LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

July 10/16

 Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletin16/english.july10.16.htm

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Bible Quotations For Today

Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 11/32-44:”When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’”

The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Letter to the Philippians 04/01-07:”Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. Yes, and I ask you also, my loyal companion, help these women, for they have struggled beside me in the work of the gospel, together with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus./

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 09-10/16

Iran's Support for Terrorism Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA)
Matthew Levitt/The Washington Institute/July 09/16
Can Bahrain count on Moscow to fill Washington’s shoes/Giorgio Cafiero/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
Passivity in the Face of Big-Power Aggression/Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute/July 09/16
Is Israel doomed to live with terror/Shlomi Eldar/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
Turkey's pro-government media mired in CIA conspiracy theories/Pinar Tremblay/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
Is Iraq's Kirkuk on verge of becoming independent region/Omar Sattar/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
In Defense of Tony Blair/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/July 09/16
Terrorism – No One is Safe Anywhere/Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/July 09/16
Why Brexit won – and how Arabs can be happy with Britain’s choice/Paul Crompton/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
Neither Chilcot nor Brexit are a reason for Arabs to rejoice/Faisal J. Abbas/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
Drowning in blood and grief/Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
Why US-Russia talks on Syria will lead to nowhere/Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
Has technology defied Arab values/Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
5 reasons Rouhani may not win second term/Ali Omidi/Al-Monitor/July 09/16

Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on July 09-10/16

Iraqi army takes key base south of Mosul from ISIS
Intelligence report: 300 Hamas and 950 Hizballah members operating in Germany
“Terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah find safe haven in Germany,”
Toronto Sun: West should push for Iran regime change
Linda Chavez: Time to root out the ideology behind Islamic fundamentalism
Rebel-held Aleppo fears shortages after Syria regime advance
Merkel, Erdogan discuss strained ties after genocide vote
Syria army extends ceasefire for three days
Iran to continue missile program ‘with full force’
First Russian tourist flight lands in Turkish resort
Iraq’s war children ‘face void without global help’
Israel's UN delegation hoping for Security Council seat

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 09-10/16
French Diplomats: Saudi, Iran Not Opposed to Political Settlement in Lebanon
Hizbullah Urges Saudi to 'Review Terror Classifications' after Kingdom Blasts
Mustaqbal Says Aoun 'Still Dreaming' of Presidency as FPM Says His Chances Surging
Report: Qansou Visited Franjieh after Syrian Dismay over Aoun's Latest Tour
Berri meets Ambassador Fath Ali, delegation of families of kidnapped Iranian diplomats
Khreiss: Status quo an invite to all patriots and Christians to concede for sake of country
Army:Syrian referred to judicial authorities for belonging to Daesh
Mohammad Qabbani to Rabat to participate in Mediterranean Parliamentary seminar
Army: Fire extinguished in various villages
Citizen killed, another injured in car accident in Hasbayya

Links From Jihad Watch Site for July 09-10/16
Intelligence report: 300 Hamas and 950 Hizballah members operating in Germany
India: Muslim groups say the Islamic State is un-Islamic, tool of “enemies of Islam”
Leftist pastor behind Dallas Black Lives Matter protest wrote of becoming Muslim
UK: “Little improvement” 2 years after “Trojan Horse” Islamic plot to take over secular schools
Virginia: Father of jihad terrorist says his son misunderstands Islam
Former Islamic apologist who left Islam gets multiple death threats from Muslims
Hamas-linked CAIR’s Nihad Awad to Muslims: “Black Lives Matter is our campaign”
Islamic State beheads 4 soccer players after declaring the sport un-Islamic
Flashback: Hillary says “police violence” as big a threat as the Islamic State

Latest Lebanese Related News published on July 09-10/16

French Diplomats: Saudi, Iran Not Opposed to Political Settlement in Lebanon
Naharnet/July 09/16/Saudi Arabia and Iran are not opposed to a political settlement in Lebanon that would put an end to the protracting presidential vacuum, a media report said on Saturday. “In light of the latest separate talks that Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif have held with French officials, French diplomatic sources have said that the two sides are not opposed to a political settlement in Lebanon,” An Nahar newspaper reported. “Zarif has also told (French FM Jean-Marc) Ayrault that Iran does not mind reaching a Lebanese political agreement that puts an end to the institutional crisis,” the daily added. Ayrault for his part told the Saudi and Iranian officials that the parties “must not await the end of the conflict in Syria in order to put an end to the Lebanese crisis.”The French FM is scheduled to visit Lebanon on July 11 and 12. “During his meetings with political leaders, Minister Ayrault will voice France's support for Lebanon, which is facing the challenges of the continued institutional paralysis and the repercussions of the war in Syria,” deputy foreign ministry spokesman Alexandre Georgini said on Friday.Ayrault's trip comes three months after an official visit to Lebanon by French President Francois Hollande.Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 due to sharp political differences among the rival parties and electoral rivalry among the candidates.

Hizbullah Urges Saudi to 'Review Terror Classifications' after Kingdom Blasts
Naharnet/July 09/16/Hizbullah has urged Saudi Arabia to reevaluate its blacklist of terrorist organizations in the wake of the multiple suicide bombings that rocked the kingdom last week. “The Saudi regime committed a strategic mistake when it sought to mislead the nation and present Hizbullah as a terrorist danger that is threatening Arabs and Muslims,” Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, the deputy head of Hizbullah's Executive Council, said on Saturday. “The suicide attacks in Jeddah, Qatif and Medina prove the incorrectness of the Saudi regime's terror classifications,” Qaouq added. “Was Hizbullah the threat to Saudi national security or the takfiri terrorism?” he asked. Riyadh blacklisted Hizbullah as a terrorist group and pressed the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League to follow suit after accusing the party of forming militant cells in some Gulf countries and interfering in the Yemeni conflict. The moves also came amid unprecedented regional tensions between Hizbullah's backer Iran and the Gulf states. The Syria-based jihadist groups Islamic State and al-Nusra Front are also on Saudi Arabia's terror blacklist. “The Saudi regime is required, after the bombings that targeted it, to review its anti-resistance policies, classifications and alignments so that the confrontation remains focused on the terrorist, takfiri threat that is offering a strategic favor to Israel,” Qaouq added. He also accused Saudi Arabia of arming the Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front. “The takfiris who staged bombings in Beirut, Hermel and the Bekaa, and who abducted and slaughtered the (Lebanese) servicemen are al-Qaida's branch in Lebanon and Syria (Abdullah Azzam Brigades) and al-Nusra Front, and al-Nusra Front is today fighting with Saudi weapons,” Qaouq charged. “Until when will the Saudi regime support and arm al-Nusra Front in Syria, although it has murdered us, executed our servicemen and continued to occupy our land in the Bekaa?” the Hizbullah official added. He also warned that “the Saudi regime's continued support for al-Nusra Front poses a real threat to Lebanese national security.”

