Detailed Lebanese & Lebanese Related LCCC English New Bulletin For September 30/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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Trump’s UN Speech Almost Adds Up to a Doctrine
Eli Lake/Bloomberg/September 29/18
President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is often caricatured as a mass of contradictions. He rails against the dumb wars of his predecessors, but has yet to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. He taunted and threatened North Korea’s tyrannical leader, only to meet him later in Singapore for a lavish summit. Trump kisses up to Russia’s autocratic president, but his government sells weapons to Russia’s enemies and sanctions its senior officials.
There is some truth to these criticisms, but they miss a larger point. While it’s hard to say there is a Trump doctrine, there has emerged a theme to his statecraft: American sovereignty.
This was the message Tuesday of Trump’s address Tuesday to the United Nations General Assembly. “We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable global bureaucracy,” he said, referring to the UN’s International Criminal Court. In return, he promised to “honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship.” He urged the assembled leaders to “make their countries great again.”
This rhetoric may sound familiar, but it’s actually a break from the past. Previous US presidents have, to varying degrees, embraced the UN and other international bodies as means for America to shape the world. Trump, by contrast, sees the international system as a way for the world to constrain America.
So in his speech, Trump emphasized how his administration has rejected what he calls “the ideology of globalism.” The most obvious example is the US withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The Senate never ratified that agreement as a treaty; before any member of Congress voted on it, President Barack Obama got a UN Security Council resolution in support of it.
There are other examples. Trump announced the US will not participate in the UN Global Compact for Migration. He boasted that the US had withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, after other member states rejected his administration’s proposed reforms.
Trump was particularly pointed about the International Criminal Court. US wariness of the court is not new. Neither George W. Bush nor Barack Obama tried to ratify the Treaty of Rome that created this tribunal. Earlier this month, Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, went further, promising to sanction the court and prosecute its officials if it launched investigations into the US or its allies.
Trump’s emphasis on American sovereignty also has implications for trade. In his speech, he singled out the World Trade Organization for allowing members “to rig the system in their favor” by engaging in product dumping and intellectual property theft. (It was an obvious dig at China.)
For many foreign policy experts, Trump’s talk about sovereignty is balderdash. The international institutions that the US helped create after World War II were designed not only to prevent conflict, advance trade and promote freedom, they also rigged the system in America’s favor. The US has one of five vetoes at the UN Security Council. It controls the largest share of votes at the International Monetary Fund. The US military provides the logistics and supply chain for UN peacekeeping. A skilled president should try to use the system to its benefit, instead of rejecting it out of hand.
Maybe so. But a lot has happened, in the world and in Turtle Bay, since the UN charter was signed in San Francisco 73 years ago. It’s not just that the UN has failed to prevent conflicts between or within nations. It’s that the UN itself has allowed its worst members to corrupt it. That’s why so many were shamed after the UN was forced to open its books on Iraq’s oil-for-food program, and why UN peacekeeping missions have faced scandal after scandal.
Trump is half right: The US would be foolish to allow a UN court to sit in judgment of its soldiers. US military action should not be subject to a veto from China, France, Russia or the United Kingdom. But the UN’s structural flaw is not just the threat it poses to the sovereignty of its members. It’s the deference it pays to the sovereignty of rogues.

Iran threat factors heavily in GCC’s UN agenda
Mohammed Alkhereiji/The Arab Weekly/September 30/18
LONDON - Regional challenges, especially threats from Iran, featured prominently on the agenda of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at the UN General Assembly, with the prospect of an “Arab NATO” edging closer to reality.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, speaking September 28 at the United Nations, said Iran has engaged in terrorist activities and aggressive conduct and that Saudi Arabia supports the United States’ strategy in dealing with Tehran, particularly by countering its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes and its alleged terror support. Jubeir’s remarks came amid reports that the United States planned a summit in January to introduce an Arab military alliance like NATO to counter Iran.
“Saudi Arabia believes that in order to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, what is necessary is to deter Iran and its subversive policies,” Jubeir said.
“Iran has trained and armed terrorist militias, has provided them with ballistic missiles, conducting assassinations targeting diplomats, acts of aggression against diplomatic missions. This is sectarianism and interference in the internal affairs of the region,” he said, emphasising that such conduct is a breach of international law, for which Iran should be held accountable.
The “Arab NATO,” to be known as the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), was first brought up in July.
“MESA will serve as a bulwark against Iranian aggression, terrorism, extremism and will bring stability to the Middle East,” a spokesman for the US National Security Council said at the time.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has met with foreign ministers from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and Jordan and Egypt to discuss the creation of the alliance, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
“All the participants agreed on the need to confront threats from Iran to the region and the United States,” the State Department said in a statement.
