LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
January 05/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Bible Quotations
Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay, ”says the Lord.
On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

"Romans 12/01-21: "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay, ”says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."


Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 04-05/18
Is Hezbollah Eating the Iranian People's Bread/Yves Mamou/Gatestone Institute/January 04/2018
The Iranian people deserve a more dynamic system of government that revives the country’s fortunes/Con Coughlin/The National/January 04/ 2018
Soft sands and stormy winds in the Arab world/Amr Moussa/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
Our sick neighbor/Adnan Hussein/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
The vanity of social media/Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
Avoiding the Bitcoin trap/Mahmoud Ahmad/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
Iran Sends More to the Gallows/Denis MacEoin/Gatestone Institute/January 04/2018
Egypt: State-Run Media vs. President el-Sisi/A. Z. Mohamed/Gatestone Institute/January 04/2018
Iran's Crisis is Deeper than the Price of Bread/Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/January 04/18

Titles For Latest LCCC Lebanese Related News published on January 04-05/18
Marcel Ghanem Interrogated as Protesters Brave Rain to Show Solidarity
Government Earmarks LBP 50 Billion for Parliamentary Elections
Reports: 2 Foreigners in General Security Custody after Raising Suspicions in Dahieh
Nasrallah Downplays Iran Protests: There's Nothing to Worry About
Hariri Meets Aoun, Says Efforts Ongoing to Resolve Berri Row
Geagea Slams Nasrallah for 'Acting as if There's No Lebanese State'
Hariri Says Govt. Solidarity Intact as Cabinet Convenes amid Aoun-Berri Row
Arrest Warrant Issued for Maria Maalouf in Nasrallah Libel Case
Israel Warns Hizbullah any Confrontation 'Will Shock You'
Berri Orders Opening of Nejmeh Square for Pedestrians
Report: Hariri to Visit Riyadh as Part of Gulf Tour
Is Hezbollah Eating the Iranian People's Bread?

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 04-05/18
CIA, Israel, Saudi Arabia Are 'Main Designers' of Iran Protests, Tehran Legal Official Claims
Bannon Says Trump 'Great Man' despite President Verbal Attack
Saudi-Led Strikes on Yemen Kill Dozens
More Pro-Regime Rallies as Iran Declares 'Sedition' Over
Paris Says French Jihadist Wives 'Should Face Trial in Syria'
Israel Minister Calls for More Settlement Approvals
Clashes in Syria Rebel Bastion over Surrounded Regime Base
28 Civilians Killed in Syria, Most in Russian Air Strikes
Russia Says 2 Troops Killed in Syria, Denies Warplanes Destroyed
Israel Opens Probe into Death of Wheelchair-Bound Palestinian
Israeli Jets Hit Gaza Site after Rocket Fire

Latest Lebanese Related News published on January 04-05/18
Marcel Ghanem Interrogated as Protesters Brave Rain to Show Solidarity
Naharnet/January 04/18/Prominent TV talk show host Marcel Ghanem on Thursday appeared before Mount Lebanon First Examining Magistrate Nicola Mansour in connection with a controversial episode of his Kalam Ennas show, as protesters braved heavy rain to express solidarity with him outside the Baabda Justice Palace. Ghanem’s lawyer, MP Butros Harb, meanwhile filed procedural defenses that were accepted by Mansour and the session was adjourned to February 2. The solidarity rally was attended by Information Minister Melhem Riachi and Education Minister Marwan Hamadeh, Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel, the MPs Nadim Gemayel, Ghazi Aridi and Nabil de Freige, ex-MP Fares Soaid, a Progressive Socialist Party delegation, and a number of political, syndical and press figures. “There is a political plan to muzzle voices and Marcel and LBCI are being targeted to pass on the message,” Harb said after the interrogation, stressing that “Lebanon will remain the country of freedom.”Ghanem for his part thanked “everyone who came to express solidarity despite the rain.” “They came to say no to repressing free speech and we will always stand by free speech,” Ghanem added. “Our battle will continue and no one will be able to intimidate us. We will never be lenient in the battle for freedoms in Lebanon and we will not let the blood of those who were martyred for freedom go in vain,” Ghanem vowed. A subpoena had been issued on December 14 for Ghanem to appear before the judiciary. According to LBCI, Harb's procedural defenses argue that Ghanem's prosecution “is not based on a legal text.” Harb had warned that “accepting such type of prosecution would mean accepting the eradication of freedoms in this country.”Ghanem is accused of hosting Saudi journalists who branded the Lebanese president and parliament speaker as "terrorists" during one of his show's episodes. “I'm not supposed to defend anyone. I'm a talk show host. I don't regret what I did on air and I only managed the episode. What is my crime?” Ghanem had recently said in an interview with Al-Arabiya television.
Justice Minister Salim Jreissati has said that Ghanem was only supposed to give his testimony and that no lawsuit would be filed against him. Jreissati had asked the country's prosecutor general to launch an investigation against the two Saudi journalists who appeared on Ghanem's Kalam Ennas talk show, one of the most watched weekly TV programs in Lebanon. The minister wrote in a two-page letter to the prosecutor that the two men, Ibrahim Al Merhi and Adwan al-Ahmari, had engaged in libel against top officials including President Michel Aoun and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri. The move came at a time when tensions were very high between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia over the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, announced from the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Government Earmarks LBP 50 Billion for Parliamentary Elections
Naharnet/January 04/18/The Cabinet on Thursday approved all items on its agenda and decided to earmark LBP 50 billion for the May parliamentary elections, the information minister said. “Until now, we do not have the results of the investigations into the issue of (Iraqi militia leader) Qays al-Khazali’s entry into Lebanon,” Minister Melhem Riachi added, referring to Khazali’s controversial visit to Lebanon’s border with Israel. Riachi also announced that President Michel Aoun and Premier Saad Hariri “voiced their complete rejection of any attack on freedoms” in Lebanon. According to the minister, the Cabinet also decided to create a national holiday for “the martyrs of the judiciary.”

Reports: 2 Foreigners in General Security Custody after Raising Suspicions in Dahieh
Naharnet/January 04/18/Conflicting reports emerged Thursday about the “disappearance” of a Dutch man and a New Zealand woman in the Beirut southern suburb of Haret Hreik, a Hizbullah stronghold. Some media reports said the two foreigners were held by Hizbullah before being handed over to General Security, as other reports said the man and the woman were arrested by General Security guards near one of the security agency’s checkpoints. The wife of the Dutch man told MTV on Thursday afternoon that her husband “has been handed over to General Security” and that he would be freed “within hours.”The TV network had reported that the two foreigners had “disappeared while passing in Beirut’s southern suburbs,” describing them as aid workers. The reports said the man and the woman were held after “raising suspicions” over their presence in the area.

Nasrallah Downplays Iran Protests: There's Nothing to Worry About
Associated Press/Naharnet/January 04/18/Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said overnight that U.S. President Donald Trump's "hopes" that the protests in Iran will snowball and lead to regime change or chaos will be dashed along with the hopes of "the Israelis and Saudis."In his first comments since protests in Iran broke out, Nasrallah said protesters with legitimate grievances have been exploited by political factions who attached political slogans to their protests. Nasrallah, whose group is funded extensively by Iran, spoke in a TV interview with the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen station. He said the protests across Iranian cities are being dealt with "calmly and wisely" by Iranian authorities. He said the protests are nothing like the massive protests of 2009 in terms of scope and demands, adding that "there is nothing to worry about."

Hariri Meets Aoun, Says Efforts Ongoing to Resolve Berri Row
Naharnet/January 04/18/Prime Minister Saad Hariri met with President Michel Aoun after Thursday’s cabinet session as part of his ongoing efforts to resolve the latest spat between the president and Speaker Nabih Berri. “Talks tackled several issues, including solutions for the issue of decrees, and efforts are being exerted in this regard,” said Hariri after meeting Aoun in Baabda. Aoun is engaged in a spat with Berri over a controversial decree granting one-year seniority to a number of officers. After the decree was signed by Aoun and Hariri, Berri and Finance Minister Khalil insisted that the decree should have also carried the finance minister's signature. Aoun and his aides have argued that the decree did not require Khalil's signature because it did not entail any “financial burden,” a point Berri and officials close to him have argued against. Ain el-Tineh sources have meanwhile warned that the decree would tip sectarian balance in favor of Christians in the army's highest echelons. The officers in question were undergoing their first year of officer training at the Military Academy when Syrian forces ousted Aoun’s military government from Baabda in 1990. They were suspended by the pro-Damascus authorities until 1993 before they resumed their officer training course as second-year cadets.

Geagea Slams Nasrallah for 'Acting as if There's No Lebanese State'
Naharnet/January 04/18/Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea lashed out Thursday at Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah over the latter’s overnight remarks to al-Mayadeen television. “Sayyed Nasrallah always acts as if there are no Lebanese people, a country called Lebanon or a Lebanese state,” Geagea said in a press release. “I wish he had tasked the ministers of his party and his allies in the government to raise in Cabinet all the issues that he mentioned in his interview, so that all government components can take part in the discussions in order to shoulder their responsibilities before God, history and the people whom they represent,” Geagea added. He stressed that “the first precondition for the success of any defensive or offensive act is national unity, whereas Sayyed Nasrallah always disregards this element and acts without an authorization from the people, in a blatant encroachment on legitimate Lebanese institutions.”“Should there be a preemptive defense plan for Lebanon in the face of Israel and other forces, the Lebanese Army should be in charge of devising it,” Geagea emphasized. He added: “It is not the first time that Sayyed Nasrallah mentions the issue of bringing non-Lebanese fighters into Lebanon, and this matter is totally rejected by us and by the majority of the Lebanese people.” “I hope this will be the last time that he tackles this issue, because Lebanese sovereignty does not belong exclusively to him, but rather to all representatives of the Lebanese people,” Geagea went on to say. Nasrallah announced overnight that Yemen’s Huthi rebels have expressed their readiness to send fighters to support Hizbullah in any future confrontation with Israel.

