LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
April 24/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Turkey: Is Erdogan's "Magic Spell" Beginning to Pale?
Pinar Tremblay/Gatestone Institute/April
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12188/erdogan-magic-spell
Research conducted in March by 50 teachers from the Imam Hatip schools revealed that students are moving away from Islam.
"[Mosques] no longer serve people, but rather serve as a source of income for certain people." – Young imam, later fired.
Another cause of upset on the part of many religious Muslims is the content of the Diyanet-prepared Friday sermons, which frequently advocates violent jihad.
What is clearly on the rise, however, is great disappointment in the Erdogan government's version of Islam, especially when accompanied by corrupt politics and a deteriorating justice system.
For decades, prominent Islamist figures would rarely criticize Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and when they did, it would be directed at his policies, rather than his personality. That trust seems beginning to change.
On March 26, for instance, Temel Karamollaoglu, the head of the tiny but increasingly influential Saadet (Felicity) party, railed against Erdogan and the members of the public "under his spell." Karamollaoglu's repeated reference to Erdogan as having performed "magic" on the Turkish people is significant. Accusing the leader of the ruling Islamist party of violating Islam, which bans sorcery and witchcraft, goes against the grain of the prevailing culture of unconditional loyalty and obedience. In fact, the 76-year-old Karamollaoglu has been a devoted follower of the political Islamic ideology of dawa (religious outreach) and a former supporter of both Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AKP) Party. Today, outspoken in his opposition, he says that his movement is the only one "that can stop the polarization in Turkey because we can sit down and speak with everyone, accepting our differences. Ours can be a platform of social democrats, nationalists, Kurdish voters and those who previously supported the AKP but are now disillusioned."
The question is whether he can reach Erdogan's dedicated voter base, most of who are ideologically and religiously conservative. There is reason to believe that he might. Turkish Islamists are no longer politically uniform -- especially women and young people, whose waning support for the AKP was apparent during the April 2017 presidential referendum. To attract both sectors, Erdogan promised to lower the age at which a person can run for parliament and to grant lavish subsidies to housewives. These vows, however, appear to be insufficient to keep the people under his "spell."
In the education system, for instance. Erdogan has long promised his supporters that he would cultivate a "pious generation", and invested heavily in religious Imam Hatip schools. His younger son, Bilal, even referred to the students attending these schools as "Erdogan's generation." Yet, it turns out that the children enrolled in these institutions have been failing miserably on all standard academic tests.
Research conducted in March by 50 teachers from the Imam Hatip schools revealed that students are moving away from Islam in favor of a more general deism. The report generated a heated debate. While some secular groups doubt its findings, many feel vindicated by them.
The greatest debate going on, however, is taking place within the conservative sector of Turkish society, highlighting a schism among Islamists. Children from AKP-loyal families, as well as intellectuals and activists, are apparently questioning the touted morals of their elders. In a recent op-ed, hijabi-feminist Berrin Sonmez attacked what she called the "hypocritical piety" of Erdogan and the AKP elites. Sonmez and others have been criticizing Erdogan for his one-man rule, claiming that it runs counter to Islamic values and culture.
On March 22, when Turks celebrated the candle vigil night of mirac kandili, pro-government journalist Nevzat Cicek shared photos on social media of a major mosque in Istanbul that was completely empty. In his tweet, he referred to previous crowded ceremonies and asked: "Have the people moved from religion this much?"
As of 2017, there were 90,000 mosques in Turkey, led by government-employed imams. These mosques have experienced a notable decrease in attendance, particularly among young and middle-aged men. Some of those who continue to frequent the mosques are doing so less for religious reasons than for networking and job-seeking. In addition, more and more mosques have begun requesting hefty contributions from their congregants, while imams are coaxed by the state to collect donations after each sermon. One young imam who publicly complained about this practice -- he said that mosques "no longer serve people, but rather serve as a source of income for certain people" -- was promptly removed from his position.
Another cause of upset on the part of many religious Muslims is the content of the Diyanet-prepared Friday sermons, which frequently advocates violent jihad.
Does this mean that a majority of the Turkish public is really abandoning religion in general and Islam in particular? The alternatives are hardly widespread trends, particularly among young people from religious families. What is clearly on the rise, however, is great disappointment in the Erdogan government's version of Islam, especially when accompanied by corrupt politics and a deteriorating justice system. Religious orders not associated with the Diyanet are beginning to attract more practitioners. While Diyanet and government officials make headlines for their lavish spending and luxurious lifestyles, outside religious orders are presenting a more righteous way of life.