The alliance is to include the six countries that make up the GCC, as well as Jordan and Egypt. However, with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt boycotting Qatar, partly due to its ties with Iran, there are questions as to how MESA will function.
“The real challenge facing the US-led alliance is to solve the Gulf crisis,” Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said at a news conference following the meeting. Sheikh Mohammed, who spoke more diplomatically on Saudi Arabia and the UAE than at any time since the dispute between Doha and those countries broke out 15 months ago, said Qatar remains “open to dialogue” with Saudi Arabia and its allies and “we hope there will be progress.” The drive for a united front against Iran comes as Tehran faces increased pressure at home and abroad. Iran has been strained by the collapse of the nuclear deal and looming economic sanctions that have led to protests in the country. An attack September 22 on a military parade featuring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that was claimed by the Ahvaz National Resistance, an ethnic Arab group that opposes the government, killed at least 25 people. Despite the Arab separatist group claiming responsibility for the attack, officials in Tehran blamed the United States and Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the gunmen were funded by the Gulf Arab states. Khamenei vowed to “severely punish” those behind the Ahvaz attack. A video produced by a media channel with ties to the IRGC threatened Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with ballistic missile attacks, with a voice-over by Khamenei saying: “A heavy punishment is under way.” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash responded on Twitter that “the official incitement against the UAE within Iran is regrettable and has increased following the Ahvaz attack.”
“The UAE’s historical stance against terrorism and violence is clear and Tehran’s accusations are baseless,” he said. Riyadh also dismissed Iran’s accusations in a statement quoting a foreign ministry official, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, saying: “The kingdom completely rejects the deplorable false accusations by Iranian officials regarding the kingdom’s support for the incidents that occurred in Iran. “Saudi Arabia’s policy is clear regarding its non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries.”
*Mohammed Alkhereiji is the Arab Weekly’s Gulf section editor.

US works to quash European attempts to bypass Iran sanctions
Thomas Frank/The Arab Weekly/September 30/18
WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump went to the UN General Assembly to build international support for his effort to isolate and bankrupt Iran but by the end of the week he was trying to quash attempts by the European Union, China and Russia to bypass US sanctions.
US officials are fighting off a plan by the European Union, China and Russia that could undercut US sanctions by creating a system to facilitate financial transactions with Iran by circumventing the US financial sector. The plan would enable countries to buy Iranian goods — most notably oil — without triggering penalties from the United States. The Trump administration responded by intensifying its verbal attacks on Iran, which shot back with its own vitriol that left the two sides further apart than at any time since Trump said in May that he was pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement.
“What’s worrying the [Trump] administration is that the Europeans and Iran are trying to create mechanisms to bypass the sanctions,” said Shibley Telhami, a former US State Department adviser and Middle East scholar. “They (administration officials) have become very angry with that prospect because that obviously is a direct challenge to them.”
US officials minimised the significance of the alternative-payment plan, saying European businesses have been pulling out of Iran in droves to avoid US sanctions. US Special Envoy for Iran Brian Hook said revenue that the plan would generate for Iran “is so small that it’s insignificant. All the major corporations have made their decisions to leave the [Iranian] market.” Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department adviser on Iran, wrote in a blog that “US measures are highly successful: International firms are running for the exits to avoid US penalties and the value of Iran’s currency has plummeted.”
However, in a television interview on September 26, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced Europe, China and Russia and urged them to reverse course. “Here’s what I’d say about their decision yesterday: To continue to create mechanisms to fund the world’s largest state sponsor of terror is disastrous policy and I hope they will reconsider it,” Pompeo said. The United States reinstated some sanctions in August and plans to implement limits on Iran’s oil sector in early November.
The Trump administration is “doubling down on its pressure strategy with Iran” but very few countries are going along with it, said Brian Katulis, a Middle East specialist and former consultant to the US State and Defence departments.
The United States began assembling a Middle East Strategic Alliance to counter Iran and other threats such as cyber-attacks. Members would include Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
Pompeo met with foreign ministers of those countries on September 28 to discuss the alliance. “All participants agreed on the need to confront threats from Iran directed at the region and the United States,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
“It’s a pretty hostile posture towards Iran and that hasn’t changed,” said Khaled Elgindy, a foreign policy analyst in Washington and former Palestinian adviser.