Mustaqbal Says Aoun 'Still Dreaming' of Presidency as FPM Says His Chances Surging
Naharnet/July 09/16/Mustaqbal bloc MPs have noted that Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun can only “dream” of being elected president, although FPM officials are saying that the presidential chances of the Change and Reform bloc chief are surging. “Aoun is still dreaming of becoming president,” Mustaqbal bloc MP Ahmed Fatfat told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Saturday. “At the personal level, we do not have a problem with Aoun, but it is out of the question to endorse him for the presidency for reasons related to his political course,” Fatfat added. “When he rose to power in 1989 and 1990 we witnessed the Elimination War and the Liberation War,” the lawmaker reminded. Turning to Aoun's political conduct in the period that followed his return to Lebanon in 2005, Fatfat slammed the performance of FPM's ministers, saying they “behaved maliciously and incompetently” and that they “failed to improve the energy and telecom sectors.” The MP also cited “all of Aoun's declared political affiliations and his extreme adherence to the Iranian policies and Hizbullah.”“Large segments of al-Mustaqbal Movement are unwilling to endorse Aoun,” Fatfat announced. In remarks to al-Liwaa newspaper, Mustaqbal bloc MP Ammar Houry also described Aoun's presidential ambitions as mere “dreams.” Change and Reform bloc MP Nabil Nicola however told al-Joumhouria that “day after day, it is becoming clearer that the only person who can rally all people is General Aoun.” Asked about the visits that Aoun paid Wednesday to Speaker Nabih Berri and Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan, Nicola described them as Eid al-Fitr protocol visits but noted that “the General's chances are surging regardless of all these visits.” Change and Reform parliamentary sources meanwhile told al-Liwaa that “the latest domestic moves bring the presidential seat closer to General Aoun although nothing is final yet.”“Further deliberations are needed,” the sources added, noting that Aoun will continue his political contacts. The sources also noted that “no meeting has been scheduled between him and (Mustaqbal leader) ex-PM (Saad) Hariri, although some parties are seeking to create communication between them.” There has been speculation in the country that the latest rapprochement between Aoun and Berri could lead to an agreement over the stalled presidential election or the parliamentary polls. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the electoral sessions at parliament, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Report: Qansou Visited Franjieh after Syrian Dismay over Aoun's Latest Tour
Naharnet/July 09/16/The latest visit by pro-Damascus MP Assem Qansou of the Baath Party to Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh came after Syrian “dismay” over the recent meetings that Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun held in Beirut, a media report said on Saturday. “The visit reflected signals from the leadership of the Baath Party in the Syrian capital and the dismay of Damascus, and maybe its other allies, over Aoun's latest tour,” the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Anbaa reported. Aoun had visited Speaker Nabih Berri and Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan on the first day of Eid al-Fitr on Wednesday. He also held talks on the same day with Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Awadh Asiri. After talks with Franjieh in Bnashii on Thursday, Qansou announced that the Marada leader “is the guarantee.” “We came here today to emphasize this communication between us and Suleiman Beik and to stress that we share the same policy and support for the resistance,” Qansou said. There has been speculation that the latest rapprochement between Aoun and Berri could lead to an agreement over the stalled presidential election or the parliamentary polls. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the electoral sessions at parliament, stripping them of the needed quorum. Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Berri meets Ambassador Fath Ali, delegation of families of kidnapped Iranian diplomats
Sat 09 Jul 2016/NNA - House Speaker, Nabih Berri, met with Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad Fath-Ali and a delegation from the families of the kidnapped Iranian diplomats at his residence in Ain Teeneh with talks featuring high on the latest developments in the case of the four kidnapped Iranian diplomats, who have been missing since 1982. Separately, Speaker Berri met with Deputy Anwar Khalil and a delegation from Hasbayya.

Khreiss: Status quo an invite to all patriots and Christians to concede for sake of country
Sat 09 Jul 2016/NNA - Member of Development and Liberation parliamentary Bloc, MP Ali Khreiss, said during a funeral ceremony in Tyre on Saturday that the current situation with all takifrist attacks is a clear invitation to all "loyal patriotic nationalistic Arabs, Muslims and Christians, to stand up and concede for the sake of the nation, and participate in a Constitutional breakthrough in face of terrorism."Khreiss asserted that fighting terrorism ought to start by fighting the ideology behind it.

Army:Syrian referred to judicial authorities for belonging to Daesh
Sat 09 Jul 2016 /NNA - Intelligence Directorate referred to the concerned judicial authorities the Syrian Atallah Khaled Al-Tohmeh who was previously arrested in Al-Labboueh region in Baalbeck over belonging to the terrorist Daesh organization and taking part in terrorist acts against the Army, a communiqué issued on Saturday by the Army Command - Guidance Directorate said.

Suspicious object in Koura free of explosives
Sat 09 Jul 2016/NNA - A suspicious object found in Koura, north Lebanon, was inspected by a military expert who determined that it was free of explosive material, NNA correspondent reported on Saturday.

Army raid Syrian refugee camp in Akkar, arrest many
Fri 08 Jul 2016/NNA - A Lebanese army unit raided today refugee camps in the outskirts of Bakarzala in Akkar and arrested 6 Syrians not holding their identification papers, National News Agency correspondent reported on Friday. The army also confiscated 3 motorcycles.

Mohammad Qabbani to Rabat to participate in Mediterranean Parliamentary seminar
Sat 09 Jul 2016/NNA - MP Mohammad Qabbani left on Saturday Beirut to Rabat to represent the Lebanese Parliament in the 30th seminar of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, which will focus on the various concerns of the Mediterranean basin countries; especially terrorism, the displaced crisis and the economic challenges of the climate change.

Army: Fire extinguished in various villages
Sat 09 Jul 2016/NNA - Army units in collaboration with Civil Defense members succeeded in putting out fires which erupted yesterday in the vicinity of Barbara village in Jbeil as well as in the vicinities of Jarjouaa, Joayya and Kfarkilla villages, a communiqué issued by the Army Command - Guidance Directorate said on Saturday. The damaged areas were estimated by 42 Donoum of fruitful and forest trees and dry weed.

Citizen killed, another injured in car accident in Hasbayya
Sat 09 Jul 2016/NNA - The citizen Shaker Madi was killed and Omar Saab was injured when their Sherooke vehicle collided with the entrance of one of the houses in the western side of Hasbayya village, NNA correspondent said on Saturday.
The field reporter added that the two citizens are from Shebaa village, pointing out that Shebaa police members open investigation over the incident.
 

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on July 09-10/16

Iraqi army takes key base south of Mosul from ISIS
Staff writer, Al Arabiya English Saturday, 9 July 2016/The exiled governor of the ISIS-occupied Nineveh province in northern Iraq said on Saturday that a key air base has been freed from the militants “without any resistance.”“Victory is coming to liberate Nineveh,” Nofal al-Akoub told Al-Sumaria News.Qayyarah air base is located south of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city and Nineveh’s capital. After liberating the ISIS-stronghold city of Fallujah west of Iraq in late June after it was occupied for two years by the militant group, the Iraqi government is vying to liberate Mosul, which is located only a few dozen kilometers from autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Freeing Qayyarah air base will give Iraqi forces - who are backed by US air strikes - a strategic launch-pad to wage their offensive to finally liberate Mosul, considered to be ISIS’s last stronghold in Iraq. Akoub said an army brigade took the base at 10 a.m. local time on Saturday. “We want to announce the good news to [Iraqi Prime Minister] Haidar Al-Abadi, to all of the Iraqis and especially to the people of Nineveh,” he added.The news come after ISIS claimed a deadly attack on Iraq’s capital Baghdad on Sunday. The ISIS suicide bombing attack in Baghdad’s central Karrada neighborhood on Sunday, which killed 292 people, was the deadliest in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The death toll has been rising as more bodies are recovered from the rubble. The prime minister described the attacks as the militants’ response to Iraq’s “great victory in Fallujah, which stunned the world,” according to a statement released by his office.