Hariri Says Govt. Solidarity Intact as Cabinet Convenes amid Aoun-Berri Row
Naharnet/January 04/18/Prime Minister Saad Hariri reassured Thursday that “solidarity will continue among the government components,” as the Cabinet convened in Baabda amid an ongoing spat between President Michel Aoun and Speaker Nabih Berri. The Cabinet has 43 items on its agenda, topped by a request from the Defense Ministry to refer the case of the Arsal, Ras Baalbek and al-Qaa clashes to the Judicial Council, Lebanon’s highest state security court. Baabda sources said Hariri “has not proposed anything regarding the seniority decree,” ruling out that the controversial issue would be raised in the Cabinet session. “There is strong keenness on the proper functioning of Cabinet,” the sources added. Asked whether he would raise the issue, Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil told reporters before the session that he would only speak if someone else raises the contentious topic. “Solidarity among the government components will continue and any dispute can be resolved to secure the country’s interest and protect stability,” Hariri said at the opening of the session. “The importance of the Cabinet is that it was a work team that protected the country and safeguarded political stability and security. This team made a lot of achievements last year and it has an agenda to implement ahead of the elections,” the premier added. Aoun for his part called on the government to continue the administrative appointments, complete the preparations for parliamentary elections, and begin studying the 2018 state budget.
He also called on the Defense Ministry and security agencies to finish their preparations and papers for the International Support Group for Lebanon meeting that will be held in Rome. Separately, the president stressed his keenness on freedoms as well as on “the law and the respect of the judiciary,” in reference to the judiciary’s summoning of prominent talk show host Marcel Ghanem. Aoun is engaged in a spat with Berri over a controversial decree granting one-year seniority to a number of officers. After the decree was signed by Aoun and Hariri, Berri and Finance Minister Khalil insisted that the decree should have also carried the finance minister's signature. Aoun and his aides have argued that the decree did not require Khalil's signature because it did not entail any “financial burden,” a point Berri and officials close to him have argued against. Ain el-Tineh sources have meanwhile warned that the decree would tip sectarian balance in favor of Christians in the army's highest echelons. The officers in question were undergoing their first year of officer training at the Military Academy when Syrian forces ousted Aoun’s military government from Baabda in 1990. They were suspended by the pro-Damascus authorities until 1993 before they resumed their officer training course as second-year cadets.

Arrest Warrant Issued for Maria Maalouf in Nasrallah Libel Case
Naharnet/January 04/18/An arrest warrant in absentia was issued Thursday for firebrand journalist Maria Maalouf, who is accused of “libel, defamation and incitement” against Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. The warrant was issued by Beirut First Examining Magistrate Ghassan Oueidat after a lawsuit was filed by the lawyer Ashraf al-Moussawi and a number of other lawyers. An indictment issued by Oueidat said Maalouf “published writings that stir sectarian sentiments and subject Lebanon to the threat of hostile acts.”

Israel Warns Hizbullah any Confrontation 'Will Shock You'
Naharnet/January 04/18/Israeli army spokesman Avichai Adraee voiced threats on Wednesday warning Hizbullah to refrain from waging any aggression against Israel “because we are going to surprise you if you dare,” he warned. “Maintaining stability in the region is a common interest of the Israeli and Lebanese sides, but if you dare, we will surprise you,“ said the Israeli official in a video footage. He added that “Hizbullah has been working as an Iranian arm in Lebanon and sacrificing Lebanese to foreign interests.”Hizbullah has been hit hard in the Syrian war and “its support in Lebanon and the Arab world continues to decline,” he added. The official warned that Israel is “closely monitoring what Hizbullah is doing as well as what is happening on the border and beyond.”

Berri Orders Opening of Nejmeh Square for Pedestrians
Naharnet/January 04/18/Speaker Nabih Berri has given instructions on Wednesday to wide-open all the entrances around the Parliament’s premises in Beirut's Nejmeh Square for pedestrians convenience. Berri said the roads leading to Nejmeh Square will no more be restricted for pedestrians, and the movement will return just like it was before tight security measures were imposed “for safety reasons.” Berri asked business owners, restaurants, hotels and offices in the area to resume their businesses after closing down. Whenever Lebanon's parliament is scheduled to go into session, security measures are implemented and the the roads around the premises close down prohibiting vehicles, motorists and pedestrians from passing. However, this measure turned into a permanent routine and the area became a permanent security zone cordoned-off with concrete barriers and barbed wires. Berri's move came a few days after the Square witnessed the biggest celebrations on New Year's Eve as part of an initiative for the revival of downtown Beirut.

Report: Hariri to Visit Riyadh as Part of Gulf Tour
Naharnet/January 04/18/Prime Minister Saad Hariri is expected to embark on a tour to Gulf countries that will include Saudi Arabia, signaling a “diplomatic breakthrough” after strained ties between the Kingdom and Lebanon, the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Seyasah reported on Wednesday. Quoting unnamed ministerial sources, the daily said they “expressed satisfaction” with what they described as “diplomatic breakthrough” between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, following what appeared like a diplomatic tussle that caught Lebanon's ambassador to SA and his Saudi counterpart over representation. On Tuesday, the Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Walid al-Yaacoub presented a copy of his credentials to Lebanon's Foreign Minister in preparation for presenting them to President Michel Aoun, ending months of delay. Saudi Arabia named its ambassador in September. Ambassador Walid al-Yaacoub arrived in Lebanon in November, but still has not been sworn in by the president. Lebanon's ambassador to Saudi Arabia was named to the post in late July and was only accredited late in December in Saudi Arabia. The delay highlighted tension between SA and Lebanon following the bizarre, now-reversed resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri from Riyadh. Lebanon was thrown into a political crisis after the Nov. 4 resignation of the Premier which he delivered in a televised statement read from the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Hariri has since withdrawn his resignation and returned home nearly three weeks later. The resignation was widely perceived as Saudi-orchestrated, and part of the kingdom's high-stakes rivalry with Iran.

Is Hezbollah Eating the Iranian People's Bread?
هل حزب الله يأكل خبز الشعب الإيراني
Yves Mamou/Gatestone Institute/January 04/2018
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/?p=61607
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11666/iran-hezbollah-financing
Ironically, Iran's receiving more than $100 billion in frozen assets succeeded in breaking the solidarity between the Iranian people and the Ayatollahs' regime better than the sanctions did.
Without Iranian money, Hezbollah would not exist. At least, not exist as an Iranian foreign legion, militarily engaged against Israel and in other Middle East regional conflicts. Without Iranian subsidies, Hezbollah would be just a narco-mafia.
Hezbollah has developed deep connections to Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, directly to facilitate the distribution of drugs throughout the Middle East and the US.
In the holy city of Qom in Iran, on December 30, 2017, anti-regime demonstrators shouted "Death to Hezbollah", "Aren't you ashamed Khamenei? Get out of Syria and take care of us", and "Not Gaza, or Lebanon".
In an Islamic country, whose official slogan is "Death to America" and "Death to Israel", to see Iranian people shouting "Death to Hezbollah" is totally surreal.
By wishing "Death to Hezbollah", Iranians demonstrators were not only protesting a "rise of the price of eggs" as the Ayatollahs' propaganda machine tried to claim. The demonstrators were demanding that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spend Iranian money for Iranian people -- and only for Iranian people. Ironically, Iran's receiving more than $100 billion in frozen assets for the hapless "nuclear deal" succeeded in breaking the solidarity between Iranian people and the Ayatollahs' regime better than the sanctions did. During the tough time of sanctions, the Iranian people stood by their leaders. The people only broke with their leaders when they saw that the "liberated" money was benefiting everyone but them.
Is Hezbollah eating the Iranian people's bread? The answer is yes, absolutely. Hezbollah is an Iranian foreign legion, a tool of an imperialist Shia war being conducted in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and against Israel. This Arab Shia army was created in Lebanon by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1982, right after Israeli defense forces expelled the PLO from Lebanon. The aim of this Arab Shia legion was to demonstrate to Sunni Muslim Arabs in the Middle East that Shia Iran was a better fighter against the "Zionist entity" than any Sunni regime.
Over the years, the small militia of 1982 grew to an expensive army, with more 150,000 missiles targeting at Israel, and able to defeat ISIS in Syria.
How much money is Hezbollah costing Iran? Before quoting an amount, please remember that Hezbollah is not only a 30,000 to 50,000-man fighting army. Hezbollah is also a social system with hospitals, welfare institutions, well-diggers for farmers, religious schools for boys and girls, a media conglomerate (television channels, radios, websites), a private telecommunications network inside Lebanon, and with the cyber-warfare capability to destabilize countries or companies. Hezbollah, in other words, is a state within the state of Lebanon, and the "patron" of the Shia community there.
Until 2005, experts guessed that Iran was giving about $200 million a year to Hezbollah. Matthew Levitt, a specialist on Hezbollah, wrote:
"Recently, Western diplomats and analysts in Lebanon estimated Hezbollah receives closer to $200 million a year from Iran... Some of this financial support comes in the form of cash funds, while much is believed to come in the form of material goods such as weapons. Iranian cargo planes deliver sophisticated weaponry, from rockets to small arms, to Hezbollah in regular flights to Damascus from Tehran. These weapons are offloaded in Syria and trucked to Hezbollah camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. In the wake of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Hezbollah reportedly received an additional $22 million from Iranian intelligence to support Palestinian terrorist groups and foment instability."
Different Iranian "charitable" foundations, many of them controlled directly by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, also fund Hezbollah's hospitals and charities in Lebanon. The amount of money difficult to quantify because it does not appear in any official budget. It certainly represents many millions of dollars. Of course, as the military role of Hezbollah expanded, the cost of funding it increased, from $300 million to $1 billion annually.
In short, without Iranian money, Hezbollah would not exist. At least, not as an Iranian foreign legion, militarily engaged against Israel and in other Middle East regional conflicts. Without Iranian subsidies, Hezbollah would be only a narco-mafia. It is a characteristic of this Shia militia to have been able to find alternative financing to compensate for the ups and downs of Iranian financing each time it was necessary.
Another source of Hezbollah's funding is cocaine-trafficking. Over time, Hezbollah has developed deep connections to Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, directly to facilitate the distribution of drugs throughout the Middle East and the US. The Obama administration quashed a huge Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) investigation into drug-running, arms-smuggling, human trafficking, and other criminal enterprises from which Hezbollah was profiting around the world, according to a bombshell report by Josh Meyers in Politico in December 2017. For the Obama White House, blocking the DEA investigation was a decisive move to help finalize its "nuclear deal" with Iran.
How much money does Hezbollah make from cocaine? Again, it is difficult to say. From 2007 to 2011, for example, Hezbollah networks were involved in a $300-million scheme purchasing used vehicles in the U.S. to ship to West Africa for sale. Earnings from the car sales were commingled with drug profits and sent to currency-exchange houses for laundering.
Among other trafficking, according to Interpol, Hezbollah also counterfeits goods (car brakes, clothes, pharmaceuticals, money). As early as 2003, Interpol warned of links between counterfeiting and terrorism, and between counterfeiting and Hezbollah :
"In documents prepared for his testimony on 16 July before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, said the problem may become more serious in future and he called for enhanced efforts, including a new partnership between industry and police, to combat it...
"The INTERPOL document presented to the Congressional Committee indicated that a wide range of groups - including Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Chechen separatists, ethnic Albanian extremists in Kosovo, and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland - have been found to profit from the production or sale of counterfeit goods."Hezbollah also raises funds from the Shia diaspora communities in Africa, Europe, Northern America and is running
"an extensive network of commercial and illicit businesses around the globe, including in South America and Africa, which may morph into new enterprises to avoid scrutiny. By using shell companies, and by renaming companies to avoid U.S. sanctions, Hezbollah-linked groups can continue to access the international financial system and transact with an ever-growing network of companies. The U.S. Treasury Department has designated dozens of Lebanon-based firms for supporting Hezbollah, including real estate firms and auto care companies. It is likely the group will continue its money laundering operations, growing into new fields and businesses in the future."
Even if Iran cuts its subsidies to its proxy, Hezbollah's 150,000 missiles will presumably remain in Lebanon as a permanent threat against Israel. Meanwhile, the Hezbollah Shia drug cartel will just have to work harder to feed its fighters.
**Yves Mamou, is an author and journalist based in France. He is the author of "Hezbollah, dernier acte", ("Hezbollah: The Final Act").
© 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.