As Diyanet mosques function as pseudo-AKP headquarters across Turkey and abroad, the alternative religious orders pose a significant threat to Erdogan's standing and power. It is no wonder, then, that he recently lashed out at them and asked the Diyanet to "update" Islam. Coming under fire from Islamist scholars not at all keen on "updating Islam," Erdogan and his advisers immediately backpedaled. Instead, they are now figuring out how not to lose young people to deism and atheism, and to cause them to rally around Erdogan's version of Islam.
This is most likely why Metin Kulunk, a lawmaker from AKP and a staunch Erdogan advocate, told the press that "deism is the biggest potential threat against our country, unless we take precautions."
It is safe to assume that Erdogan will engage in similar fearmongering as he begins to prepare for the next general election in November 2019.
By the time Turks go to the polls next year -- if elections are not held earlier -- he will certainly possess the best possible platform for his propaganda. Currently, a pro-AKP group is in the process of purchasing the Dogan Media Company, which controls many of Turkey's key newspapers, networks and Internet sites. Will devout Muslims, who still believe in Islam but have lost their faith in Erdogan and the AKP, manage to break his "spell"?
Pinar Tremblay is a columnist for Al-Monitor's Turkey Pulse and Turkish news outlet T24.
© 2018 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

The Energy Revolution has Already Begun
David Von Drehle/The Washington Post/April 23/18
Between the science-denying trolls who say climate change is a hoax and the we’re-all-doomed Cassandras who picture the last human remnant escaping to Mars, there is an exciting frontier. It’s populated by people too busy making progress to indulge in political shouting matches.
Likely for the first time in history, a human society (ours!) has broken the linkage between sustained economic growth and greater consumption of energy. An iron law, burn more to make more, has been erased. In its place, the United States — by far the world’s leading energy consumer — has chalked up a near-record nine consecutive years of economic growth while keeping its total consumption of energy flat. Or take a longer view: In 1990, according to the US Energy Information Agency, the equivalent of more than 9,000 BTUs of energy was consumed for each real dollar of growth in the US economy. Last year, a real dollar of growth consumed fewer than 6,000 BTUs. The agency projects consumption will fall to about 3,000 BTUs per buck of growth by 2050. Carbon dioxide emissions (the most abundant of the greenhouse gases) per dollar of growth have been falling since 2008.
What does this tell us? That change is not just possible, it’s real. Your Energy Star appliances, LED lightbulbs, aluminum vehicles and weatherstripping are not merely symbolic efforts. They are part of an efficiency revolution at home, at work and on the road that’s producing meaningful results without disrupting our way of life. We’re also seeing significant shifts in the sources of our energy. Coal consumption is sharply down; cleaner natural gas is surging. But the steepest angle of growth is in the renewable energy sectors (though they admittedly started at a much smaller base). Wind is projected to exceed water in electricity generation within the next year. Imagine that. In the 20th century, water power, source of about 7.5 percent of US electricity, modernized the Tennessee Valley, turned darkness to dawn in the Pacific Northwest and gave the Nevada desert its garish neon Vegas glow. Now, in the space of a single generation, windmills will overtake dams. Solar power is also trending briskly upward as panels improve and prices drop. The next billion people to escape poverty around the world may be powered up the economic ladder by solar cells rather than oil or coal. If progress continues in battery storage technology, as it surely will, solar energy will play a larger role in juicing the world’s homes and industry — as it already does in heavily subsidized China. But while the arrows are pointed in the right direction for energy consumption and energy mix, we’re still destined to emit many billions of tons of carbon dioxide over the coming decades if not generations. The essential challenge on the other side of the equation is to find ways to capture and safely store those gases.
Here, too, the news is promising.