Intelligence report: 300 Hamas and 950 Hizballah members operating in Germany
“Terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah find safe haven in Germany,”
by Vijeta Uniyal, Legal Insurrection, July 7, 2016
300 Hamas and 950 Hezbollah members operating in Germany, says the latest German intelligence report.
According to a latest intelligence report, Germany harbours an alarmingly large number of Islamic terror operatives on its soil. Germany is home to about 300 Hamas and 950 Hezbollah members, the annual report of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency — the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) — reveals. The report was released last week by German interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and President of BfV, Hans-Georg Maassen. “The supporters of Islamist-terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, who aim is to destroy the Jewish State of Israel, are focused on their region of origin [Middle East] and primarily conduct acts of terrorist violence there [Authors translation],” says the 317-page long annual intelligence report. What is surprising is not the high number of Hamas, Hezbollah or other Islamist groups operating in Germany — intelligence reports have been confirming that fact for some years now — but rather the inability and the unwillingness of the Germany authorities to clamp down on their activities. Iran-sponsored terrorist group Hezbollah has made no effort to hide its presence in Germany. According to Jerusalem Post, “An estimated 800 pro-Hezbollah activists and Iranian regime supporters marched in the annual al-Quds Day march in Berlin on Saturday.” Noted counter-terrorism expert and Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Benjamin Weinthal writes in Jerusalem Post: It is unclear why Germany is harboring Hamas members.
The EU classifies Hamas’s entire organization as a terrorist entity. (…)  According to [Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s] reports in 2013 and 2014, the number of members and supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah remained 300 and 950, respectively.
The 2015 reports said 360 members and supporters of the group Turkish Hezbollah are active in Germany. Such statistics can be hard to square with the administration of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who declared in 2008 Israel’s security to be “non-negotiable” for the Federal Republic. Israel and Germany wrapped up a packed year of events in 2015 celebrating 50 years of diplomatic relations

Congressman: the Iranian regime is afraid
Saturday, 09 July 2016/Congressman Ted Poe, speaking not just as a member of the House of Representatives but as a former judge and prosecutor, pledged his support to the pursuit of justice for Iran as embodied in the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). Drawing attention to the plight of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) in Camp Liberty in Iraq, Congressman Poe said that 66 co-sponsors, from both parties, had come forward with proposed legislation condemning the attacks on the unarmed residents. He blamed "the mullahs in Tehran" for the deaths of 140 and the injuries to 1300 in successive assaults on Camp Liberty. Congressman Poe said the attacks demonstrated the fear in which the opposition is held by the regime in Tehran.
Commending the Resistance for its defiance - a mass Free Iran rally takes place on July 9 in Paris - Congressman Poe vowed that the day of reckoning for the regime would come: the "fire in all of us that wants to be free...cannot be quenched by any dictator; it is in our soul," he said.

Senator John Boozman backs Free Iran rally
NCRI - United States Senator John Boozman, addressing his "friends" at the mass Free Iran rally, on July 9 in Paris, said he was "disturbed" by the growing number of human rights violations in Iran and by the plight of the Iranian Resistance members in Camp Liberty. The camp was subjected to a missile bombardment on July 4 which injured more than 50 of the unarmed residents of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK). Senator Boozman, a member of the Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus which aims to shed light on the efforts of Iranian people to bring democracy to Iran, said in a letter to the gathering that he is "committed to preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapons program," and to the "noble cause" of the Resistance.

Toronto Sun: West should push for Iran regime change
Saturday, 09 July 2016 09:21 /Western leaders base their engagement with Iran on the assumption that regime change is beyond reach. But many Iranian activists see things differently. The National Council of Resistance of Iran — an opposition movement and a political party — is holding its annual “Free Iran” conference in Paris this weekend. They are loudly calling for regime change in Tehran, writes Candice Malcolm in Toronto Sun on Friday July 8.
The following is the full text of the article:
West should push for Iran regime change
The only way to make peace with Iran, according to the Obama administration, is to appease its cruel and authoritarian government. The alternative, according to the White House, would be increased hostility and perhaps even war. Under this dichotomy, U.S. President Barack Obama has extended an olive branch to America’s longtime adversary.
Last summer, the U.S. struck an historic nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Obama teamed up with members of the UN Security Council and Germany to lift economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran halting its uranium enrichment program. The Trudeau government has followed suit, saying it will work towards reinstating diplomatic relations with Iran.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion insists Canadian companies should be able to do business in Iran. These self-styled “progressive” politicians are striking a deal with the devil.By engaging with Iran, Western nations are giving legitimacy and power to a deeply regressive regime. Iran is in the grip of one of the world’s most tyrannical and fundamentalist governments. The mullahs that run Iran impose strict sharia law — cutting off limbs, lashing dissidents and stoning women — in a manner comparable to the brutal campaign of violence brought by the Islamic State (ISIS). The major difference is that ISIS proudly broadcasts its atrocities while Iran conducts its behind closed doors.
And Iran has been ruling this way for decades.
Morality police routinely harass women about their clothing, monitor social media and arrest journalists.Gays and religious minorities are abused and publicly executed.
Alongside its deplorable human rights record, Iran funds radical jihadist organizations around the world. As a state sponsor of terrorism, Iran antagonizes its neighbours and destabilizes the entire region through its terrorist networks. Despite unsuccessful attempts by Western leaders to appease Iran, there is another alternative. Or at least there may be for those who seek a more peaceful Middle East.
The alternative is regime change in Iran. But is it possible? Obama, Justin Trudeau and other Western leaders base their engagement with Iran on the assumption that regime change is beyond reach. But many Iranian activists see things differently.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran — an opposition movement and a political party — is holding its annual “Free Iran” conference in Paris this weekend.
They are loudly calling for regime change in Tehran.
Last year, over 100,000 people attended this gathering, including hundreds of parliamentarians, such as former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell.
Resistance members can’t operate inside Iran, for obvious reasons, so they assemble in Europe and attract pro-freedom activists and Iranian ex-pats from all over the world.
This group wants more than just a change of government. It want to transform Iranian society and enable democracy, religious freedoms, the equality of men and women, the rule of law and peace. The party is led by a woman, Maryam Rajavi, and considers itself a parliament-in-exile. It argues the Iranian people are far more liberal and tolerant than their theocratic leaders. Public opinion polls suggest that, despite the anti-American rhetoric from the regime, most ordinary Iranians hold pro-Western and pro-American views. That is why the Free Iran rally in Paris is so important.
These Iranian dissidents are clear in their message. They want regime change in Tehran, not more appeasement from the West. But will leaders like Trudeau and Obama listen?
Or will they continue to legitimize the mullahs and their oppressive rule over Iran?