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on January 04-05/18
CIA, Israel, Saudi Arabia Are 'Main Designers' of Iran Protests, Tehran Legal Official Claims
Iranian prosecutor general says that CIA planned to turn the protest into an 'armed' insurrection by mid-February, the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution
The Associated Press Jan 04, 2018
Iran's prosecutor general has directly named a CIA official as being the "main designer" of the protests that have shaken the country. The Trump administration has denied having any hand in the protests and the CIA declined to comment. Mohammad Jafar Montazeri's comments Thursday, carried by the state-run IRNA news agency, said the CIA official headed an operation that had Israeli and Saudi support. Montazeri alleged that the CIA planned to turn the protest into an "armed" insurrection by mid-February, the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.A senior Trump administration official on Wednesday disputed the notion that the U.S. played any role in instigating the unrest in Iran, saying the United States had not expected them to occur. The official said: "The protests were entirely spontaneously generated."The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
Iran's interior minister said earlier that some 42,000 people took part in the week of protests that roiled the Islamic Republic. Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli said in a statement Thursday that the figure was "based on precise statistics we have."Fazli said the continuation of the protests during the past week was because of the "leniency, restrain, tolerance and interaction" of the government. He did not elaborate. This is the first time authorities have given a figure for the total number of participants in the protests. On Wednesday, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, the chief of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, said the biggest gathering included some 1,500 protesters. The protest began last Thursday in Mashhad and quickly extended to other cities. Unrest surrounding them has killed at least 21 people. Claims of more protests in Iran dropped overnight Wednesday after a week of unrest that killed at least 21 people. It wasn't immediately clear if the drop on Thursday meant that the demonstrations are subsiding or that the Iranian government's blocking of social media apps has stopped protesters from offering new images of rallies. In Tehran, streets were calm and clear at the start of the Iranian weekend. On Wednesday, Iranian state media covered massive pro-government rallies in dozens of cities across the Islamic Republic. The protests began on Dec. 28, sparked by Iran's flagging economy and a rise in food prices, before morphing over the following days into calls for the downfall of Iran's theocratic government. Hundreds have been arrested by authorities over the unrest.

Bannon Says Trump 'Great Man' despite President Verbal Attack
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is heaping new praise on Donald Trump, after the president scathingly dismissed him as insane and irrelevant for disparaging his family in published remarks. "The president of the United States is a great man," the executive chairman of right-wing news website Breitbart told SiriusXM late Wednesday. "You know I support him day in and day out, whether going through the country giving the Trump Miracle speech or on the show or on the website."Trump reacted with outrage after the release of explosive excerpts from a new book in which Bannon described Trump's eldest son's meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer as "treasonous" and "unpatriotic." "Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind," the Republican president said in a statement.
Bannon was one of the main architect of Trump's upset victory in 2016 presidential elections, and the president's chief White House strategist for six months. A Trump lawyer, Charles Harder, has sent Bannon a cease-and-desist letter accusing him of violating a non-disclosure agreement by speaking to the author of the book.

Saudi-Led Strikes on Yemen Kill Dozens

Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Saudi-led air strikes have killed dozens of rebels and civilians in the past 24 hours in Yemen's flashpoint province of Hodeida, medical sources said on Thursday. Saudi-led coalition warplanes carried out nine air raids overnight on positions of the Shiite Huthi rebels in the Red Sea province, local sources told AFP. The strikes killed 36 rebels and 12 civilians, sources at four hospitals in the provincial capital said. Fighting between the Iran-backed rebels and the government of President Abedrabbo Mansur Hadi supported by the Saudi-led coalition has intensified in the past few weeks, causing a rise in civilian casualties. Last week, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said coalition air strikes on December 26 killed 68 civilians in Hodeida and the neighbouring province of Taez. The coalition accused McGoldrick of bias towards the rebels, but did not deny the civilian deaths. The military alliance intervened in support of Hadi's government in March 2015, after the Huthis took over the capital Sanaa and much of the rest of the country. But despite the coalition's superior firepower, the rebels still control the capital and much of the north. More than 8,750 people have been killed since the coalition intervened, according to the World Health Organization.

More Pro-Regime Rallies as Iran Declares 'Sedition' Over
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Iran saw another day of large pro-regime rallies Thursday after authorities declared the end of deadly unrest and turned attention to addressing economic concerns that fueled protests. A week after the demonstrations broke out, there were no reports of fresh protests in local media overnight, while videos on social media suggested only limited unrest in provincial towns which could not be immediately verified. As Washington suggested it may be looking to impose fresh sanctions on Tehran, Iranian authorities were weighing options including blocking unpopular measures in President Hassan Rouhani's recent budget. State television showed huge crowds marching in support of the government across 10 cities early Thursday, including Isfahan, Ardebil and Mashhad, where the protests first erupted last Thursday. "We are together behind the leader," chanted the crowds, in reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "The revolutionary Iranian people have responded in time to the enemies and trouble-makers by coming out on the streets," Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Khamenei, told the semi-official ISNA news agency. "The people's main demand now is for the government and officials to deal with the economic problems," he added. General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday announced the "end of the sedition." A total of 21 people died in five days of unrest that began on December 28 as protests against economic grievances quickly turned against the regime as a whole, with attacks on government buildings and police stations. Jafari told state television that "a large number of the troublemakers" were behind the unrest, saying many had been arrested and would face "firm action."
'Grotesque intervention'
The unrest -- the biggest challenge to Iran's Islamic regime since mass protests in 2009 -- caused international concern, with the United States in particular accusing authorities of a crackdown on dissent. A White House official, who asked for anonymity, said Wednesday that Washington would look for "actionable information" to try to bring fresh sanctions on those responsible. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly tweeted his backing for Iranian protesters, wrote: "You will see great support from the United States at the appropriate time!" The question now is whether Trump will continue to waive nuclear-related sanctions that were suspended under the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. Under the deal, Trump must actively waive certain sanctions every few months and the next deadline falls on January 12. Iran -- which has long accused the United States and Sunni Arab rivals led by Saudi Arabia of interference in its affairs -- said external "enemies" were behind recent unrest. Its U.N. Ambassador Gholamali Khoshroo said in a letter that the U.S. government had "stepped up its acts of intervention in a grotesque way in Iran's internal affairs" and accused Washington of violating international law and the principles of the U.N. charter. Online messaging and photo sharing platforms Telegram and Instagram remained blocked on mobile phones, having been interrupted soon after protests began. Telecoms Minister Mohammad-Javad Azari Jahromi said Telegram would only be unblocked if it removed "terrorist" content.
- Parliament responds -I
ran's political establishment has closed ranks against the unrest, with even reformists condemning the violence. But many have also called on Rouhani to address the economic grievances that drove the initial protests. There have already been moves in parliament to block the unpopular budget measures announced last month, which included cuts to welfare and fuel price hikes. "As concerns petrol prices, we must absolutely take into account the situation of the people because the tensions are absolutely not in the interests of the country," parliament speaker Ali Larijani said on Wednesday. Rouhani came to power in 2013 promising to mend the economy and ease social tensions, but high living costs and unemployment have left many feeling that progress is too slow. Rural areas, hit by years of drought and under-investment, are particularly hard-hit. On the streets of the capital, there is widespread sympathy with the economic grievances driving the unrest, particularly an unemployment rate as high as 40 percent for young people. "People have reached a stage where they can no longer tolerate this pressure from the authorities," said Soraya Saadaat, a 54-year-old jobless woman. But some Tehranis said claims from the U.S. that they were desperate for freedom were overblown. "We do have some freedom in Iran," Hamid Rahimi, a 33-year-old bank employee told AFP. "If the people of Iran have something to say, it's about economic problems. They want to see their demands, what they voted for, fulfilled."

Paris Says French Jihadist Wives 'Should Face Trial in Syria'

Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Female French jihadists arrested in Kurdish-held parts of Syria should face justice there so long as they can be guaranteed a fair trial, the French government said on Thursday. Debate has been swirling in France over the fate of women who went to Syria to marry Islamist fighters and now find themselves in custody, not least following heavy defeats for the Islamic State group. This week Emilie Konig, a 33-year-old Muslim convert from Brittany who became a notorious jihadist recruiter, became the latest of a string of European women to plead publicly for repatriation. But French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux indicated there are no plans to bring her home. If "there are legal institutions capable of guaranteeing a fair trial assuring their right to a defence", women arrested in Kurdish-held Syria should be "judged there", Griveaux told RMC radio.
"Whatever crime may have been committed -- even the most despicable -- French citizens abroad must have a guaranteed right to a defense," he added. "We must have confirmation of that."Konig, who features on U.N. and U.S. blacklists of dangerous militants, was arrested last month and is being held in a Kurdish camp with her three young children along with several other French women. "They have been arrested, and as far as we know they did not surrender of their own accord," Griveaux said. "They were arrested in combat." Konig's lawyer Bruno Vinay argued Wednesday that France must repatriate her under its "international commitments."A policeman's daughter who converted after meeting her first husband, Konig set off for Syria in 2012, leaving her first two children in France to join her new partner, who was later killed. She frequently appeared in propaganda videos and French intelligence intercepted messages to her contacts at home urging them to attack French institutions or the wives of soldiers. Some 30 French jihadists, both men and women, are currently in the custody of Kurdish and Iraqi forces, according to a source close to the investigation.
'Must face justice for crimes'
Of some 5,000 EU Islamists believed to have gone to fight, around a third have returned home, according to the Soufan Center, a U.S.-based NGO that conducts research on global security. So far, France, Germany and Britain have tackled returnees on a case-by-case basis. The Syrian Kurds' representative in France told AFP that authorities in their territory, covering swathes of north and northeast Syria, were ready to either take the women to court or send them home with their children. "With France, an allied country, we can come to an agreement that works out well, bearing in mind that the priority is that these terrorists are held accountable for their crimes," Issa said. No foreign national has yet appeared in court in Kurdish-held areas, Issa added, adding that their forces on the ground have some 1,300 "terrorists" in custody including foreigners. Kurds currently hold just under a third of Syrian territory -- including the Raqa region, IS' former "capital" -- while the regime holds around a half, following the multi-sided civil war which has raged since 2011. France is part of the U.S.-led international military coalition that has been carrying out air strikes against IS.