Perhaps, like me, you were too distracted by a tempestuous presidential campaign to notice a scientific breakthrough announced in 2015 and patented the following year. At Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, a team led by the esteemed inventor Jeff Brinker came up with a highly efficient, durable and low-cost technology for scrubbing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions. A thin membrane (the inventors call it a “memzyme” in honor of the microscopic enzymes engineered on its surface) isolates carbon dioxide molecules and rapidly sucks them from the surrounding plume. This reusable, non-toxic technology easily outperforms government goals for carbon scrubbers, and does so at a fraction of the cost of previous devices, according to Brinker and his colleagues.  Even better, scientists in Norway may have found a good way to store the captured carbon. At a conference in Vienna last summer, a team from the University of Bergen unveiled a promising advance in high-pressure oil and gas extraction. Rather than “fracking” underground rock formations to free trapped fuels, the scientists successfully injected carbon dioxide into core samples to force out trapped oil, leaving the carbon dioxide locked in its place. The new process “increased recoverable oil by an order of magnitude compared with fracking, and at the same time reduced the carbon footprint by associated CO2 storage,” the team summed up. Fracking has been a game-changer for the US economy, offering cheaper, cleaner fuel and the prospect of energy independence. But this process could be even better, if the Norwegian experiment can be proved in field tests. No more chemically contaminated water, no more fractured rocks and related earthquakes. Furthermore, by creating a lucrative market for large supplies of carbon dioxide, the new technology could drive rapid commercialization of “memzyme” scrubbers. Congress can goose this progress by creating a revenue-neutral tax on carbon dioxide emissions and steering the proceeds into further research and incentives for investment. But don’t hold your breath. It will be enough for now if the government simply sticks with policies already in place. Because clearly, they’re working.

When the Writer Apologizes
Ghassan Charbel/Asharq Al Awsat/April 23/18
The story began in September 2015, when waves of Syrian refugees poured into Germany and I went to collect some of the accounts of newcomers, especially those who risked their lives using the “death boats” to reach Europe.
The scenes were painful and the stories agonizing.
I did not find a better title for the first episode of my investigation other than what a young man who came on the dangerous boat trip told me, as he seemed very relieved having succeeded in resigning from his homeland and its horrors.
I asked him about his condition and he replied: “Excellent. Three meals a day, sleep without fear, no Baath no ISIS.” I wrote that the Syrians, who used to believe their country was a key player in the region, are now discovering that it has become an arena for interventions and militias.
As soon as I published my article, my phone rang. The caller said: “My brother Ghassan. You don’t know the magnitude of the pain that you have caused me today, and you certainly understand the difficulty of being a Syrian these days, and at the same time, to be a journalist who has been observing for years that the policy of oppression is accumulating the factors of explosion.”
The caller was Journalist and Writer Ghassan Imam. He said that the Syrian man’s delight in finding three meals at a shelter in Germany had broken his heart.
He said that the Syrians were subjected to unprecedented humiliation both on their land and in the tents and shelters they throw themselves and their families into, despite the noble feelings of the host countries.
He expressed his fear that the developments in Syria would be more severe than the country can withstand and that wars on its territory would end not only with the most terrible humanitarian disaster after World War II but also with the destruction of its unity and the manipulation of its identity.
“I did not call you just because I suffered as I read the stories of the fugitives from Syrian hell. I also contacted you for professional reasons. As a Syrian, I liked the fact that the editor-in-chief of a leading newspaper would go personally to interview the refugees, while the prevailing mentality today is to assign one of the newspaper’s writers with that task. Newspapers are the memory of peoples. Their news and investigations provide the historian with data upon which he could rely after reviewing and verifying it. We will not have a sophisticated Arab press if the aspirations of journalists are limited to conveying answers to officials, whatever the size of their positions.”
I was moved by the telephone call of Ghassan Imam, who belongs to an older generation than mine. A generation that we read in the beginning of our press work; that we agreed and disagreed with, but learned a lot from.
I remembered that conversation when I was informed days ago during my travel that the heart of Ghassan Imam betrayed him a few months after he stopped writing.
More than a year ago, I returned to Asharq Al-Awsat and Ghassan Imam hurried to contact me. But fate decided that the period of deepening dialogue and affection would be painful for the writer, who enriched the opinion pages in this newspaper for decades.
There are details that Ghassan Imam’s readers have the right to know. In the last months of 2017, he called me. He said he was tired and had cancer and wanted to stop writing. I felt confused. But I was afraid to encourage him to do so for my concerns over him. I knew he was living alone with his papers, pencils, woes and memories. When a sick writer says he wants to stop writing, it means he wants to dedicate his time to waiting for the end.
I told him that it was not right for a writer to resign. I told him that as a reader of his articles and not as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, I am asking him to go on. After the discussion, he agreed to carry on.
In the first week of this year he sent his last article. He called and said: “For me, writing has become torture that I can no longer endure. I do not hide that I have entered the last chapter.” I interrupted him trying to take the conversation to another direction. But he insisted. “This is my last article,” he said. “I hope you take appropriate administrative measures for this situation.”
My response was that Asharq Al-Awsat’s relationship with its writers was never a captive of administrative procedures. And that the newspaper was proud of those who lit up its pages and that the loyalty bond between them was more important than the terms of a work contract.
