to control Iraq with the same tight grip with which Hezbollah rules over Lebanon. Not only is Iraqi territory over 40 times the size of Lebanon’s, but there are other powerful armed groups across the spectrum willing and able to defend their corner. Rising tensions between these groups and Sunnis and Kurds, as well as with Iraq’s neighbors who are nervous about their presence, are guaranteed. A backlash from Iraqi Shiites, from secularists to nationalists, is also likely.
Still, the institutionalization of the Hezbollah model in Iraq is a worrisome development. The new political leverage of elected PMU leaders can be used to derail attempts to rein in the militias, push the Iraqi state to fund them and advance Tehran’s agenda. This will represent a substantial obstacle for the national reconciliation efforts of the coming government and will further undermine the sovereignty of the Iraqi state.
• Dr. Manuel Almeida is a political analyst and consultant focusing on the Middle East