Israel Minister Calls for More Settlement Approvals
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has summoned a meeting of top Israeli planning officials for next week to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, his office said Thursday.A brief statement said he had convened a session of the Supreme Planning Council for Monday "to approve new programs for the planning and sale of housing units in all parts of the (West Bank)."It did not give details. The Hebrew-language statement said the move was "part of the policy of Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to strengthen settlement in Judea and Samaria," the Hebrew biblical term for the West Bank. Israel occupied the territory in the Six-Day War of 1967. Today more than 600,000 Jewish settlers live there and in annexed east Jerusalem among 2.9 million Palestinians, with frequent outbreaks of violence between the sides. The settlements are deemed illegal under international law and widely seen as a main obstacle to peace. The central committee of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party on Sunday passed a resolution urging its MPs to work for annexation of the West Bank settlements. Taking such a measure could effectively end prospects for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as there would be little area left for a Palestinian state. But a significant number of members of Netanyahu's right-wing coalition say that is precisely what they are seeking and openly oppose a Palestinian state. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday harshly condemned the Likud vote and criticized the United States for its silence. "We hope that this vote serves as a reminder for the international community that the Israeli government, with the full support of the U.S. administration, is not interested in a just and lasting peace," he said. The prime minister says he still supports a two-state solution with the Palestinians, although he has also pushed for Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. According to settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel advanced plans for 6,742 settlement units in the West Bank in 2017, the most since 2013. Israeli right-wing politicians have seized on support from U.S. President Donald Trump to promote measures seen as further damaging remaining hopes for a two-state solution.

Clashes in Syria Rebel Bastion over Surrounded Regime Base
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Syrian regime forces on Thursday battled to reach troops trapped in rebel bastion Eastern Ghouta, as a monitor said at least 28 civilians were killed in Russian and government bombardments.State television said "army units had launched an assault to break the siege" of the Armored Vehicle Base where some 250 soldiers are believed to be cut off. On the outskirts of Damascus, Eastern Ghouta is one of the last remaining opposition strongholds in Syria and has itself been under government siege since 2013, causing severe food and medicine shortages for up to 400,000 residents. The regime base on the edge of the region was surrounded by rebels at the start of the week after an offensive that involved Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance dominated by a former al-Qaida affiliate, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said "violent clashes were taking place" Thursday close to the base, the only one in Eastern Ghouta still held by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
Dead and wounded
Ahead of the government operation, Abdel Rahman said at least 29 civilians were killed in Eastern Ghouta Wednesday by Russian and regime bombardments. Twenty were killed in Russian air strikes in the town of Misraba, while the remainder died in regime raids and shelling in other areas. Seven children and 11 women were among those killed, said the head of the war monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria. Victims were taken to a hospital in Douma, where an AFP correspondent saw rescuers bringing in mostly women and children. Medical staff tried to revive a child who had been pulled from the rubble, but without success. A young girl among the wounded received stitches for a serious injury to her face. A medical source at the hospital told AFP: "Among the wounded were two women in their 20s. One of them lost both eyes and the other lost one eye." Eastern Ghouta is one of four "de-escalation zones" agreed by Russia, as well as regime backer Iran and rebel supporter Turkey, to help halt fighting around Syria. The deal excludes Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, but other larger rebel groups in Eastern Ghouta are part of it.
Attack on Russian base
The latest fighting there comes as regime troops backed up by Russian airpower battle rebels and jihadists on the edge of northwestern Idlib province, the only one still fully beyond government control. The government push near Idlib -- also a "de-escalation zone" -- follows two months of sporadic fighting that the United Nations says has displaced more than 60,000 people. Meanwhile, Russia's defence ministry on Thursday said two servicemen were killed in a New Year's Eve mortar attack by Islamist militants on its Hmeimim airbase in Latakia province, but denied media reports seven military planes were destroyed. Moscow has declared its mission in Syria largely completed after a two-year intervention that has shifted the conflict firmly in Assad's favour. Russia says it has carried out a partial withdrawal but it will still keep soldiers and bases in Syria. The war in Syria has killed more than 340,000 people and displaced millions from their homes since it began in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.

28 Civilians Killed in Syria, Most in Russian Air Strikes
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/At least 28 civilians have been killed by bombardment in the besieged Syrian opposition stronghold of Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, most of them in Russian air raids, a monitor said. Nineteen were killed in Russian strikes in the town of Misraba on Wednesday, while the remainder died the same day in regime strikes and shelling in other areas, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Seven children and 11 women were among those killed, according to the head of the Britain-based war monitor, Rami Abdel Rahman. Victims were taken to a hospital in Douma, where an AFP correspondent saw rescuers bringing in mostly women and children. Medical staff tried to revive an infant who had been pulled from the rubble, but without success. A young girl among the wounded received stitches for a serious injury to her face. A medical source at the hospital told AFP: "Among the wounded were two women in their 20s. One of them lost both eyes and the other lost one eye." Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining opposition strongholds in Syria, is controlled mostly by rebels from the Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) group. It has been under government siege since 2013, causing severe food and medicine shortages for around 400,000 residents. According to the Observatory, Russian-backed regime forces have increased their bombardment of the enclave in recent days in response to jihadists and rebels attacking regime positions near the town of Harasta. The monitor relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used. - 'Troops gathering' -The bombardment comes despite Eastern Ghouta being one of four "de-escalation zones" agreed by Russia, as well as regime backer Iran and rebel supporter Turkey, to help halt fighting around Syria. Jaish al-Islam leader Mohammed Alloush on Thursday accused the regime of preparing an assault on the opposition stronghold. "The regime has been gathering its troops especially on our fronts for the past month to attack (Eastern) Ghouta," he told AFP.
The Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the government, on Thursday said the army was gathering its troops on the outskirts of Harasta. The war in Syria has killed more than 340,000 people and displaced millions from their homes since it began in 2011 with the brutal repression of anti-government protests. The latest raids came after at least seven civilians, including five children, were killed Tuesday by air strikes in northwestern Idlib province, the last outside government control, the Observatory said.
Two Russian servicemen killed
Government and allied forces backed by Russian warplanes have been battling jihadist fighters and rebels for more than a week in an area straddling the boundary between Idlib and Hama provinces. The government push on the edge of Idlib province -- also a "de-escalation zone" -- follows two months of sporadic fighting that the United Nations says has displaced more than 60,000 people. Russia first launched bombing raids in 2015 in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. The strikes have helped Assad regain control over much of the war-ravaged country. Russia's defense ministry on Thursday said two servicemen were killed in a mortar attack by Islamist militants at the Hmeimim airbase in northwestern Syria on New Year's Eve, but denied media reports seven military planes were destroyed. The news came a day after the ministry announced a Russian helicopter crash that killed two pilots following a technical fault as it was flying to Hama, in northwestern Syria, also on December 31. Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu last month said the military had completed the partial withdrawal from Syria ordered by President Vladimir Putin, but Moscow would maintain a presence in the country, including three battalions and two bases. Moscow acknowledged in recent months that its special forces are also active on the ground in the offensive against Islamic State group jihadists.

Russia Says 2 Troops Killed in Syria, Denies Warplanes Destroyed

Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Russia's defence ministry on Thursday said two servicemen were killed in a mortar attack by Islamist militants in Syria on New Year's Eve, but denied media reports seven military planes were destroyed. "As darkness fell, the Hmeimim air base was subjected to sudden mortar shelling from a mobile group of militants. As a result of the shelling, two servicemen were killed," the defense ministry said in a statement to Russian agencies. The Kommersant business daily reported seven military planes had been "practically destroyed" in the attack, citing two military-diplomatic sources, but the ministry said the report was "fake."The news comes a day after the ministry announced a Russian helicopter crash in Syria that killed two pilots following a technical fault, also on December 31. With four fatalities this is one of the deadliest single days for the Russian army in Syria since it entered the conflict and brings the total number of officially reported losses to 44. Security around the Hmeimim base was being stepped up after the mortar attack, the defence ministry said. "The Russian air force in Syria is combat-ready and continues to fulfill all intended tasks," the statement added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Syria last month where he ordered the start of a pullout of Russian troops, saying their task in the war-torn country had been largely completed. Three battalions of military police and officers of the Russian Center for Reconciliation would remain in Syria, as well as two Russian bases, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said on a subsequent trip. Russia became involved in the multi-front conflict in September 2015, when it began an aerial campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad's military. Moscow acknowledged in recent months that its special forces are also active on the ground in the offensive against Islamic State jihadists.

Israel Opens Probe into Death of Wheelchair-Bound Palestinian
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Israel's military said Thursday it was opening an investigation into the death of a wheelchair-bound Gazan man, with Palestinian officials saying he was shot by a sniper during clashes with Israeli forces. Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh, a 29-year-old whose family said had lost his legs in a 2008 Israeli strike, was shot in the head by a sniper during protests and clashes along the Gaza border on December 15, according to the health ministry in Gaza. The United Nations' human rights chief said he was "truly shocked" by Abu Thurayeh's death and demanded an "independent and impartial investigation."On Thursday, Israel's military announced it was opening a probe into his death, after previously saying it was not able to determine whether he had been killed by its soldiers' fire. "As stated previously, the IDF's (Israeli army’s) operational review concluded that no live fire was aimed at Abu Thurayeh," it said in a statement. "Based on the information gathered during the review, it was not possible to determine whether Abu Thurayeh was injured as a result of riot dispersal means or what caused his death. "In order to further examine the case, including information received from organizations operating in the Gaza Strip, it was decided that the circumstances of (Abu) Thurayeh's death will also be examined by a military police investigation."AFP photographers have seen Abu Thurayeh at multiple demonstrations in recent years. In video footage recorded the day he was killed, Abu Thurayeh could be seen carrying the Palestinian flag and waving the victory sign at Israeli soldiers across the border. The protest on December 15 was part of unrest that has occurred in the Palestinian territories since U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Fourteen Palestinians have been killed since Trump's December 6 announcement, most of them in clashes with Israeli forces.

Israeli Jets Hit Gaza Site after Rocket Fire
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/January 04/18/Israeli air strikes targeted a site in the Gaza Strip overnight in response to rocket fire from the Palestinian enclave, with no injuries reported, the military and Gazan security sources said on Thursday. "In response to the projectiles fired at southern Israeli communities throughout yesterday from the Gaza Strip, IAF (Israeli air force) fighter jets targeted a significant terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip," Israeli forces said in a statement, without providing further details on what was hit. Security sources in Gaza said empty land was targeted east of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, causing no injuries. Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired at least 20 rockets or mortar rounds at Israel since U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as the country's capital, at least six of which have been intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system. No Israelis have been wounded by the rocket fire. The projectiles are often fired by fringe radical Islamist groups, but Israel holds Gaza's militant rulers Hamas responsible for any attacks from the territory and retaliates by targeting Hamas positions.