I did not have a choice but to accept his request to stop writing. I asked him to visit his readers when his health conditions permit. He replied: “It seems that I have only a few months to live. In any case, Asharq Al-Awsat has always been my home, my window and my honor. I have only written about my conviction in my long battle against injustice and domination. I might have sometimes exaggerated. And perhaps I have hurt someone unintentionally. I have not intend to harm anyone, but injustice was long and cruel.”
Ghassan Imam was the son of a generation that committed great dreams. Dreams for his country, his nation and his profession. Dreams of justice and freedom together… which are very difficult to achieve in the republics of fear, anxiety and cruelty. Like all the sons of his generation, he saw his dreams crumble and whenever he tried to take shelter in a castle, the latter was uprooted by the winds.
He wrote to express his criticism and discontent. We understood through his articles the difficult Arab struggle, especially in the 1950s and 1960s; the thorny relations between Baathists and Nasserites; and the deadly relations within the Baathist movement and between generals and civilians.
In his “Shells and Pearls” column, he used to write profiles on public figures with a colorful and sarcastic pen.  How difficult it is for a writer to apologize for not sending his article because the General of Darkness is attacking his heart and moving forward to cut the thread of love and light that connects him to his readers.

How Trump Can Actually Reach 'Mission Accomplished' in Syria
James Stavridis/Bloomberg View/April 23/18
I understand what President Donald Trump was trying to express in his now-famous “Mission Accomplished” tweet. And in fairness, in the military we often do use that expression to convey the successful completion of a discrete tactical task.
But he should have understood the echoes of President George W. Bush’s appearance under a now-infamous banner on a carrier deck after the invasion of Iraq. That turned out to be anything but a mission accomplished. And, unfortunately, the air strikes didn't come near accomplishing the broader strategic mission ahead of us in Syria. What the strikes (conducted jointly with two other close allies, France and Britain) did do was damage the Syrian regime's chemical weapons research, production and storage facilities. They were executed flawlessly at the tactical level. But here is what it did not do: totally destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles; knock out Bashar al-Assad's ability to produce more nerve agents or rebuild the capability to do so; reduce the regime's ability to transport the chemical weapons by road, rail or air; degrade or destroy the means of delivery (Syria's 250-plane air force); or knock out the government's command and control system.
All of those actions would have been permissible under international law. But the US wisely decided to conduct a more measured attack (although it was roughly double the level of last year’s strike that used only Tomahawk missiles). By opting for a relatively constrained assault, Mattis and the president chose a course of action that allows further escalation if necessary, had a minimal risk to US personnel, avoided direct confrontation with Russia or Iran, and minimized collateral damage to Syrian forces.
But the question hangs in the air like the smoke over the impact zones: What if Assad doesn’t stop? What would the next strike look like, and what are the additional risks?
Operationally, the next logical step in the ladder of escalation would include the following elements: A diplomatic campaign to enlist many more allied participants (NATO being the obvious core group, but potentially including Sunni Arab states and maybe Australia)
Prepositioning at least one and possibly two US aircraft carriers in the eastern Mediterranean or Arabian Gulf
A major cyberattack to knock out portions of the Syrian electric grid and command and control stations
An opening salvo of missiles to destroy Syrian air defenses
Manned aircraft from bases across the Middle East, Europe and the US conducting a multiday campaign with dozens of targets
Major intelligence assets -- CIA and Special Forces on the ground -- focused on the region for battle damage assessment and enabling precision targeting.
This scenario would be much riskier than what we saw last weekend for several reasons. First, it would put allied air crews in range of Syrian and Russian air defenses, potentially leading to prisoners of war and casualties. Second, it would increase the number of nations involved on the allied side, complicating operations considerably. Third, it would bring to a full halt the (very imperfect) peace negotiations underway. Fourth and most dangerously, it would probably bring the US and Russia into a direct military confrontation.
The US has a handful of strategic objectives in Syria. At the top of the list is continuing to seize territory from the so-called ISIS and reduce the terrorists' reach and threat to America. Second is to enforce the important international norm against using weapons of mass destruction. Third, the region faces a real threat from Iranian expansionism and for the US to disengage would put at risk partners.