Linda Chavez: Time to root out the ideology behind Islamic fundamentalism
Friday, 08 July 2016 20:07
National Council of Resistance of Iran/Former White House director of public liaison Linda Chavez writes today: "Islamic terrorism has become the single biggest threat to stability in the world. Attacks killing many hundreds have occurred over the past 18 months in Bangladesh, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt, Kenya, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, France, the United States and elsewhere. But fighting this threat will require more than drone attacks to take out leaders of groups such as the Islamic State -- or even full-scale assaults to recapture territory claimed by the terrorists, as we did recently in Iraq."
"As the terrorist killings in San Bernardino, Orlando and Paris prove, Islamists' poison can reach into the very heart of the West to infect those born and raised in nations that value freedom, promoting attacks on their fellow countrymen and neighbors. What is to be done?"Ms. Chavez wrote on Friday in TownHall: "President Barack Obama has dangerously refused to acknowledge that a radical, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam drives the terrorists. Indeed, fundamentalist Islam is gaining adherents throughout the world, and autocratic regimes in Iran and the Persian Gulf States already enforce it throughout their populations. If we are to be successful in the fight against Islamic terrorism, we must look to the Muslim world itself for a Reformation."
"Unfortunately, there are few bright lights in that firmament. The two major sects of Islam, Sunni and Shiite, have both spawned terrorist movements; and whatever their differences, they share a common enemy in modernism and Western values. And in both, the denigration and subjugation of women plays a fundamental role. But there are glimmers of hope, one of which will be on display in Paris on July 9."
She added: "As I have for the past few years, I will be emceeing an event that brings together tens of thousands of opponents of the Iranian regime, in addition to representatives from around the world who oppose Islamic fundamentalism. Addressing the group will be a broad range of dignitaries from various nations, including a bipartisan group of Americans composed of, among others, former governors, Cabinet members, ambassadors and White House officials."
"This year's event marks the anniversary of the U.S.-Iran nuclear arms deal, which has strengthened the Iranian regime by infusing much-needed cash into the hands of the ruling mullahs. Iran continues to be a major state sponsor of terrorism, as well as ruthlessly suppressing freedom for its own populace. The chief opposition to the regime is the National Council of Resistance of Iran, whose president-elect, Maryam Rajavi, is an outspoken critic of fundamentalism and the convener of the Paris conference."
The article continues:
"A political, religious and cultural antidote is required to uproot this cancerous tumor permanently," Rajavi said last year in front of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade. "In absence of an alternative interpretation of Islam ... extremist ringleaders will portray the war against fundamentalism as a fight against Islam itself. By doing so, they will then create the most important source of nourishment for this ominous phenomenon."
In Paris this weekend, Muslims -- as well as Christians, Jews and others -- will stand up for the belief that freedom of religious practice is fundamental to reform.
"We reject compulsory religion and any form of compulsion in religion," Rajavi has said. She has spoken out against mandatory veiling laws and against the mistreatment of women and denial of their rights in the name of Islam.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration not only does not support the efforts of Rajavi and her group but also has opposed them at every opportunity. But equal rights for women and freedom of conscience for religious practice are the best way to combat radical Islamic fundamentalism. We can continue to fight the Islamic State group, al-Qaida, Boko Haram and other fundamentalist groups on the battlefield and from the air. We can capture or kill their leaders and their foot soldiers. But until we battle the ideology that has spread around the world, we will not succeed. And the most effective way to do that is to work with those, like Rajavi, who have been doing it for decades. If she is not afraid to name the danger for what it is, why should we hesitate to say that Islamic fundamentalism is a threat to us all?

Rebel-held Aleppo fears shortages after Syria regime advance
AFP, Aleppo Saturday, 9 July 2016/Residents of rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo on Saturday faced food and fuel shortages after a Syrian government advance cut the opposition’s last supply route into the city. Around 200,000 people remain in the opposition-held eastern sectors of Aleppo, which has been divided between government and rebel control since shortly after fighting in the city erupted in mid-2012. Fresh government air strikes on rebel neighborhoods killed four civilians on Saturday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.And opposition fighters also renewed rocket fire on the government-held west of the city, a day after heavy shelling that killed dozens of civilians. In the east of the city, residents described shortages of basic goods after government troops advanced within firing range of the key Castello Road supply route. “For two days the situation was calm, I went to the market and I filled up my motorbike with gasoline. Today, I couldn’t even find a single tomato,” said Bilal Qaterji, a local textile factory employee. “There’s not a drop of fuel left because the Castello Road has been cut,” the resident of the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood told AFP. Government troops effectively severed the Castello Road on Thursday with the capture of a hilltop within firing range of the key route. Rebel forces responded by firing barrages of rockets into the government-held west of the city on Friday, killing at least 41 people, most of them civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory. The Britain-based monitoring group said 14 children were among the dead, while Syrian state media gave a toll of 43 dead and 300 injured. Residents in the east of the city said they feared ongoing shortages if the Castello Road remained closed. “I worry that the Castello Road will be cut for a long time, it will lead to shortages of bread and other necessities,” said Ahmed Kanjou, an unemployed father of four. Residents said prices were already rising after the government advance, and many were bracing for the possibility of a lengthy siege. The government has been accused of using siege tactics to pressure rebel forces, and the UN says nearly 600,000 Syrians live in besieged areas, most surrounded by government forces although rebels also use the method. The Castello Road wraps around Aleppo’s eastern and northern edges and leads into rebel-controlled territory north of the battered city. President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been trying to cut the key route for more than two years and their Thursday advance brought them the closest so far to achieving that goal. On Saturday, the Syrian army was less than 500 meters (yards) from the key road, and were firing at anyone attempting to use the route. The Observatory said a man and two children were killed by regime fire on the road on Friday.

Merkel, Erdogan discuss strained ties after genocide vote
Sabine Siebold, Reuters, Warsaw Saturday, 9 July 2016/German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan tried to clear the air on Saturday in their first private talks since the German parliament infuriated Ankara by branding the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a genocide. Officials said the meeting on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Warsaw lasted longer than the scheduled 45 minutes. Both leaders were expected to make statements later in the day. Relations between Turkey and Germany - vital partners in efforts to curb mass migration to Europe - have been strained since the Bundestag passed the Armenian resolution on June 2. Ankara withdrew its ambassador from Berlin and threatened unspecified retaliation. A source close to the Turkish presidency said Erdogan expressed his disappointment at the resolution to Merkel, who said she would do her utmost to ensure this event would not harm German-Turkish relations. The source said Merkel also expressed satisfaction with the way Turkey was keeping its word in preventing refugees and migrants crossing the Aegean Sea to Greece after more than one million flooded into Europe last year, most ending up in Germany. German officials would not comment immediately on the substance of the talks. In apparent retaliation, German parliamentarians have been denied access to the Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey where some 250 German troops are participating in NATO operations against ISIS militants in Iraq, prompting protests from the Berlin government. The Turkish source said Merkel had raised the issue and asked Erdogan to restore access to Incirlik for lawmakers, who approve all military spending and investment. Erdogan had replied that the airbase was not a place for "public shows and marketing" but Turkey would consider the request in the light of German statements on relations, the source said. The two leaders also discussed intelligence cooperation in the fight against foreign fighters recruited by ISIS in Syria, some of whom have returned to carry out attacks in Europe.

Syria army extends ceasefire for three days
Reuters, Beirut Saturday, 9 July 2016/The Syrian military said it extended a 72-hour nationwide ceasefire that expired on Friday for another 72 hours, state media reported on Saturday. The military high command said in a statement reported by state media that “a regime of calm will be extended for a period of 72 hours from one o’clock on July 9.”The previous truce ran up to midnight on July 8. Syrian government and allied forces took control of a rebel-held town east of Damascus on Saturday after a 12-day battle, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, compromising a supply route into opposition territory. Maydaa was the easternmost outpost of the rebel-held bloc of territory in Eastern Ghouta and was used as a supply route into the area for weapons and money, the Britain-based Observatory said. It was the last rebel-held bit of territory before the rebel-held town of Dumeir to the east, from which it was separated by a stretch of government-controlled land. Maydaa had been under the control of the powerful Jaish al-Islam rebel faction and was the group's closest position to Dumeir military airport, where they are fighting to displace government forces.