Holly Dagres, a Middle East analyst, wrote in her blog: “Iran seems to be gambling on time, waiting out the Trump administration,” while trying to gain “the sympathy of the European Union and the P4+1 — Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — which are unhappy with Trump’s handling of world affairs in general.”Richard Grenell, the US ambassador to Germany, said in an interview on Fox News that the country’s leaders don’t realise the extent to which Iran is causing problems in Germany. “I’ve been telling Germans, all of your migration problem you can blame on Iran and the chaos they created in Syria. So you must stop funding this regime.”Trump appeared to stand by his strategy of trying to strong-arm Iran into negotiating a new deal with the United States that restricts not only Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme but activities such as its development of long-range missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and its destabilisation of the Middle East. “Iran has to come back and they have to talk,” Trump said at a news conference on September *
*Thomas Frank is a correspondent in Washington.

Expected shake-up inside the Russian house
Mohamad Kawas/The Arab Weekly/September 30/18
It was interesting to note that after the downing of the Russian reconnaissance aeroplane off the coast of Syria, the TV channel Russia Today invited someone who could really speak about the real mood in Russia’s leading circles.
Russia Today is the channel chosen to transmit to the world Russian President Vladimir Putin’s views and policies. The Kremlin and Russian Ministry of Defence had already expressed their anger about the plane incident but Russia Today’s guest revealed another anger inside Russian top circles, this time directed at some in Russia itself. The guest on Russia Today was retired Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, former head of the Russian Defence Ministry’s Main Department of International Military Cooperation. He said there were Russian officials working for Tel Aviv and executing its orders rather than executing Putin’s. For those who’d prefer to dismiss this revelation, the man used stronger words and spoke of “treason inside Russian leadership by colluding with Israel.”
Ivashov, of course, does not represent the official position of the Russian government but he is someone who has an intimate knowledge of the inside workings of the Defence Ministry and his statements can be understood as reflecting a state of discomfort about Israeli influence among Moscow’s top echelons. For Ivashov to speak this candidly on Russia Today about a very sensitive issue that touches both Russian-Israeli relations and the Russian leadership could not have been possible without permission from Putin.
Russia’s steadily rising angry tone against Israel and its sudden decision to supply the Syrian regime with S-300 missile systems can be analysed in the context of Ivashov’s revelations. One then might expect a bend in Moscow’s dealings with Israel on the Syrian question. From another angle, one could expect consequences of the matter inside the Kremlin itself, particularly concerning those accused of “treason,” in Ivashov’s term.
The situation is going to require Putin to resort to calculated steps in his approach to Israel, the United States and Western allies. Putin might fall back on a different type of calculations, dictated by internal considerations having to do with the Kremlin’s concern about the influence of Israeli lobbies inside Russian institutions. If the Kremlin deemed it necessary to issue a stern warning to officials working for Tel Aviv and executing its orders rather than Putin’s, it can only mean that a significant shake-up in the Russian leadership is on the horizon.
We won’t know more about the circumstances of this warning and its significance inside Russia. However, what seems clear is that Putin is ticked off at Israel, not just because of the downing of the Russian plane in Syria but also because Israel has made significant inroads inside Russian state institutions through its financial, economic, security and military tentacles.
Putin is perhaps seeking to end Israel’s continuous violation of Russian internal affairs since the fall of the former Soviet Union. This violation began during the term of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. After the Il-20 incident, Victor Khostov, deputy commander of Russian anti-aircraft defence missile systems in Syria, said: “Israel’s statements and words of condolence simply won’t do. It is, of course, our lax attitude towards Israel that gave it a free hand.”
Despite this anger, the crisis will not make Russia switch camps with respect to Israel. Those who were wishing for a reversal in Moscow’s relations with Israel will surely be disappointed. The Russian-Israeli friction is certainly tense but temporary and harmless. What’s a little friction between friends?
Russia’s real stance towards Israel was expressed last February by Russian Deputy Ambassador to Israel Leonid Frolov, who said: “In the case of aggression against Israel, not only will the United States stand by Israel’s side. Russia, too, will be on Israel’s side.” He added: “Many of our countrymen live here in Israel and Israel in general is a friendly nation and therefore we won’t allow any aggression against Israel.”
For Putin, the incident in Syria will be a chance to lure Washington to take part in negotiations about a final settlement in Syria. The supply of S-300 missile systems to “irresponsible parties,” in the words of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has provoked anger in Washington and, therefore, might lead to opening negotiations for a final settlement in Syria because of considerations for Israel’s security. Moscow has cleverly placed the missile deal with the Syrian regime within the context of its angry reaction to the Il-20 incident. Moscow has insisted on two things. The first is that the missile systems will be used solely “to protect Russian presence” in Syria and not for the protection of any other presence in Syria. The missile systems, then, are likely to be operated by Russian personnel under direct orders from Moscow.