At the humanitarian level, we should also be doing what we can, over time, to reduce the sheer human misery of Syria, where 500,000 are dead and well over 10 million have been pushed out of their homes. These are real and important strategic objectives. One hopes Assad got the message and will refrain from using chemical weapons on his own people. But, as the saying goes, hope is not a strategy. An actual strategy would see the US remain engaged in Syria with up to 5,000 troops (currently there are around 2,000 -- which is a far, far cry from the 150,000 under my command in Afghanistan just a few years ago). The allies would also push on Russia’s economic weaknesses -- Moscow doesn't have the money to rebuild Syria under Assad -- to force real negotiations, under United Nations auspices, on a diplomatic resolution. A good model is the Balkans of 20 years ago, when Russia eventually became part of the solution. The US has to find the balance in Syria between limited hard power (small numbers of ground troops, special forces, offensive cyber, long-range precision strikes) and soft power (diplomacy, economic incentives, coalition-building to share costs, strategic messaging). A pair of well-executed air strikes is a long, long way from “mission accomplished.” We’ve got more work to do in Syria.

When Trump the President Refused to Listen to Trump the Candidate
James Kirchick/The Washington Post/April 23/18
Days before the 2016 presidential election, candidate Donald Trump warned: “You’re going to end up in World War III over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.”
Good thing President Trump ignored him.
Dire predictions about foreign intervention leading to “World War III” aren’t merely the most predictable and laziest form of anti-interventionist “logic.” They’re also an insidious echo of Soviet propaganda, routinely deployed to undercut the West’s defense of democracy and important international norms. If Trump had listened to his former self, he’d have abdicated an opportunity to enforce the global prohibition against use of chemical weapons.
On the campaign trail, Trump said Clinton’s suggestion of establishing a no-fly zone to protect civilians would risk confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia, which had sent men and material to abet Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime. “You’re not fighting Syria anymore, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, all right?” Trump explained. “Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk.”
But last week, after a chemical weapons attack against civilians reportedly perpetrated by the Assad regime, Trump ordered airstrikes against three Syrian government targets in concert with allies Britain and France and, noticeably, a world war didn’t start.
Before missiles were launched, the Pentagon warned Moscow through already established “deconfliction” channels that strikes were imminent, and subsequently, no Russian assets were hit. Russia vigorously protested the action against its client state — one in which it has an air and a naval base — but retaliation was entirely verbal, consisting of the usual diplomatic double talk at the United Nations, after this initial statement by Russia’s ambassador to the United States:
Statement by the Ambassador Antonov on the strikes on Syria:
A pre-designed scenario is being implemented. Again, we are being threatened. We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences.
All responsibility for them rests with Washington, London and Paris.
This was unsurprising, and transparent, as Russia — which plays a non-trivial role in perpetuating the Syria conflict — has little desire to pick an actual fight with the world’s most powerful military over a limited airstrike meant to punish specific war crimes, not overthrow the Assad regime. Nonetheless, in the days leading up to the strike, critics resorted to an apocalyptic framing of the conflict. Russian state television encouraged citizens to stock up on water and emergency supplies. In the United Kingdom, the Telegraph ran a headline asking, “could Britain be drawn into World War Three?” and the Daily Express ran one declaring “World War 3 ALERT: The ‘REAL reasons’ Trump is going to war in Syria.” Germany’s widely read Der Spiegel blared (in a headline since changed), “‘Get Ready Russia’: Donald Trump Risks a World War in Syria.” In the United States, Salon ran with the headline, “Trump and allies approach World War III in Syria, on literally no evidence.”
The claim that increased American military activity in Syria — whether in the form of a no-fly zone to protect civilians or the sort of precision airstrike carried out last week — would precipitate world war is one made by noninterventionists across the political spectrum. But as Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum explained back in 2016, when Trump initially used this line of attack against Clinton, the threat of World War III erupting over Syria could be sourced back to Russian propaganda, which painted the former secretary of state as a deranged “warmonger.” The specter of Western democracies plunging humanity into world war, though, claims a pedigree much older than the most recent American presidential election. Or the present-day U.S.-Russia dynamic. From the onset of the Cold War, it was a staple of Soviet propaganda meant to cast the United States as the aggressor and the Soviet Union as the bulwark of global “peace.”