Iran to continue missile program ‘with full force’
Reuters, Dubai Saturday, 9 July 2016/Iran will press on with its missile program "with full force" based on national security needs, a foreign ministry spokesman was quoted as saying on Saturday, adding that critical comments by Germany's leader were unhelpful. Chancellor Angela Merkel told the parliament in Berlin on Thursday that missile launches by Iran earlier this year were inconsistent with a UN resolution urging it to refrain for up to eight years from missile work designed to deliver nuclear weapons. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said Merkel's remarks were "not constructive" and would have no bearing on the program, according to state news agency IRNA. Reiterating Tehran's assertion that the missiles are not designed to carry nuclear weapons, he added: "Iran will continue with full force its missile program based on its defensive plans and national security calculations."On Friday, Iran rejected as "unrealistic" a report by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticizing its missile launches as inconsistent with its deal with world powers to curb sensitive nuclear activity in exchange for sanctions relief. Reuters reported on Thursday that a confidential report by Ban had found the tests to be inconsistent "with the constructive spirit" of the July 2015 agreement. Responding to German intelligence reports that Iran has been trying to acquire nuclear technology in Germany, Berlin said on Friday that certain forces in Iran may be trying to undermine the nuclear deal. Germany's domestic intelligence agency said in its annual report that Iranian efforts to illegally procure technology, especially in the nuclear area, had continued at a "high level" in 2015.

First Russian tourist flight lands in Turkish resort
AFP, Istanbul Saturday, 9 July 2016/The first Russian charter flight carrying tourists to Turkey since a diplomatic crisis erupted eight months ago landed on Saturday in the Turkish Mediterranean resort of Antalya, the airport said. The Rossiya Airlines plane touched down at Antalya's international airport at around 0730 GMT after President Vladimir Putin last month officially lifted restrictions on tourism to Turkey. The plane, flying from Moscow's Vnukovo airport, was carrying 189 tourists, NTV television said. Russia had banned the sale of agency tours to Turkey as retaliation for Ankara's shooting-down of a Russian war plane in November on the Syrian border. The move dealt a crushing blow to the Turkish tourism industry, which is hugely reliant on Russian tourists especially on its Mediterranean coast. However Putin on June 30 allowed once again the sale of tours and charter tourist flights from Russia to Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter to the Russian leader that Moscow said contained an apology for the downing of the jet. Analysts say that Ankara was keen to repair its relations with Moscow after the crisis with a key regional neighbor left Turkey dangerously isolated on the international stage.However, the Turkish tourism industry is expected to be dealt another blow by tourists staying away following the June 28 triple suicide attack at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul that killed 47 people.

Iraq’s war children ‘face void without global help’
Thomson Reuters Foundation, London Saturday, 9 July 2016/A generation of children face the bleak prospect of going without an education unless the Iraqi government, its allies and aid agencies rebuild communities torn apart by years of war, a senior UN children's agency official said on Friday. Peter Hawkins, UNICEF representative in Iraq, said recent fighting between government forces, backed by a US-led coalition, and ISIS fighters, had cut off thousands of children from school and healthcare."We are faced with a whole generation losing its way and losing prospects for a healthy future," said Hawkins in an interview. Government institutions, faced with financial deficit, are collapsing leaving them dependent on UN agencies to provide schools and teacher training, following more than a decade of sectarian violence, Hawkins said during a visit to London. "What is needed is a cash injection through central government so that we can see it building the systems required for an economic turnover," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Conflict has worsened the situation across Iraq, with an estimated 4.7 million children - about a third of all children in the country - in need of assistance, the UN agency said in a report last month. Mass movements of people forced from their homes by fighting in areas like Ramadi and Fallujah, west of the capital, Baghdad, put one in five Iraqi children at risk of death, injury, sexual violence, abduction and recruitment into fighting, the report said. UNICEF said earlier this year that at least 20,000 children in Falluja faced the risk of forced recruitment into fighting and separation from their families. "A big problem is the lack of schools, with a lack of investment in recent years meaning the systems have all but collapsed," Hawkins said.
Child recruitment
Thousands of civilians across much of western Iraq's rugged Anbar province have been driven from their homes into the searing desert heat in the last two years, as a tide of ISIS fighters took control of key towns and cities. Despite losing considerable ground on the battlefield, a massive suicide bombing in Baghdad's central shopping district of Karrada last weekend showed Islamic State remains capable of causing major loss of life. In Anbar, where fighting has ruined scores of residential areas, many of the people displaced by the militants were now "in limbo", waiting in displacement centers, Hawkins said. Nearly one in five schools in Iraq is out of use due to conflict. Since 2014 the U.N. has verified 135 attacks on educational facilities and personnel, with nearly 800 facilities taken over as shelters for the displaced, UNICEF data shows.But Hawkins said he expected thousands of families to soon return home and rebuild their lives.In Ramadi, where government forces retook control last December, UNICEF will help the ministry of education reestablish schools, provide catch-up lessons and teacher training over the summer after it had been "flattened" by fighting, Hawkins said. The veteran aid worker, who has also worked in Angola, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Pakistan, said his "biggest fear" was that children could get caught up in a battle to retake Mosul, Iraq's biggest northern city still held by the militants. Protection of children must be part of a military strategy to retake Mosul, said Hawkins. Pressures on UNICEF's $170 million annual budget for 2016-17, which Hawkins said was short by $100 million, were hampering its ability to reach all those affected and may mean some child protection programs are abandoned, he said.

Israel's UN delegation hoping for Security Council seat
Ynetnews/Itamar Eichner/July 09/16/Analysis: After Israel's ambassador was appointed to head a UN committee and an Israeli professor was re-elected to another, Israel's mission to the organization has set its eyes on a Security Council seat in two years.When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Danny Danon as the permanent representative to the UN, many raised an eyebrow and called the choice surprising. In retrospect, some now admit that appointing a skilled and cunning politician with a direct link to the Prime Minister's Office managed to open quite a few doors and bring about many achievements for Israel in the United Nations. Recently, Danon was elected to head the UN's Legal Committee, one of the General Assembly's six permanent committees that deals with sensitive topics in international law. Danon's election, which had the support of 109 states out of 193, was especially surprising because of the intense campaign waged by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, including the Palestinians and the Iranians, against his appointment. This is the first time since Israel joined the UN in 1949 that its ambassador heads one of the permanent committees, and there are those who are calling this achievement "historic." A short while later, the Israeli delegation attained a further achievement. Prof. Yuval Shany, dean of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was elected to his second term on the UN's Human Rights Committee in Geneva. The committee comprises 18 experts from different countries and is responsible for the compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in different countries.
"The fact that I come from Israel and know the dilemmas related to balancing human rights and security needs gives me a certain advantage," said Shany. "I believe that it gives my opinions on these topics a lot of weight on the committee."
While all the members are professionals in their fields, the election process is highly political. Shany won widespread acclaim for his performance in his first time, yet he still ran into difficulties when he asked to be re-elected with 40 Muslim states opposing his appointment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Israeli delegation to the UN ran a long campaign to persuade as many countries as possible to support him, and Shany himself also met with representatives of more than 100 countries and held multiple receptions and lectures. The decision, in the end, came down to a single vote, at least in the first round. The Israeli delegation is not resting on its laurels and is already preparing for its next—and most ambitious—goal: a seat on the Security Council in two years. The Western European and Others Group, of which Israel is a member, is expected to select two non-permanent members to join the council in 2019–2020. Currently, three are competing: Germany, Belgium, and Israel. The Germans' seat is practically guaranteed, so the true fight will be with Belgium. Israel begins this battle at a disadvantage of some 40–60 votes from Muslim, Arab and anti-Israeli states. "It's realistic," claims Danon. "Until recently, Israel was treated as the UN's whipping boy, but we've proven that good work can lead to important victories."
 