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on January 04-05/18
The Iranian people deserve a more dynamic system of government that revives the country’s fortunes
Con Coughlin/The National/January 04/ 2018
الشعب الإيراني يستحق حكومة تستعيد ثروات البلد
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/?p=61584
A new sanctions regime would send a clear message to the ayatollahs that the will of the Iranian people cannot be ignored
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blames foreign foes for nationwide protests, although there is no evidence to support that claim
Ever since Donald Trump came to power a year ago, he has attracted considerable derision over the hardline stand he has taken against North Korea and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Critics have accused the US president of being a modern-day Dr Strangelove, a man hellbent on provoking nuclear armageddon by directly confronting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and threatening his country with total destruction if he continues with his attempts to build nuclear weapons capable of hitting the American mainland.
But in their desperation to lampoon Mr Trump, the crucial point these critics appear to have overlooked is that Washington’s uncompromising stance now appears to be paying dividends.
After decades during which American diplomacy has done little more than appease North Korea, Mr Trump’s approach is having a profound impact on Mr Kim’s conduct.
Having initially dispatched a fleet of warships to intimidate Pyongyang, the Trump administration then brought further pressure to bear by persuading the UN to impose tougher sanctions, while at the same pressuring China to use its influence to bring its troublesome neighbour – and long-standing ally – to heel.
The result is clear to see in the conciliatory tone Mr Kim adopted in his New Year address when he offered to reopen communication channels with South Korea and even raised the prospect of sending North Korean athletes to compete in the winter games Seoul is due to host next month.
It remains to be seen just how much this new spirit of detente between Pyongyang and Seoul will accomplish. But the fact these two long-standing foes are now talking to each other for the first time in years is a vindication of Mr Trump’s no-nonsense approach.
And if Mr Trump’s robust tactics can deliver results with a rogue state like North Korea, then why not adopt the same tactics against another of the world’s leading rogue states, namely Iran?
It is now abundantly clear from the statements made by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as major-general Mohammad Ali Jafari, the head of the Revolutionary Guards, that the Islamic Republic has no intention of heeding the calls of the anti-government protesters, who are demanding economic reform as well as an end to Iran’s military involvement in Arab states such as Yemen and Iraq.
As has become the custom whenever the regime experiences opposition, Mr Khamenei has simply denounced the protests as the work of the “enemies of Iran”, while Mr Jafari, the Revolutionary Guards chief, sought to play down the scale of the protests, making the rather bizarre claim that only 15,000 people had been involved in the protests nationwide, although reports from the cities involved suggest the figure is infinitely higher.
But in an authoritarian regime like Iran, it is virtually impossible to gain a definitive picture of the scale of the protests. Similarly, given the uncompromising measures the regime uses to crush any form of dissent, the anti-government protestors have little likelihood of prevailing with their demands for change without some form of outside help.
It is for this reason that, unlike what happened during the 2009 Green Revolution, the major world powers are not turning their back on Iran’s protestors and instead applying intense pressure on the regime to accommodate their views and undertake wholesale reform.
As recent events in Pyongyang have proved, economic sanctions can deliver results – as long as they are properly applied. Indeed, one of the main factors in president Hassan Rouhani’s successful election in 2013 was his commitment to deal with the crippling sanctions that had been imposed on Tehran regarding its wilful non-compliance with the international community over its nuclear programme.
At that time the sanctions were so effective that the Iranian economy had been brought to its knees and Mr Rouhani was almost forced to beg the major powers for a nuclear deal to get the sanctions lifted.
The controversies over whether the major powers should, in return, have secured a better deal with Tehran have been well-aired. But the key point is that the sanctions implemented against Iran until 2015 worked to devastating effect – and, with the right political will, could be made to do so again.
For this to happen the world needs strong leadership from Washington. It was former president Barack Obama’s decision to turn his back on the Green Revolution that allowed the agents of repression in Iran – the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij – to suppress the revolts.
But the Trump administration has made it clear it has no intention of repeating the mistake and is already pressuring the UN to address the matter.
The implementation of a new sanctions regime against Iran would certainly send a clear message to the ayatollahs that the outside world is no longer willing to tolerate their refusal to acknowledge the will of the Iranian people. Nearly four decades after the creation of the Islamic Republic, the ayatollahs’ warped interpretation of what an Islamic government should look like appears tired and anachronistic.
What the Iranian people desire and deserve is a new, more dynamic system of government, one that revives the country’s fortunes and fulfils the enormous potential that lies within.
The economic landscape of the modern Middle East is changing fast. Iran’s predominantly youthful population only needs to look across the tranquil waters of the Gulf to see what can be done when benign Arab governments allow the true spirit of entrepreneurial endeavour to flourish.
**Con Coughlin is the Daily Telegraph’s defence and foreign affairs editor and author of Khomeini’s Ghost


Soft sands and stormy winds in the Arab world
Amr Moussa/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
The year 2017 witnessed important developments linked to the ongoing movement of change in the Arab world. Some indicate that military clashes and terrorist acts will decrease, such as in Iraq, Syria and Libya, while others indicate that they will continue, such as in Yemen and terror attacks in Egypt’s Sinai.
On the other hand, international efforts have intensified to reach political solutions that are still incomplete and expected to take shape in 2018. This is applied to the turbulent situation in the Fertile Crescent region, southern Arabian Peninsula and Arab countries in North Africa. Based on the above, the Arab world is unstable and so are its neighbors in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel region. As for Iran, Turkey and Israel, they complete the picture of the Middle East and they lie in wait to reap any rewards. They stand in a position of power, have smart administrations, strong tactics and the ability to maneuver that enables them to achieve strategic visions. These are assets that are completely absent from or partially available to other regional countries.
This is a very brief introduction to the situation in our region at a time when we bid farewell to an old year and welcome a new one. The welcome cannot be complete without acknowledging that the reconstruction of Arab societies, through real and comprehensive reform (in the fields of education, economy, justice and administration and imposing the rule of the constitution, law and democracy…), has not taken place. Its real beginning has not even started yet, which deals a blow to the movement of change or at least slows it down.
It weakens the Arab strategic position at a time when regional balances are being assessed to see who can be a partner and who can be fragmented or indefinitely destabilized.
This situation demands Arab citizens to call on governments to exercise caution. The region is headed towards a new reality and the search is on for the “new regional system,” which will unavoidably be established. At this point a very honest proposal needs to be made.
A united Arab stance, should we reach it, will mean a political weapon that is greater than allying with this major power or that regional country
Mistakes of the past
Arab governments, or Arab rulers, do you want to keep on correcting the mistakes of the past or do you want to build a new Arab system that is based on a modern vision of Arab solidarity and that takes into consideration the factors of the 21st century and the aspirations of our mostly youthful societies?
Conditions should be prepared for them because this century will reject and defeat all who remain frozen in a certain mentality or who believe that what took place in the 20th century can be replicated. Or have you determined to put an end to the collective Arab life and each go your own way to achieve your interests and safety, even if it may be temporary and superficial? On this note, let me say the following: One: Whoever seeks the protection of major powers will remain exposed because in reality, this was never about protecting a country or its interests. It was about the more powerful pursuing their interests and once they are achieved, then the weaker player will be cast aside (we saw what happened to the Shah of Iran and the figures that were toppled in the “Arab Spring”, all of whom were thought to be “protected”).
Two: Whoever believes that he can use Israel in a plan or policy against Iran, for example, will discover that Israel is manipulating him and that Iran and Israel may at any moment reach an understanding that totally disregards Arab stances and their interests. The possibilities of this happening are clear to all who are aware of political games and their complexities.
Three: Those who believe that the US holds all cards, or at least 99 percent, of the regional game are mistaken. The situation is no longer the way it was in the 20th century. The cards have been distributed and several of them are being seized. The Arab world must obtain some of them. The ways to do so are well known in political science and it can happen, even if through certain conditions.
Four: Abandoning the Palestinian cause and claiming that we have more important problems would be a “grave strategic error.” The cause that we are clinging on to could create for the Arabs important political cards through which fair regional arrangements can be reached for the Palestinians and all the Arabs within a peaceful framework that falls in line with the new regional system. In this regard, we should closely examine the aftermath of Trump’s decision on Jerusalem.
Five: As for Iran, it is a country that has a long history in the region where Arabs make up a majority, either in countries or population. There is no doubt that old and new disputes exist on the Arab-Iranian scene. There is also no doubt that Arabs generally refuse the export of the revolution and the majority of Arab support the rise of a civil state, whose authorities are the constitution and laws and nothing else.
Declaration of ‘victory’
Senior Iranian officials’ proud declaration of victory and boasting that Tehran now controls four Arab capitals was very negatively received in the Arab world. In addition, concerns have been raised about the threats of Iran’s ongoing pursuit of its agenda to impose its hegemony over the region.
At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif’s call for dialogue should not be disregarded and it should be viewed from a peaceful perspective. Time should be given to determine whether his call reflects a change and development in Iranian policy or if it is a political maneuver.
The relationship with Iran should be viewed from an Arab angle and it should be approached while keeping in mind the past, present and future dimensions of this relationship. A united Arab stance, should we reach it, will represent a political weapon that is greater than allying with this major power or that regional country. Neither alliance will harbor good intentions towards the Arabs and neither will honestly take their interests into consideration.
Six: As for Turkey, its ambitions to restore some of the power it enjoyed over the Arab world during Ottoman rule is emerging, through a 21st century approach. In this regard, Turkey will be seeking to achieve its interests, which do not necessarily coincide with Arab ones. It will seek to do so through a strong Turkish military, economic and political presence and in playing, as much as possible, an effective role in reshaping some regional countries and governments.
In this regard, Turkey is forming its alliances and is being selective in the locations it sets up base. We have seen several examples of this. It has a military base in Qatar, meaning the Gulf, and a dominant presence in the Sudanese island of Sawakin, putting it in the Red Sea.
Ankara has a strong strategic political stance on Kurdish regions in Syria and Iraq, and alliances with extremist regional and international organizations, starting with the Muslim Brotherhood, all in coordination with Iran and its regional policy. In addition, Turkey is enjoying a positive policy with Russia and a special position with the United States and various other western alliances.
Given the above, Turkey has managed to garner very special strategic positions that are bolstered by its strong economy and successful management, even if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest policies raise several questions.
In reality, we should be wary of Turkey’s ambitions, especially in regards to its alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood and its efforts to achieve a regional system with an Ottoman or religious identity. We as Arabs, starting with Egypt and the Gulf, must closely and diligently study Turkey’s actions that make it a force in the Gulf and Fertile Crescent.
Seven: Israel. Our problems with Israel are related to the establishment of a Palestinian state, whose capital is East Jerusalem, ending the occupation of Arab land and thwarting its dreams of expanding to the Nile and the Euphrates. The reality is that the 2002 Arab initiative that was launched in Beirut is the key to reaching peace, ending enmity and paving the way for stability in the region.
At this point, we as Arabs should declare a clear stance against Israel’s obstruction of the two-state solution. We should propose a peace agenda that is based on two possibilities, either this or that, within a timeline and transparent international authority. With that I mean establishing an independent Palestinian state or one that brings together Israelis and Palestinians alike. Israel must choose.
The Israelis and Americans have made the Palestinian state option a mirage for Arabs to chase while Israel colonizes and “judaizes” Palestinian land. The one-state option should be on the agenda of any negotiations table along with the option of the Palestinian state. We have negotiated over the latter for over a quarter of a century to no avail. Negotiations, should they be held, must be within a timeframe. Once they end and talks of a Palestinian state end, then so will talk of a Jewish state. We can then begin serious discussions on a single state for all Israelis and Palestinians.
Yes, it is time to officially and internationally propose the one-state option, regardless of Israel’s rejection of all fair peace options.
Eight: Ethiopia. It is considered a major country in the Horn of Africa, which includes the three Arab countries of Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti. Ethiopia also enjoys strong strategic ties with Egypt, which are represented now with the Renaissance Dam project and its threat to Egypt’s share of Nile waters.
Arab and Islamic family
There is no doubt that Ethiopia is part of the Arab and Islamic family that spans the Asian and African continents. Common interests should therefore be taken into consideration and problems with Addis Ababa must be resolved, starting with the Nile dam dispute. The dispute should be tackled through a major development and investment operation within a new regional framework. The above is not simply a recap of 2017, but it is a preparation for the new year. It is a brief and quick examination of the rapidly moving regional situation that stands on soft sand and is being blown by stormy winds. The region is filled with demons, who are drawing a terrifying scene.There are however some glimmers of hope that can only be strengthened through restoring Arab consciousness and having leaders assume their responsibilities towards the current and upcoming generations according to a clear vision of the future. Experienced Arab leaders could help in drafting this vision within an Arab proposal for an Arab and regional security system. In this regard, it would be best to review the proposal that was made at the 2010 Arab League summit to set up a league of Arab neighbors or study the possibility of setting up a regional security and cooperation system in the Middle East. These proposals have their conditions and demands and their establishment requires creating suitable Arab and regional factors, starting with Iran reconsidering its regional policies and actions, Turkey going back on its Ottoman ambitions and Israel ceasing its rejection of Palestinian rights. Can we as Arabs rise to the occasion?