As the Soviet Union lowered its Iron Curtain across Central and Eastern Europe in the ashes of World War II, Moscow castigated opposition to its moves as risking World War III. Instrumental in this effort was perversion of the word “peace.” To win over potential allies in the West, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orchestrated the creation of communist front groups and conferences with anodyne names like the “World Peace Council” and the “World Congress of Partisans for Peace.” The real purpose of this campaign wasn’t the promotion of “peace,” however, but Soviet foreign policy; the cynical implication being that anyone remotely skeptical of an organization or conclave with “peace” in its name was obviously in favor of war. George Orwell satirized this abuse of language in his masterpiece, “1984,” imagining a fictional superstate with the slogan: “WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
Across the globe, Moscow-backed peace outfits decried opposition to Soviet prerogatives as fascist agitation that would bring about another world war. At the 1949 National Labor Conference for Peace in Chicago, the Communist Party USA newspaper, the Daily Worker, reported “new opportunities for massing the strength of labor against the fomenters of the Cold War and the preparations for World War III.” The following year, after the United States joined a United Nations-led mission to resist the Soviet Union and China-backed invasion of South Korea by North Korea, the American Communist Party announced, “American imperialism has now entered the open military phase of its preparations to unleash World War III, threatening to embroil the whole world in a new world holocaust.”
Talk of World War III mostly abated throughout the years of detente but returned with a vengeance after the election of President Ronald Reagan and the subsequent “Euromissile” debate, one of the last great strategic confrontations of the Cold War. In the late 1970s, the Soviet Union began deploying intermediate-range nuclear warheads in Eastern Europe. As NATO debated whether to match this provocation by stationing similar weapons on its own territory, the Soviets launched a propaganda onslaught, echoed by Western sympathizers, insisting that any attempt to deter its nuclear blackmail would result in nuclear Armageddon.
“Stopping World War III” was the blunt title of a 1981 book published by the US Peace Council, the American chapter of the Soviet-backed World Peace Council. “We fought World War I in Europe; we fought World War II in Europe and, if you dummies will let us, we will fight World War III in Europe,” declared Gene La Rocque, a retired US Navy admiral who went on to become a fierce critic of American foreign policy and advocate for the dissolution of NATO. La Rocque’s Center for Defense Information, a think tank devoted to criticizing US military spending, produced a 1983 documentary about nuclear weapons, “War without Winners.” Narrated by Paul Newman, it invited viewers to “contribute to preventing World War III.” Writing in the Guardian that same year, British Marxist historian E.P. Thompson, a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament, claimed NATO was a “war movement” instigating “the preliminaries of World War III.”
Following the collapse of Soviet communism, and as Putinist Russia began to attract sympathizers on the political right, the rhetoric of “World War III” expanded beyond traditional leftist redoubts. “Are we far from World War III?” former Texas Republican congressman, GOP presidential candidate and 1988 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Ron Paul asked last April, when Trump first struck Syria after its use of banned chemical weapons. “If you’re in favor of World War III, you have your candidate,” his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), declared during a 2015 Republican presidential debate after then-Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) called for a no-fly zone over parts of Syria. “We can’t risk World War III,” alt-right leader Richard Spencer tweeted at the time, imploring his followers to attend a protest against the strikes. A search for “World War III” on the paleoconservative clearinghouse Antiwar.com yields hundreds of results; the same for Ron Paul’s Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Ideology aside, and intended or not, invocations of “World War III” have the same net effect: to obfuscate the belligerence of authoritarians and discourage deterrence by democracies. During the Cold War, it was never NATO — a consensual and defensive alliance of democratic nations — which threatened world peace but rather the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact, which invaded Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and held Central and Eastern Europe in its grip until dissolving in 1991. Today, aided by guileless Westerners, the Russians insist that letting them get away with invading sovereign countries and suborning mass murder in Syria is predicate to preventing world war. A variant of “warmonger” — an epithet which roughly translates, in this context, into “critic of Russian foreign policy” — conjurings of “World War III” are a rhetorical means by which Russia psychologically projects its own bellicosity and lawlessness onto the West.
Of course, Moscow is capable of “turning the United States into radioactive ash,” as one of the Kremlin’s propagandists declared shortly after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. But knowing the United States has the same nuclear capability has reliably prevented it from ever acting upon such a threat, and Russia certainly won’t risk doing so over a few dozen Tomahawk missiles fired at its troublesome puppet, Assad.
The purpose of invoking “World War III” isn’t to sound genuine alarm. It is to foster a culture of war-weary appeasement within one’s adversaries. That so many in the West have adopted this overwrought characterization indicates the triviality of much of our foreign policy debate.
Ponder a world where America and its allies backed down from their commitments and principles at every Russian cry of imminent world war. We would have surrendered West Berlin to Soviet blackmail, abandoned South Korea to the totalitarian North and permitted the placement of nuclear missiles 90 miles off the Florida coast. Thankfully, we never took empty World War III threats seriously. We shouldn’t do so today.