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on July 09-10/16

Iran's Support for Terrorism Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA)
Matthew Levitt/The Washington Institute/July 09/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/07/09/matthew-levittthe-washington-institute-irans-support-for-terrorism-under-the-joint-comprehensive-plan-of-action-jcpoa/

The Islamic Republic's terror sponsorship has hardly abated since the nuclear deal was reached, giving the Obama administration another opportunity to reassess these menacing behaviors and hold Tehran accountable.
July 14 will mark one year since the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran. This article is part of a series of PolicyWatches assessing how the deal has affected various U.S. interests, to be released in the days leading up to the anniversary.
When the JCPOA was implemented in January, terrorism-related sanctions remained in place against Iran, and U.S. officials promised they would hold Tehran accountable for any such activity despite the lifting of nuclear sanctions. As Secretary of State John Kerry noted on January 21, "If we catch them funding terrorism, they're going to have a problem with the United States Congress and with other people, obviously." And yet, in the year since the deal was signed, Iran's threatening behavior has not diminished.
In February, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that "Iran, the foremost state sponsor of terrorism -- continues to exert its influence in regional crises in the Middle East through the International Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), its terrorist partner Lebanese Hezbollah, and proxy groups...Iran and Hezbollah remain a continuing terrorist threat to U.S. interests and partners worldwide." A month later, CENTCOM chief Gen. Joseph Votel testified that Iran had become "more aggressive in the days since the agreement."
Sponsoring Terrorists in the Levant
Iran has been a consistent supporter of U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Hamas. In August 2015, after four rockets hit the Israeli Golan Heights and Upper Galilee, Jerusalem attributed the attack to a joint effort by PIJ and the IRGC-QF. These claims were substantiated when Israeli counterstrikes against the cell that launched the initial salvo wound up killing an IRGC general, Mohammad Ali Allahdadi.
In September, the Treasury Department designated Maher Jawad Yunes Salah, a dual British-Jordanian citizen who headed the Hamas Finance Committee headquartered in Saudi Arabia. In that capacity, he had been overseeing the transfer of tens of millions of dollars from Iran to the committee; these monies were used to fund Hamas activity in Gaza, including the group's military "wing," the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
Although Iran and Hamas have argued at times over the latter's refusal to support the Assad regime in Syria, they rekindled their broken relationship this year. According to a November report issued by Congressional Research Service, "Iran has apparently sought to rebuild the relationship with Hamas by providing missile technology that Hamas used to construct its own rockets, and by helping it rebuild tunnels destroyed in the [2014] conflict with Israel." At a press conference in 2015, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman asserted that bolstering resistance to Israel -- in part by funding Hamas -- is a "principled policy." This support was clarified in February when a Hamas delegation visited Iran for eight days and met with various officials, including IRGC-QF commander Qasem Soleimani. According to a member of the delegation quoted by the Jerusalem Post, Soleimani stated that "Iran was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian resistance before the nuclear deal, and it will remain so after the deal." Hamas celebrated the trip in a statement of its own, highlighting its "successful and positive meetings with Iranian officials."
Despite this rapprochement with Hamas, Iran continued its sponsorship of al-Sabirin, a new proxy militant group in Gaza. Led by a former PIJ commander, al-Sabirin reportedly receives $10 million a year from Tehran. Members of the group have also apparently converted to Shia Islam despite operating in Sunni-majority Gaza, adding another level of complexity to the relationship. In December, al-Sabirin claimed responsibility for an explosion that targeted Israeli forces on the border.
Elsewhere in the Levant, Lebanese Hezbollah remains Iran's primary terrorist proxy. Last month, the group's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, bluntly declared that "Hezbollah gets its money and arms from Iran, and as long as Iran has money, so does Hezbollah." Since the JCPOA was signed, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization has engaged in numerous criminal, espionage, and terrorist plots.
In February, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced that it had uncovered a major drug trafficking and money laundering network during a multinational investigation. The agency named the "Business Affairs Component" of Hezbollah's External Security Organization as one of the main benefactors of a network that collected and transported "millions of euros in drug proceeds," which in turn were used to purchase weapons for Hezbollah fighters in Syria.
Last year, less than a week after the JCPOA was signed, Israeli officials arrested a Swedish-Lebanese man, Hassan Khalil Hizran, at Ben Gurion Airport for attempting to gather intelligence on Israeli targets on Hezbollah's behalf. And just days before the signing, a Lebanese-Canadian man confessed his ties to Hezbollah and said the group had directed him to attack Israeli targets. He was jailed in Cyprus after authorities seized nine tons of a chemical compound used in bombmaking from his home there.
As Hezbollah pours considerable weaponry and manpower into the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, it has also directed third-party actors to carry out terrorist attacks. This January, Israeli authorities arrested five Palestinians for planning an attack "organized and funded by Hezbollah." According to Israeli officials, the leader of this West Bank cell was recruited by Hassan Nasrallah's son Jawad. Hezbollah trained and directed the group to surveil Israeli targets, giving the men $5,000 to carry out suicide bombings and other attacks. Based on these and other cases, a senior Israeli official warned in February that Iran was "building an international terror network" of cells with access to weapons, intelligence, and operatives to carry out attacks in the West.
The Gulf
In naming Iran as a major sponsor of terror, the State Department's 2015 Country Reports on Terrorism revealed that Tehran has "provided weapons, funding, and training to Shia militants in Bahrain," and that the island state had "raided, interdicted, and rounded up numerous Iran-sponsored weapons caches, arms transfers, and militants" that year. In November, Bahraini authorities arrested forty-seven individuals for their involvement in a terrorist organization linked to the IRGC. And this January, authorities detained six individuals for their involvement in a terrorist cell with claimed links to Iran and Hezbollah. The cell was accused of orchestrating a July 2015 explosion that killed two people outside a girls school in Sitra.
Iran also continued to support Shiite terrorists in Kuwait. In August 2015, local authorities raided a terrorist cell of twenty-six Shiite Kuwaitis, accusing them of amassing "a large amount of weapons, ammunition, and explosives." After media outlets reported the cell's alleged links to Iran and Hezbollah, the public prosecutor issued a gag order on the investigation. In January, a local court sentenced two men, one Kuwaiti and one Iranian, to death for spying on behalf of Iran and Hezbollah.
Tehran's antagonistic relationship with Saudi Arabia also continued this year, mainly through proxy warfare, but also through alleged activities against Saudi targets. In February, the Saudi-aligned Yemeni government asserted that it had evidence of "Hezbollah training the Houthi rebels and fighting alongside them in attacks on Saudi Arabia's border." And according to another report that same month, Filipino authorities claimed to thwart an IRGC plot against a fleet of Saudi passenger planes in the Philippines.
Beyond the Middle East
This May, an American drone strike killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour on the Iran-Pakistan border. At the very least, his activities indicated tacit Iranian support for the Taliban, if not more. U.S. authorities had tracked him visiting family in Iran and conducted the strike as he returned to Pakistan. Afterward, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid stated that Mansour had been on one of his several "unofficial trips" to Iran because of "ongoing battle obligations."
Previously, in November, Kenyan authorities arrested two Iranian citizens on charges of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack against Israeli targets in Nairobi. The Iranians were allegedly sent by the IRGC-QF.
A month later, the Nigerian army launched a massive attack on the Shiite town of Zaria after reportedly obtaining intelligence about an assassination attempt on the country's army chief of staff. The plot was allegedly organized by the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, a Shiite militant group that Iran had previously trained in the assembly of explosives and other skills, according to a former Iranian Foreign Ministry advisor.
Conclusion
At an April 2015 Washington Institute event held three months before the signing of the JCPOA, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew stated, "Make no mistake: deal or no deal, we will continue to use all our available tools, including sanctions, to counter Iran's menacing behavior." A year later, President Obama underscored this pledge to Gulf Cooperation Council partners at a Camp David summit: "We have to be effective in our defenses and hold Iran to account where it is acting in ways that are contrary to international rules and norms."
Today, however, it is clear that Iran's support for terrorism has only increased since the deal was reached, and officials cannot feign surprise on the matter. In June, for example, senior Treasury official Adam Szubin bluntly concluded, "As we expected, Iran has not moderated this conduct since the implementation of the JCPOA." Given Iran's ongoing support for terrorism and regional instability and the administration's repeated insistence that it would hold Tehran's feet to the fire on these very issues, the JCPOA's first anniversary presents Washington with a perfect opportunity to reassess the regime's menacing behavior and take steps to hold it accountable.
**Matthew Levitt is the Fromer-Wexler Fellow and director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at The Washington Institute.
 