Our sick neighbor
Adnan Hussein/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
There is no doubt that Iran is a sick state. The frequent popular protests defying oppression every few years are a proof of that.
Iran’s friends and supporters in Iraq would be upset by such opinions as the Iranian regime is sacred to them. However, if they really have their friends’ best interest at heart, they must inform them of the truth. The truth is that Iran is a sick state whose main problem lies in its totalitarian regime.
Ten years after the Iranian revolution toppled the Shah, the world began to clean up totalitarian regimes. Later on, the regimes of Saddam Hussein, Moammar Qaddafi, Ali Abdullah Saleh and Taliban collapsed. The Assad regime is faltering, and if it hadn’t been for that strong and flagrant Iranian and Russian intervention, it would have collapsed years ago. It’s well-known that a large percentage of oil revenues, as well as other revenues, is being used to cover military expenses and to support groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and other countries. Iran desperately held on to the totalitarian regime, and it now resembles someone who is going to Mecca while pilgrims are returning. Eight years ago, the large-scale popular uprising calling for freedom was violently quelled. Those oppressed included prominent members from within the regime itself, such as former President Mohammad Khatami, former Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi, former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and hundreds of other reformist figures and thousands of ordinary people who aspired for freedom after three decades of totalitarian governance which turned Iran that’s rich in natural resources into one of the poorest countries in the world.
Economic crisis
In October, Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli submitted a report to Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei and included detailed numbers about the economic and social crisis that has been worsening for decades. The report showed that the unemployment rate in some cities reached 60 percent, which is unprecedented during the Islamic Republic’s history. Rahmani Fazli said at a press conference that the current unemployment rate is 12.5 percent and noted that the rate is higher in other areas such as in the Kurdish Kermanshah and Arab Ahwaz and in the Baluchestan Province where it reached 60%.
The report also said that 11 million Iranians live in marginalized areas, adding that there are 1.5 million drug addicts and 600,000 prisoners. These numbers are huge for a country that exports more than 4.5 million barrels of oil a day and that is almost self-sufficient in terms of nutrition. According to unofficial data, the annual inflation rate is very high as it’s between 6.8% and 8.7%. It’s well-known that a large percentage of oil revenues, as well as other revenues, is being used to cover military expenses and to support groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and other countries.
It’s not difficult to resort to armed force to quell the current protests but can this force put out the fire beneath the ashes? Iran’s experience states otherwise.

The vanity of social media
Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
If we draw ourself away from the current technological development for hours or days, we will realize how much time we waste in watching ridiculous videos and following up on silly matters. Poor products dominate the scene as the number of apps have increased. Vanity has been sponsored and packaged as a product that’s worthy of exporting and recycling, thus tempting consumers. This is what can be seen from the fact that many social media stars became writers or media figures. This is dangerous because they dominate the scene as figures who mentor our children.
Armies of vanity
Two decades ago, publishing an article or appearing on television was difficult. Amateurs needed to train and refine their talents and then walk a long and bitter path to venture into the field of publication and media. Social media made this much easier now. Some even laugh at prominent journalists and intellectuals because they are not familiar with technology and do not use modern apps like Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. This rising category is trying to destroy cultural and media achievements, considering they are “remnants of the past.” Armies of vanity are thus trying to eliminate some of the real and solid achievements, through social media. Amid the current wave of entertainment activities in Saudi Arabia, there are two major developments pertaining to the conflict between the real product and the fake one. The first one is the importance of no longer hosting social media stars and hiring them to act or lecture or narrate their success stories. The second one is to base work on the sophistication seen at poetry and musical events. The latter must direct other entertainment events in the kingdom in order to cleanse reality after these “stars” dominated the arena amid the absence of critics, poets, authors and composers and after a bunch of ignorant men, who spread vanity as a comprehensive product worthy of appreciation and praise, took over several platforms.
Two decades ago, publishing an article or appearing on television was difficult. Amateurs needed to train and refine their talents and then walk a long and bitter path to venture the field of publication and media. Social media made this much easier now.
Societies which protected their aesthetic taste maintained their real products, such as art or music. When an opera in Riyadh opens – hopefully very soon – the events held there must meet the standards of other events across the world. If we do not do so, opera houses, theatres and others will be mere buildings void of meaning. They will lack a spirit that refines them and guards them. There are successful models of opera houses in the UAE, Oman, Kuwait and other countries which we can benefit from.
Sweeping wave
There was a time when we feared that social media will affect crime rates. Now that there are security measures to address this in cooperation with the owner of these apps, we must protect ourselves from the repercussions of these destructive tools which waste our time, worry us and drag us all the way down to vanity. It’s a sweeping wave, like a tsunami which we can warn of but cannot stop. It’s a warning which wise men can make use of and it’s very important that we do. as without it societies will act like obedient herds that head towards existential demise. Some researchers, academics and reasonable men, in addition to fools, fall for this and walk down this spiral of vanity. Commenting on social media, Italian contemporary writer Umberto Eco once told the Italian La Stampa daily: “Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.”

Avoiding the Bitcoin trap
Mahmoud Ahmad/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
People are always attracted to, or run after, new investment opportunities. Sometimes they do this without due diligence. They run after every chance there is to make a profit in the simple hope that they will be able to double or triple their investment by making a quick buck in a new or uncharted venture.
This is human nature and that’s what people who offer these investment opportunities hope to play upon. Only educated persons or expert investors who calculate every step and evaluate the risk and study the market before making a new investment are the ones who usually succeed.
However, an inexperienced person, who is blindly running after wealth thinking that his money will double without any risk, will on many occasions part with his money rather than make more. His only calculation being making a profit without understanding the scheme, the market or the risk involved. Many fall into the trap of such questionable investment schemes, and one currently making the rounds is the Bitcoin scheme. It is said that the simplicity of this new currency system is what makes it a possible currency of the future. People think it is better to invest early in order to make gains before buying Bitcoins becomes harder or more costly. What is a Bitcoin? It is a cryptocurrency and worldwide payment system. It is the first decentralized digital currency, as the system works without a central bank or single administrator. The website dollarcollapse.com states: “It came in 2008 after a mysterious person or group using the apparent pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto unveiled it.
The Bitcoin system tracks each piece of currency from buyer to seller, eliminating the possibility of one person spending the same piece of currency multiple times before the counterparties catch on. The network is distributed, with no central clearinghouse or bank holding everyone’s money and imposing rules.
The investor first needs to be tech savvy and must inquire about how foolproof mining, transactions and the buying and selling of Bitcoins are
‘Miners’ creation’
“Miners” create more Bitcoins by solving complex algorithms to add more Bitcoins to the system, with the difficulty of the number crunching increasing as the quantity of Bitcoins grows, thus keeping their supply rising at a steady, predetermined rate until it reaches its preordained limit of 21 million a century or so hence.” I am not an expert in investment or in banking systems, nor am I someone who fully understands potential economic opportunities. But I am a citizen who looks at past experiences and can forecast, as a citizen, the danger on the horizon of a possible bad investment.
Despite the awareness efforts of responsible authorities warning people against such bad investments, there are a good number of people who fall victim to them. The Bitcoin scheme could be another one of them. The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA) recently issued a warning against this digital currency because of its high risks and because it is not being monitored by an authority. There are international gangs that target people who are searching for quick wealth. They take advantage of people’s lack of awareness of their tricks and of investment in general and the good intentions of the general public to lure people into a trap, stealing their money and leaving them high and dry. The sad memory of SAWA investment is still fresh in the minds of many people who were promised a huge financial return by investing in SAWA calling cards. Some scammers managed to collect hundreds of millions of riyals while others managed to collect over one billion through this investment scheme. At the end of the day, victims were left with nothing.
Market operation
The same happened with the stock market when people bought shares without any knowledge or even a clue of how the market operates. The dream of becoming rich fast blinded the eyes and minds of many people, despite their lack of investment knowledge, information and risk assessment.
At the end of the day, many people lost everything — savings and land wealth. I personally have met many who went through these investment experiences that left them poorer all because they were driven mainly by ignorance and greed. More awareness is needed about Bitcoins because we do not know who is behind this scheme. I hope it is not an international gang that is hiding in deep cyberspace hunting for victims. Bitcoins raise more questions than they answer. As they are not monitored, then if an investor lost his Bitcoins, to whom would he complain? The Bitcoin currency bypasses the established banking/regulatory system, making it free of government oversight, as was described by the website. In addition, the lack of understanding of how the digital currency works may contribute to further complications. People need to understand the method of transfer of the currency and how safe it is. Furthermore, in the process of the erosion of value, are there ways for investors to recoup their earnings as in the stock exchange? Then there is the fact that being a digital currency, the investor first needs to be tech savvy and must also inquire fully about how foolproof the mining, transactions and the buying and selling of Bitcoins are, because today every technology has to play catch-up with hacking and hackers. It is in this hazy scenario that I express my doubts about Bitcoins, which need to be analyzed by technology and economic experts who understand the way this scheme works before people venture into the unknown and get their fingers burned.