Iran’s leaders to blame for currency crisis
إيران هي السؤولة عن الأزمة الحالية
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Arab News/April 24/18
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/archives/64101
Iran’s ruling mullahs continue to view other countries, specifically the United States, as threats to their hold on power and the expansion of their influence in the region. Nevertheless, recent developments indicate that the major threat to the Iranian regime is actually surfacing from within the country thanks to the underlying currency and economic crises.
Imagine the value of your money decreasing by almost half in the matter of a few days, and it continuing to plummet while the economy in the rest of the world is booming. That is exactly what is occurring across Iran.
Iran’s national currency, the rial, has dropped to historic lows — one US dollar, which equaled approximately 35,000 rials in November last year, now buys you nearly 62,000. Amid the crisis, Iranian officials announced that they have switched from dollars to euros for foreign trades and transactions.
In such a situation, Iranian people have panicked and many have rushed to banks to withdraw their money in order to convert it to a more stable currency, specifically the dollar. Such a sharp devaluation of the currency makes the financial situation of ordinary people much more severe and strenuous.
This issue is particularly critical because, a few months ago, many people took to the streets protesting the high prices and economic austerity they faced on a daily basis. If the underlying problem continues, this could lead to another nationwide protest. The difference is that, this time, the regime may not be capable of crushing and subduing the demonstrations.
But the Iranian regime appears not to have taken any concrete steps toward addressing the people’s grievances. The reaction to people’s panic and difficulties regarding the recent currency devaluation has been trivial or indifferent. Some Iranian officials use their classic tactic of blaming other countries, specifically the US, for the crisis, while some call it a foreign “conspiracy.” Iran’s Supreme.
Leader Ali Khamenei pointed out that “foreign enemies” are behind the “recent issues in the currency market.” He urged Etela’at (Iran’s ministry of intelligence) to foil the plot.
The Iranian regime’s financial corruption, misuse of public funds, and the widespread banking crisis are among the major reasons behind the present currency and economic crises.
However, the truth is that the Iranian leaders ought to point fingers at themselves for the crisis, as the rest of the world plays no role in Tehran’s rial crisis. In fact, one should remember that the US and other members of the P5+1 helped Tehran by lifting all four rounds of the United Nations’ economic sanctions against the regime three years ago.
Iran’s oil exports and trade with European countries have brought Tehran billions of dollars of extra revenues. The regime has come out of economic isolation. This begs the question, what are the reasons are behind the currency and economic crises?
A few months ago, an investor asked me if investing in Iran’s currency was a good move as Tehran was reentering the global market. I replied negatively due to the following reasons, which will also likely continue to contribute to the devaluation of Iran’s currency.
The first reason is financial corruption at the top and across the political spectrum, among both moderates and hardliners. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani famously promised that he would root out “corruption in the country’s administrative and economic system.” But misuse of public funds continues on a large scale and the currency has been devaluated much more since Rouhani took office in 2013.
Secondly, Iran’s revenues are being spent on keeping Bashar Assad in power, or supporting militia and terrorist groups across the region, rather than strengthening Iran’s economy and redistributing wealth.
The third factor is related to the banking system. The regime has developed a flawed system where banks are paying one of the highest interest rates in the world — as much as 20 percent on savings accounts. To compare, the average interest rate for US banks is 0.06 percent.
At first glance, Iran’s high interest rate may look appealing. But such a system is designed to help the officials and those at the top rather than the ordinary people. People who have connections and have accumulated wealth through corruption can deposit their billions in one of the banks, such as Caspian or Sepah, and receive 20 percent interest every year while doing nothing. On the other hand, people who mostly obtain loans to buy a car, a house or pay university tuition will be required to pay back nearly the same inflated and excessive interest on their loans.
The Iranian regime’s financial corruption, misuse of public funds, and the widespread banking crisis are among the major reasons behind the present currency and economic crises. In fact, these problems are systemic and exist deep in Tehran’s economic infrastructure. The recent currency crisis is not an anomaly or an exception. The rial has plummeted continuously for the last 39 years — since the establishment of the Islamic Republic — from nearly 70 rials a dollar in 1979 to approximately 62,000 in 2018. The negative trend will most likely continue as long as the Iranian regime is in power.
• Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist. He is a leading expert on Iran and US foreign policy, a businessman and president of the International American Council. He serves on the boards of the Harvard International Review, the Harvard International Relations Council and the US-Middle East Chamber for Commerce and Business. Twitter: @Dr_Rafizadeh

Trump starts indirect negotiations with Iran ahead of his summit with Kim
Debka File/April 23/18
The French president, the German Chancellor and the Iranian Foreign minister are present in the US this week, all bent on saving the 2015 nuclear accord. French President Emmanuel Macron begins a state visit to Washington Monday, April 23; German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due on Friday, while Iranian foreign minister Javad Mohammed Zarif is spending the week in New York. The two European leaders will try and persuade the US president not to quit the nuclear accord, while the Iranian foreign minister is already playing hard ball through the US media.
In a word, indirect negotiations were launched this week on the future of the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran.
For an exclusive take on this unfolding story, subscribe to the coming issue of DEBKA Weekly out on Friday, April 20.
DEBKAfile’s sources report that these under-the-table negotiations are not restricted to the nuclear issue, but also touch on Iran’s interests in Syria. A month or more before his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, US President Donald Trump has therefore set his feet on a negotiating track with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, channeling it through the two European leaders and the Iranian foreign minister.
Our sources reveal that working papers were prepared for the US-European summit in Washington by a team of US, French, German and British diplomats. They are to be the agreed guidelines for a new common Western policy line on Iran, on which the four allies were hitherto at odds. The paper has four parts:
General Intent
Iran is prohibited from developing nuclear weapon after the expiry of the nuclear accord in 2025.
International watchdog IAEA inspections will be intensified on site, including the military compounds where nuclear activity is suspected, and which Tehran closed to the monitors.
Tehran’s continuation of ballistic missile development will incur fresh sanctions.
In his interviews to the US media, Foreign Minister Zarif played Iran’s opening gambits for the bargaining process. His diplomatic style is typically offensive rather than defensive. Tehran would not stand for any amendments being inserted in the original nuclear accord text, he said, and warned that his country would resume its nuclear program “at much greater speed,” if Trump withholds the next round of Iran sanctions waivers due for renewal on May 12, effectively taking the US out of the accord. Zarif also insisted that staying in the accord was not enough. The US must lift the sanctions strangling the Iranian economy. He also dismissed as “misguided” French and German efforts to pressure Tehran into curtailing its regional policies and missile program in exchange for Washington staying in the deal.
On Syria, Zarif dropped six points onto the virtual negotiating table.
An imminent military clash between Iran and Israel is not envisaged at present.
All the players in the Syrian crisis [US in particular] must stop seeking military solutions and take to the path of diplomacy.
They must all acknowledge Bashar Assad’s continued rule in Damascus
Iranian forcers must remain in Syria to fight “terrorist elements.”
Iran has no territorial or other claims on Syria. Proof? Iranian forces have never raised their national flag at any place of their deployment in the country.
The Hizballah contingents are deployed in Syria to safeguard national security [of Lebanon]. Once their mission is accomplished, they will withdraw.
It may be understood from these points that Tehran won’t object to Hizballah forces exiting Syria – but Iran is there to stay.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman referred to Iran’s latest war threats against Israel in a toast to Israel’s 70th anniversary on Sunday, April 22, at the IDF high command. Netanyahu addressed Zarif as “the foreign minister of a nation that sends armed UAVs against Israel and ballistic missiles against Saudi Arabia.” He said: “I listened to his diplomatic language and noticed the huge gap between his words and the deeds of the Revolutionary Guards, who are deploying an army for the explicit goal of destroying Israel.”
However, the upshot of these events is that Iran, whose motives are malign, is an active participant in talks that affect the future of Syria, while Israel has no role in the process.
President Macron is close to the Israeli position on Syria: He reiterates his opposition to President Trump’s determination to pull US troops out of Syria, because, he says, that “will leave the floor,” to Iran, as well as ISIS and Bashar Assad. Israel is taking no part in this argument, although the US troop withdrawal would leave its borders dangerously exposed to its arch-enemy, Iran.
Trump, for his part, is indirectly keeping the ball rolling with Tehran, while juxtaposing it with his forthcoming face to face with Kim Jong-un in May or June. He appears to calculate that if Kim agrees to US troops remaining in South Korea as part of a denuclearization deal, then Iran would appreciate that the US withdrawal from Syria is a very big concession indeed, for which Tehran ought to pay a high price.
DEBKAfile’s sources predict that Trump will come to terms with Macron and Merkel on both items at issue between them. They will find a compromise for preserving the nuclear deal with Iran and a formula on the US troop question in Syria. This formula appears to consist of taking US military strength out of Syria but remaining “beyond the horizon.”
Netanyahu and Lieberman must therefore contend first with the fallout from the US troops’ exit from Syria, before confronting Iran’s long-term presence just across its northern border.