Can Bahrain count on Moscow to fill Washington’s shoes?
Giorgio Cafiero/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
Since 2011, much analysis on Bahrain has focused on its crackdown on Arab Spring activism, the US military presence in the kingdom and Manama's role in the geosectarian cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. However, there has been significantly less discussion about Bahrain's long-term foreign policy planning. Following the lead of other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, which have taken stock of the relative decline of US influence in the Middle East, Bahrain has explored deeper relations with other global powers. Officials in Manama see US support for the Iranian nuclear deal as having left the GCC increasingly vulnerable to the consolidation of Iranian/Shiite influence throughout the region. At the same time, Washington's criticism about human rights issues enrages the kingdom's rulers. Such tensions in Washington-Manama relations illustrate the context in which Bahrain is slowly hedging its bets away from the United States. Consequently, the growth of Bahraini-Russian relations underscores the important role that Moscow could come to play in Manama's foreign policy decision-making.
King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa's visit in February to Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence in Sochi carried much symbolism and highlighted the extent to which Manama and Moscow see the tumultuous Middle East through similar lenses. The two leaders exchanged gifts, with Putin presenting the Bahraini monarch with a stallion and Hamad presenting the Russian president with a sword made of Damascus steel, which the king called a "sword of victory … for imminent victory, God willing."
Some read these words as a sign of Bahrain's support for Russia's direct military intervention in Syria, which Putin and Hamad addressed. Shortly after the two leaders met, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, "Both Russia and Bahrain want to see a stable Syria, a country in which the foundations of the secular state are strengthened, a country that ensures its territorial integrity and within the framework of which the rights of all its citizens, without exception, are guaranteed."Beyond Syria, Bahrain and Russia align on other issues. Both states back Egypt's current government and loathe US "democracy promotion" efforts in the Middle East. In April 2014, Bahrain and Russia signed investment deals, even as Washington and Brussels were imposing economic sanctions on Russia over its activities in Ukraine. Bahrain also revised its visa policies in an effort to lure Russian businessmen to the island, and Gulf Air, the kingdom's national airline, agreed to open a new direct route between Manama and Moscow. This was a snub to Washington.
"With Russia continuing its efforts to destabilize Ukraine, this is not the time for any country to conduct business as usual with Russia," a US State Department official said. "We have raised these concerns with the Bahraini government." Washington's criticisms of Bahrain's record of quashing its political opposition — along with the Obama administration's policies regarding Iran — have left the island's rulers doubting US commitment to the GCC's security. In contrast to the United States, which partially suspended its annual $1.3 billion military aid to Egypt amid the 2013 anti-Muslim Brotherhood crackdown, Russia does not link weapons deals to human rights accountability. Similarly, the Kremlin is not in the habit of condemning authoritarian governance in any region of the world. Within this context, Russia has positioned itself as an attractive and reliable partner for Bahrain.
Shortly after Bahrain's "Arab Spring" uprising erupted in 2011, Moscow sold weapons to Manama for the first time. The announcement that Rosoboronexport, Russia's state-owned arms trade company, would do business with the island kingdom came six months after the United Kingdom and France banned the sale of military equipment to Bahrain in response to the monarchy's crackdown. Rosoboronexport's first sale to Bahrain included Kalashnikov AK-103 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition. The Russian arms trading company also established a training and equipment program for the Bahraini Defense Forces that remains in place today.
The timing and nature of Rosoboronexport's deal underscored Russia's interest in breaking into the Arabian Peninsula's arms markets, which Western countries have dominated throughout modern history. In light of Bahrain's ongoing political crisis — recently exacerbated by Manama's cancellation of Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim's Bahraini citizenship for what it called sectarian extremism –— Moscow is likely to find the island to be a lucrative market for small arms for the foreseeable future. The elephant in the room is Saudi Arabia, as Riyadh and Moscow's clash over Syria complicates the prospects for deeper Bahraini-Russian relations. Due to political and social unrest, coupled with the island's economic stagnation, Manama has grown increasingly reliant on Saudi financial and security assistance. According to many observers, Riyadh has Bahrain under its thumb, with some GCC interlocutors viewing the island kingdom as a de facto Saudi archipelago province. Two days before Hamad's February meeting with Putin in Sochi, Sheikh Fawaz bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, Manama's ambassador to London, stated that Bahrain would deploy ground troops to Syria "in concert with the Saudis" to fight the Islamic State and the "brutal [Bashar al-] Assad regime.” Although many analysts dismissed such rhetoric as an empty threat against Assad aimed at pleasing Bahrain's Saudi backers, Fawaz's words were enough to underscore how the clash of competing powers' agendas in Syria will affect Bahraini-Russian relations, given Riyadh's leverage over Manama and the Syrian crisis' seemingly endless nature.
Looking ahead, Russia and Bahrain's growing relationship will face a host of obstacles, most importantly the GCC and Moscow's conflicting agendas in Syria. Nonetheless, Putin's actions against Assad's enemies deliver a powerful message about Moscow's determination to crush Sunni Islamist extremists operating in the Levant and seeking to redraw the map of the Middle East. Although Russia's collaboration with Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese Shiite forces on Syria's battlefields has hurt Moscow's reputation in parts of the Sunni Arab world, the GCC states have taken stock of Russia's deepening engagement with the Middle East. Believing that Russia cannot be ignored, the GCC states seek to deepen their partnerships with Moscow as their confidence in Washington declines.
Moreover, the GCC is aware that Russia and Iran's relationship has its own problems. Bahrain and other Sunni Arab states may seek to use deeper defense and economic ties with Russia to lure Moscow away from Tehran, perhaps positioning the Kremlin as an effective mediator in Gulf Arab-Iranian disputes. In January, there were indications that Russia was seeking that role, after diplomatic sources in Moscow declared their readiness to serve as an intermediary between Riyadh and Tehran in the aftermath of Saudi Arabia's execution of popular Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr.
Ultimately, if the Saudis come around to viewing Russia as a suitable mediator in the Middle East, Bahraini-Russian relations have the potential to flourish, given Manama and Moscow's overlapping interests. However, if the Saudis perceive Russia as an Iranian ally — at a time when rising sectarian temperatures and geopolitical instability continue to exacerbate the Saudi-Iranian rivalry — Bahrain's ability to turn to Moscow to counterbalance Manama's traditional Western allies may be rather limited.