Iran Sends More to the Gallows
Denis MacEoin
/Gatestone Institute/January 04/2018
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11674/iran-political-prisoners
Iran's judicial authorities "continued to impose and carry out cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments that amounted to torture, including floggings, blindings and amputations. These were sometimes carried out in public." At least one woman, Fariba Khaleghi, remains under a sentence of death by stoning. — Amnesty International.
What is worse, the vast majority of those put to death in Iran have not committed crimes that would be punished with that severity (or at all) almost anywhere else in the world, least of all in Europe, Israel, or 23 states (and the District of Columbia) in the USA.
Even before their trials, individuals accused of anti-state convictions are mistreated, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for months on end, and denied access to their families and lawyers. "'Confessions' extracted under torture were used as evidence at trial. Judges often failed to deliver reasoned judgments and the judiciary did not make court judgments publicly available." — Amnesty International.
As for the mullahs, they brook no criticism from any quarter and intend to keep Iran and its people under their iron grip forever, even if that means putting to death every dissident voice.
At the end of December 2017, something almost without precedent happened in cities across Iran. It started in the largest shrine city of Mashhad, then moved to Kermanshah, which had not long before suffered a major earthquake in which some 600 people died and where survivors had been neglected by the state. After that, large-scale protests moved to Sari and Rasht in the north, the clerical city of Qom, then Hamadan, and by the December 29, Tehran itself. In the following days, people were on the streets across the country. Starting on the third day, protesters were challenged by massive turnouts of pro-regime marchers. Anti-government protests, which these were, had not been seen in this quantity since the brutally-crushed risings after the 2009 presidential elections. By January 2, at least 20 protesters had been killed and more than 450 arrested. It was reported on the same day that Iran's Chief Justice, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, claimed that protesters might be considered "enemies of God", and executed.
On his website, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,
"accused unnamed foreign enemies of meddling in Iran's affairs, using money, weapons, politics and intelligence apparatuses 'to create problems for the Islamic system'. The clerical elite is congenitally incapable of admitting that native Iranians, chafing under their harsh rule, might have genuine reasons for civil unrest."
President Hassan Rouhani, a fake "reformist", identified these foreign enemies as "the US, the regime occupying al-Quds [i.e. Israel] and their cronies".
Nothing deterred, US President Trump tweeted on January 1 that:
"Iran is failing at every level despite the terrible deal made with them by the Obama Administration. The great Iranian people have been repressed for many years. They are hungry for food & for freedom. Along with human rights, the wealth of Iran is being looted. TIME FOR CHANGE!"
Complaints are, indeed, many, including condemnation of the regime's foreign policy, which led to the country spending billions of dollars on its aggressive foreign adventures; supporting the fighting in Yemen and Syria; bolstering Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria; paying the Shi'i militias in Iraq; funding Hamas in Gaza, and, in general, financing and participating in terrorism worldwide. Why, these protesters asked, were these billions not being spent on Iran's own people? Despite modest growth in its economy since 2016, following sanctions relief, the country still suffers from inflation. Should President Trump's plan to re-impose some sanctions take effect in 2018, another economic downturn is likely. Inevitably, pro-regime demonstrators blame everything on the United States and Israel and carry placards calling for death for their supposed enemies.
Loud as these protests are, they are highly unlikely to lead to real reform. Iranian citizens may have limited freedom to go onto their streets, chanting slogans, but they have no concerted or strong political opposition behind which to rally. Even with only limited freedoms, there is evidence of a strong political purpose: to free Iranian citizens from the dictatorship of the one-party state apparatus. One Persian-language tweet cited by the BBC comes from Tehran University, where protests have taken place. The writer addresses Ayatollah Khamenei insultingly by name, writing: "Sayyid Ali, be ashamed of yourself. Leave the country alone (mamlakat-u raha kon)".
Significantly, among the calls for change aired in tormented Kermanshah, was one that targeted the impossibility of forming a political counterbalance to the regime. According to The Guardian:
About 300 demonstrators gathered in Kermanshah after what [the quasi-official news agency] Fars said was a "call by the anti-revolution". They shouted "Political prisoners should be freed" and "Freedom or death", and some public property was destroyed. Fars did not name any opposition groups.
There were no opposition groups present because there are no serious opposition groups. The reason for that is expressed in that call, "Political prisoners should be freed". Iran is choc-a-bloc with political dissidents who languish in its prisons.
It is no secret that the Islamic regime, which has ruled Iran since 1979, has a well-deserved reputation as one of the world's greatest abusers of human rights. In its 2016-2017 report on Iran, Amnesty International records innumerable instances of gross legislative and functional domestic abuses of women, religious and ethnic minorities, foreign nationals and Iranians with dual nationality. Political prisoners, including prisoners of conscience, human rights defenders, and reformists have been imprisoned in large numbers, tortured, subjected to five-minute trials without visible evidence or even lawyers to plead their cases. Others have been held under house arrest for many years.
The United for Iran group publishes a detailed online resource, the Iran Prison Atlas, in which data about a wide range of political prisoners is made available to researchers and the public. Prisoners are classified by religion, ethnicity, the charges made against them, how they have been mistreated, and the nature of their sentences. Currently, there are 645 political prisoners in detention, 1914 who have been released, and 82 who have been executed. Under different rubrics, the atlas lists 671 members of religious minorities, 529 supporting or belonging to dissident groups, 379 facing other religious charges, 262 ethnic activists, and sundry bloggers, pro-democracy activists, civic activists, labor rights activists, human rights defenders, journalists, artists, writers, people accused of collaboration with foreign governments, and women's rights activists. These numbers stay more or less stable. [1]
The current Amnesty report details:
"Judicial authorities continued to impose and carry out cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments that amounted to torture, including floggings, blindings and amputations. These were sometimes carried out in public."
Later, the report exposes an equally horrendous breach of human rights:
"The authorities continued to use the death penalty extensively, including against juvenile offenders. Hundreds of executions were carried out after unfair trials. Some executions were conducted in public".
At least one woman, Fariba Khaleghi, remains under a sentence of death by stoning.
In 2016, Gatestone writer and Iran specialist Majid Rafizadeh identified Iran as the world's leading country for executions:
Since January 2016, Iran has executed at least 230 people, that is at least one person a day on average. The number of executions has recently increased and Iran ranks first in the world, followed by China, when it comes to executions per capita. Iran executed approximately 1000 people in 2015.
Given the size of Iran's population (81,588,534 as of January 1, 2018) compared to that of China (1,412,298,946), this is an astonishing statistic. What is worse, the vast majority of those put to death have not committed crimes that would be punished with that severity (or at all) almost anywhere else in the world, least of all in Europe, Israel, or 23 states (and the District of Columbia) in the USA.
This overuse of execution, coupled with its often public exhibition, serves the regime well as a means of frightening the public and deterring any signs of opposition to the regime. In 1988, for example, a fatwa issued by the late Imam Khomeini, Iran's Supreme Leader, led to the killing of an unprecedented 30,000 prisoners, many as young as 13, during a purge of the country's prisons. Six at a time were hanged from gallows in an effort to scare the public witless. One former official from Tehran's notorious Evin Prison later testified:
Every half an hour from 7.30am to 5pm, 33 people were lifted on three forklift trucks to six cranes, each of which had five or six ropes. He said: "The process went on and on without interruption." In two weeks, 8,000 people were hanged. Similar carnage took place across the country.
The notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, Iran. (Image source: Ehsan Iran/Wikimedia Commons)
That countrywide massacre was intended to frighten off anyone who might lean towards opposition to the regime. Prisoners were asked to identify their political stance. Those who answered by supporting the Mujahidin-e Khalq or other anti-government movements such as the communist Tudeh Party were sent to die, while those expressing loyalty to the state were spared.
There are no show trials in Iran as there were in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Instead, "trials" are held behind closed doors, are adjudicated by special courts, and are politically and religiously biased. According to Amnesty International:
"Trials, including those resulting in death sentences, were generally unfair. The judiciary was not independent. The Special Court for the Clergy and the Revolutionary Courts remained particularly susceptible to pressure from security and intelligence forces to convict defendants and impose harsh sentences."
Even before their trials, individuals accused of anti-state convictions are mistreated, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for months on end, and denied access to their families and lawyers.
"'Confessions' extracted under torture were used as evidence at trial. Judges often failed to deliver reasoned judgments and the judiciary did not make court judgments publicly available."
As in Stalinist Russia, fake "confessions" have been used to impose lengthy prison terms or capital punishment. A recent example of this is the case of Iranian-Swedish doctor Ahmadreza Djalali, whose death sentence was confirmed by Iran's Supreme Court on December 17, 2017. Dr. Djalali was a researcher at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, where he worked on improving emergency medical responses to armed terrorism and radiological, chemical and biological threats. When in Iran, he had been on the faculty of the Natural Disaster Research Institute, working on HAZMAT emergencies for the country's Ministry of Health and later heading the Disaster Management Section of the ministry of Welfare and Social Justice. A useful, even essential, man, one might have thought.
Moving to Sweden, where he obtained his PhD, he settled down with his wife and two children, while holding positions at research centers in Belgium and Italy, and was a well-known name in the disaster medicine field in Europe. He was arrested by agents of the notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security in April 2016, while participating in scientific workshops in Iran, and sentenced to death on October 21 that same year by the Revolutionary Court in Tehran.
According to an "Urgent Action" report by Amnesty:
Iranian-born Swedish resident Ahmadreza Djalali, a scientist, medical doctor and academic, has been sentenced to death and fined 200,000 euros after being convicted of "corruption on earth" (efsad-e fel-arz) [sic] following a grossly unfair trial before Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. The court verdict alleged that Ahmadreza Djalali had worked as a spy for Israel in the 2000s. According to one of his lawyers, the court produced no evidence to substantiate the claims against him. The court also failed to provide a copy of the verdict and instead summoned one of the lawyers on 21 October 2017 to read the verdict in court.
Why was the Ministry of Intelligence -- effectively, the secret police -- interested in someone like Djalali at all? Was he really a spy for Israel -- a typical false accusation by the Iranian authorities -- or were there other reasons? In an article about Djalali for the Washington Examiner last November, Eugene M. Chudnovsky writes:
A source close to Djalali revealed that in 2014 he was approached by agents of the Iranian military intelligence that asked him to collect information on Western chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear sites, as well as on critical infrastructures and counter-terrorism operational plans. Djalali refused.
Chudnovsky adds details to the illegal procedures used to extract a false confessions from Djalali:
For three months Djalali was kept in a solitary confinement, interrogated daily with no lawyer present, and tortured to extract false confessions. Later he was placed in an 80 sq. ft. cell with three other prisoners. He was not allowed to speak with a lawyer. In December 2016 he began a hunger strike. It lasted 42 days. In February 2017 he started another hunger strike that lasted 43 days. His health has deteriorated. In July 2017 he was taken to a solitary confinement to prevent his contact with ambassadors from European countries that came to visit him in Evin prison.
Djalali himself has provided testimony to the pressures placed on him while in prison. According to another Amnesty report:
In a voice recording that was published on YouTube on 22 October, Ahmadreza Djalali is heard saying that, while in solitary confinement, he was twice forced to make "confessions" in front of a video camera by reading out statements pre-written by his interrogators. He says that he was put under intense pressure through psychological torture and threats to execute him and arrest his children to "confess" to being a spy for a "hostile government". In the recording, he says that his academic beliefs have been used to convict him and sentence him to death. He also denies the accusations against him and says they have been fabricated by Ministry of Intelligence interrogators.
Given that Djalali's is far from the only such case, Chudnovsky ends his article thus:
The case of Dr. Ahmadreza Djalali is the most horrific among recent cases of scientists accused by Iran of "collaboration with a hostile government". In 2011 Omid Kokabee, a doctoral student at the University of Texas – Austin, was arrested during a family visit to Iran and sentenced to 10 years in prison by Judge Salavati after he refused to work for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. He was released in 2016 after developing kidney cancer in Evin prison. Princeton doctoral student Xiyue Wang, who went to Iran to study ancient manuscripts, was arrested in August 2016, accused of spying for the United States, and sentenced to 10 years in prison in July 2017. This is a large part of the context in which we must understand the appalling limits placed on any meaningful participation in domestic politics in Iran. One of the greatest threats to political engagement is the regime's deliberate silencing of anyone with potential for leadership, whether for outright opposition to the clerical elite or for reform within it. The best-known opponent of the system is Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister and presidential contender who led the brutally suppressed Green Movement in 2009, for which he was named in 2010 by Time magazine as the world's most influential leader.[2] Since 2011, Mousavi, now 75 and ailing, along with his wife Zahra Rahnavard, herself a leading opposition figure, have been detained under house arrest in Tehran.
Similarly, the eminent reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, a former parliamentary speaker, now aged 80, has also remained under house arrest for the past six years. Significantly, although a former student of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a leading figure in the 1979 revolution, Karroubi has supported civil rights for women and ethnic or religious minorities. He could very well have served as an intermediary between the clerical elite and the secular younger generation, but has instead been kept out of public life. Although there are younger potential leaders of the opposition to Iran's regime, they remain in exile. There is, in effect, no space in Iran itself for opposition leaders to emerge without being arrested, imprisoned, and, in all likelihood (given current threats) hanged. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mark Dubowitz and Ray Takyeh sum this up well: "The regime is at an impasse. It has no more political actors — no establishment saviors — to offer its restless constituents". As for the mullahs, ayatollahs, mujtahids, hujjat al-Islams, marja'-e taqlids of Iran's bloated and selfish rulers, they brook no criticism from any quarter and intend to keep Iran and its people under their iron grip for ever, even if that means putting to death every dissident voice.
The clerics' days, however, may be numbered a lot sooner than that. Writing in Tablet Magazine on January 4, Edward Luttwak, a senior associate at America's Center for Strategic and International Studies, describes Iran as an impoverished country run by a corrupt clerical elite and dominated by over-expenditure from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and innumerable bonyads ("charitable" foundations), while leaving the population in dire straits.
What can be done to accelerate the collapse? Broad economic sanctions are out of the question, because they would allow the rulers to blame the Americans for the hardships inflicted by their own imperial adventures. But there is plenty of room for targeted measures against regime figures and their associates. The State Department list of sanctioned individuals is far from long enough; many more names deserve the honor.
Let us hope the US administration imposes those very sanctions, and quickly provides further help, in time to save the people of Iran.
Denis MacEoin has an MA in Persian and completed his doctorate in Persian Studies at Cambridge in 1979. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
[1] In 2010, Amnesty reported that "Out of the 600 prisoners: 173 are kept in the Evin prison; 354 are serving sentences and 246 are in detention waiting trial. Of those who have received sentences, 94 got more than 10 years. There are 63 women kept in various prisons and 38 journalists". It also commented that "When some of the prisoners are set free on bail, others are detailed and the number keeps its balance".
[2] For a detailed and well-sourced account of the 2009 rising and their suppression, see here.
© 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.