The second thing is that the missile systems in Syria will not target any third country. This point was obviously meant as a reassuring message that the technical upgrade in Syria will not affect the strategic balance of power so dear to Israel.
So, Moscow’s fundamental attitude and policy towards Israel has not changed and the current crisis will not reach the level of breaking off relations. Russia will maintain its relations with its friend, Israel.
Russia’s angry outburst against Israel might please Damascus and Tehran but any observer can easily detect that Moscow’s anger was not motivated by the Israeli raids on targets in the Syrian territory but rather by Israel’s tricky tactics that led to the downing of the Russian plane and the death of its 15 crew members. Before the plane incident, Russia had no objections to Israel’s continued raids inside Syrian territory as long as Russian interests and positions were spared. Moscow will continue not to object if it succeeds in rearranging its agreements with Israel and the United States.
What will be interesting to monitor are developments inside the Russian house regarding the so-called traitors among the country’s leadership.
*Mohamad Kawas is a Lebanese writer.

Russia is still on the wrong path in Syria
Khairallah Khairallah/The Arab Weekly/September 30/18
Russia’s decision to supply the Syrian government with S-300 air defence missile systems indicates that Moscow is determined to continue on the wrong path in Syria and deepen its crisis there. Instead of complicating the situation in Syria, Russia should have gone straight to the heart of the matter, which is that the Syrian regime has no chance of survival simply because it has never been legitimate. It was born from a military coup in 1963, evolved into a minority regime under Hafez Assad and then to a family regime under Bashar Assad, with full backing from Iran. Anyone having the slightest doubt about the intimate relation between the Syrian regime and Iran’s mullahs should read the public prosecution’s brief from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The document revealed the depth of coordination between Damascus and Tehran regarding preparatory details for the assassination of Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005. The explosive charge in that attack came from Iran.It’s no secret that Israel was indirectly responsible for downing the Russian Ilyushin-20 military reconnaissance plane off the coast of Latakia, killing its entire crew. Israeli jets raided that particular point of the coast without giving the Russian side enough time to move the plane to a safe zone. If the incident is indicative of anything, it is of Israel’s disregard for coordinating with its Russian ally when it comes to raiding anywhere inside Syrian territory that Israel deems a legitimate target.
Russia acquiesced Israel’s self-proclaimed right to attack targets in Syria but Israel has broken the rules of the game with Moscow, perhaps unintentionally as it had claimed. Russia had to save face and react. The S-300 system will certainly help in the short run.
More than in Syria, Russia’s reaction was meant essentially for internal consumption inside Russia itself. This is important for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy, which is based on tickling the imperialistic feelings hidden deep inside every Russian who longs for the glory days of Mother Russia.
OK, so the reaction did its job in the short term. This does not mean Russia has found a solution for itself in the Syrian quagmire where it wants to be the master puppeteer. Russia must first fend off America’s reaction to its move.
Can Russia guarantee Iran’s exit from Syria? If the United States insists on this condition, every day shows that Russia is unable to deliver the goods to Israel and the United States. Russia is betting on a losing regime in Syria whose fate will be like those that existed in East Germany, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
Russia has the right to try to recapture its former glory but why must it do it by choosing the longest path to get out of its crisis in Syria? The first step ought to be for Moscow to convince itself that the regime in Damascus has no future and that any solution in Syria will require Iran’s withdrawal. The sooner Iran leaves Syria, the easier it becomes to reach a political settlement there. Let us suppose that the Russian decision to supply a missile defence system to the Syrian regime reached its intended purpose internally. What next? What about the really embarrassing questions?
Suppose Israel continues to raid targets inside Syria within the context of its campaign on Iranian presence there. Can Russia afford to start a confrontation with it? Can Putin withstand the pressures from the powerful Israeli lobby in Moscow and from the equally powerful Russian lobby in Israel?
Let’s leave the Israeli facet aside and consider the practical one of reconstructing Syria. One of these days, Syria will have to be reconstructed. This is why Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, tongue in cheek, said during his last visit to Moscow that Damascus was going to reward Russia by giving it all reconstruction projects. Muallem sold mirages to Russia and Russia sold the regime anti-aircraft missiles, which will turn out to be obsolete in the face of American advanced technology.
If Russia, the United States and Israel wish to prevent Syria’s disintegration, they should jump to the first step by looking for a new regime in Damascus. It should be totally different from the present one, which is interested only in saving itself.
*Khairallah Khairallah is a Lebanese writer.