Egypt: State-Run Media vs. President el-Sisi
A. Z. Mohamed/Gatestone Institute/January 04/2018
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11678/egypt-state-media
Egypt's state-run press persists in the practice of condemning the United States and Israel -- an attitude that contradicts President el-Sisi's positions and vision for reforming Islam.
This is one of the conflicts that still beleaguer Egyptian society -- or perhaps signs of a growing power struggle.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi responded to U.S. President Donald Trump's official recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital with cautious pessimism. He warned his ally in the White House not to take measures that would undermine prospects for peace in the Middle East. The delicate balancing act he has been performing, to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with Washington, and at the same time not antagonize the Palestinians and much of the Egyptian public, was probably to be expected.
Not expected was the depth of extremist anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment spread by Egypt's state-run media. Two particularly jarring examples illustrate this disturbing trend.
The first was from television host Ahmed Moussa, on the Sada Elbalad network, who proceeded to denounce the United States as the world's bully, an international thug that supposedly both manages terrorism and manipulates it to justify its policies. He claimed that it was Egypt that led the world against Trump's Jerusalem declaration, and that the U.S. was trying to control Egypt by lodging false accusations of human rights violations and discrimination against Christians. He actually said this in spite of "what have now become regular assaults by Islamic militants on the country's Coptic community."
The second, and even more disturbing, example was a broadcast by Al Nahar TV's Gaber Al-Armouti. First, Al-Armouti celebrated a prayer delivered during the Friday sermon at Cairo's Al-Azhar Grand Mosque, by its imam, Mohammed Zaki: "May Allah doom Trump with defeat." Then he said he wished that the imam had cursed Israel, its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and all of its people. He subsequently praised the female teenage Palestinian provocateur, Ahed Tamimi, who slapped an Israeli soldier and called him a "moron and son of moron." When her father, during a phone interview with Al-Armouti, said that his daughter's attorney is Israeli and trustworthy, the host ignored the comment, and repeatedly yelled, "Zionist occupation," and "Zionist enemy," referring to Israelis as kelab (the derogatory Arabic word for "dog.")
Al-Armouti also decried that many Egyptians and other Arabs follow the IDF spokesman to the Arab press, Maj. Avichay Adraee, on social media, and share his "vicious" tweets, posts and news items. He then cursed Adraee, and expressed the wish that he be burned "in life and the afterlife." He also denounced all Israeli normalization initiatives as fake, claiming that their goal is to destroy Arabs and their countries; and said that ISIS has clear connections with Israel, which he called the "first, last, worst, and most dangerous enemy" and "son of bitch."
He concluded by stating, "Our enemies are not Qatar or Turkey; ultimately, we will reconcile with them. Only Israel will always be our enemy." He finished off with the prayer: "Allah, our God, kill Netanyahu and destroy his state!"
A few months ago, Israel's ambassador in Cairo, David Govrin, pointed to a shift in the Egyptian media's attitude towards Israel. "[The number of] poisonously critical articles and anti-Semitic cartoons has declined compared to the 1990s," Govrin said, during a lecture at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. This may be true, but it does not explain how it is that the state-run press persists in the practice of condemning the United States and Israel -- an attitude that contradicts el-Sisi's positions and vision for reforming Islam.
This is one of the conflicts that still beleaguer Egyptian society -- or perhaps signs of a growing power struggle. What is urgently needed -- to keep the next generation from being brainwashed by hate-filled, anti-Western propaganda -- is for all the pro-peace voices in the country's media to work together and in conjunction with the el-Sisi government, to report the news and present the facts in an objective and professional way.
*A.Z. Mohamed is a Muslim born and raised in the Middle East.
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Iran's Crisis is Deeper than the Price of Bread
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/January 04/18
After toppling the Shah in Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in one thing: eliminating the strongest, richest and the most successful country in the Middle East.
Khomeini established on the rubble of the modern Pahlavi empire a backward religious state with old left-wing economic ideology. Iran was a successful model in the eyes of the West and it was way ahead of other countries.
Then, Khomeini disappointed everyone who supported him and all those who thought well of him. Iran's youth hoped the Shah's successor will bring a comprehensive democratic system. Ethnic minorities thought that after the Shah's removal, dominant Persian nationalism will end and a unified Iran for all will be established. Communists thought he would be their ally against the US, the Shah's ally.
Meanwhile, US officials thought religious scholars were better than the communist Tudeh Party of Iran, which will also block the way before the Soviets who were occupying neighboring Afghanistan. In addition, they thought they could work together with the clerics later on. The Arab people believed Khomeini's pledges to liberate Jerusalem from the Israelis and Arabs in the Gulf hoped the Shah's departure would end the dispute over the islands, Bahrain, and Iraq.
They were all wrong.
After Khomeini assumed power, Iranian youth paid the highest price. Universities were placed under the clerics' control and women were oppressed. The first victims of the newly-established regime were the leftists, who suffered the prejudice of the mullahs although they had helped it in Azadi (Freedom) Square.
Moreover, the regime suppressed ethnic minorities.
US officials realized that the religious right in the region was not the same as the right-wing in the West. The religious right was more hostile to the West than the Tudeh Party.
Tehran limited its dispute with Israel over Arab areas of influence. As for Arabs in the Gulf, they discovered that Khomeini considered them his main enemy and permanent target as he reawakened the old sectarian conflict.
Those who think that the economic crisis is the reason behind the people's protest against the regime of the Supreme Leader are underestimating the more dangerous and deep-rooted causes. The demonstrations of 2009 were larger, and they were led by people from within the regime who enjoyed their livelihood privileges. The roots of the current crisis are everything I mentioned above.
The regime had eliminated all local forces and distanced itself from others. When it failed, it was easy for all the people to rally behind their sole demand: Overthrowing the regime.
Bread is not the only problem with Hassan Rouhani's government, and oil prices are not their main argument against the Supreme Leader's regime. Rather, they oppose everything the regime represents.
The majority of Iranians are not religious and they have national pride and reject marginalization by the clergy. During the Shah's time, Iran was more civilized, open and advanced in science and industry. It all disappeared after a group of "dervishes" assumed power, believing that their sole duty was to harness the state to serve the Ayatollah and spread his teachings and fight for them all over the world.
This naive selfish way of thinking did not convince the majority of Iranian youth who produce the best movies, recite the best poems and hold parties in basements away from Basij informants' eyes. For many months, Iranian women published once a week their photos without the hijab in defiance of the mullahs.
The Iranian people harbor a genuine hatred for the regime. Some of the banners held during the demonstrations had slogans condemning support for religious movements in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. This feeling is greater and far more dangerous than the demand for cheaper bread.
There are many enemies of the clerical regime abroad as well, including some of those who show their concerns, like Russia, which is locked in a dispute with Iran over the division of the Caspian Sea and several other issues.
This may pressure Tehran during the upcoming phase to change into real politics, treat its people according to their wishes and end its foreign adventures. If it does not make these changes, the antagonistic majority inside and outside Iran will succeed in toppling the regime.