Passivity in the Face of Big-Power Aggression
Gordon G. Chang/Gatestone Institute/July 09/16
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8410/russia-china-aggression
The West has developed reasonable-sounding rationales for not acting in the face of what is clearly aggression by big powers. That inaction has bought peace, but the peace has never been more than temporary.
Officials in Beijing and Moscow believe their countries should be bigger than they are today. Faced with little or no resistance, China and Russia are succeeding in redrawing their borders by force.
Should we be concerned by a nuclear-armed, hostile state falling apart? Of course, but we should be more worried by a hostile state launching nuclear attacks on the Baltics, as the Kremlin has repeatedly threatened to do.
The Chinese and Russians may be villains, but it is we, through inaction, who have permitted them to be villainous. The choice is no longer risk versus no risk. The choice is which awful risk to assume.
Speaking in April at the Aspen Security Forum in London, Douglas Lute, Washington's permanent representative to NATO, said: "So essentially there is a sense that, yes, there is a new more assertive, maybe even more aggressive Russia, but that fundamentally Russia is a state in decline. We have conversations in NATO headquarters about states in decline and arrive at two fundamental models: states in rapid decline which typically lead to chaos and breakdown, and states in gradual decline. Then we ask ourselves: Which of these two tracks would we rather have our nearest, most militarily capable neighbor, with thousands of nuclear weapons, move along? To many, trying to manage Russia's decline seems more attractive than a failed state of that size and magnitude right on the border of NATO."
Lute explained why the West adopted clearly inadequate measures to stop Russia after its seizure of Crimea and portions of Donbass. As the thoughtful diplomat explains, "it may not make sense to push further now and maybe even—and maybe accelerate or destabilize that decline."
If we do not act because Russia is weak, then how do we explain the West's China policies? China, in the estimation of almost all policymakers and analysts, is not on the way down. On the contrary, they believe it is ascendant.
By now, they also know that Beijing is increasingly aggressive. China grabbed Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines four years ago. Since then, it has attempted to seize another South China Sea feature, Second Thomas Shoal, also from Manila, and the Senkaku Islands, in the East China Sea, from Japan. The Chinese military has, without justification, closed off portions of the international waters of, and airspace over, the South China Sea. Chinese authorities, virtually without consultation, declared an air-defense identification zone, which included the sovereign airspace of Japan, over the East China Sea. China's generals have repeatedly sent their troops deep into Indian-controlled territory at various spots in the Himalayas.
And our response? That has been to continue "engagement" of the Chinese regime, helping to strengthen its economy and institutions and integrate it into multilateral organizations. The concept is that, at some point, Beijing will enmesh itself into the international community and accept global norms. Most everyone believes that if China has a stake in the world, it will help defend the existing system.
In short, the West has developed reasonable-sounding rationales for not acting in the face of what is clearly aggression by big powers. That inaction has bought peace, but the peace has never been more than temporary. Eastern Europe and East Asia are in seemingly never-ending crises because officials in Beijing and Moscow believe their countries should be bigger than they are today.
Faced with little or no resistance, China and Russia are succeeding in redrawing their borders by force. It should be no surprise that success has only increased their ambitions, with each now wanting even more territory of their neighbors. The Kremlin is at this moment threatening Poland and the Baltics. Beijing is acting provocatively in an arc from India in the south to South Korea in the North.
By using forceful tactics, both the Dragon and the Bear are destabilizing the world. So we should not care whether an aggressor is weak or strong. It is the aggression that now matters.
What to do? America and its allies and friends must first stop China and Russia, then reverse the gains from their belligerent acts, and finally impose costs greater than the benefits they obtained.
This means, with Russia, forcing Moscow to return Crimea to Ukraine and evicting the Kremlin's forces from Donbass. In the first instance, the West will have to impose progressively stricter sanctions, perhaps even an embargo on all commercial and financial dealings. Armored vehicles of a Russian-backed rebel force near Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine, May 30, 2015. (Image source: Mstyslav Chernov/Wikimedia Commons)
Russia experts say that moves like these will only increase popular support for Vladimir Putin and that the Russian people can endure great hardship. Whether or not these propositions are correct, coercive measures will deprive the Russian military of the resources it needs to threaten neighbors.
At the moment, the country is particularly vulnerable. The economy, for instance, is already in dreadful condition. Last year, according to the Russian Federal Statistics Service, gross domestic product contracted 3.7%. This year, the outlook also looks negative, as both officials and analysts say.
Putin, under strict sanctions, will not be able to afford to keep his planes in the air or create the three new divisions now planned to be deployed on the border with the Baltic states and Poland. His ships will have to stay close to port.
Should we, like Ambassador Lute, be concerned by a nuclear-armed, hostile state falling apart? Of course, but we should be more worried by a hostile state launching nuclear attacks on the Baltics, as the Kremlin has repeatedly threatened to do. An invasion of Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, however carried out, will trigger a wide war, due to their NATO membership.
As a matter of urgency, those threatened by Putin — his neighbors, Western Europe, and the United States — need to delegitimize him and the other hostile elements in Russia. Delegitimization begins and ends with his being forced to return seized territory.
With China, America and its partners need to take back control of Scarborough, in the northern reaches of the South China Sea. In the spring of 2012, Chinese and Philippine vessels sailed in close proximity around the shoal, just 124 nautical miles from the main Philippine island of Luzon and close to the strategic Manila and Subic Bays.
Washington brokered a pact between Beijing and Manila, whereby both agreed to withdraw their vessels. Only the Philippines complied, however, leaving Beijing's vessels in control of Scarborough.
The Obama administration, wanting to avoid a confrontation with the Chinese navy, did not enforce the agreement it had just finished sponsoring. American inaction made the problem even bigger, because Beijing then ramped up pressure on Second Thomas Shoal and the Senkakus. America, through doing nothing, just convinced the Chinese they had license to do whatever they wanted.
China's ever-expanding ambitions have consequences. In late March, the New York Times reported that General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was overhead at the Pentagon asking Admiral Harry Harris, the chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, what could be the most important question of the era: "Would you go to war over Scarborough Shoals?"
As Dunford's question suggests, our general policy approach, in place for decades, is not working now. We have essentially taught the Chinese that aggression pays, and when aggressors are allowed to keep their prizes, the international system, as sturdy as it is, can be taken down quickly.
Nothing will be as effective in restoring stability in East Asia as a Chinese retreat from Scarborough. The U.S. Navy, should employ Beijing's own "cabbage" strategy of surrounding an opponent and deny China's access to the strategic feature by bringing in far more firepower than China can muster — and staying as long as necessary. Moreover, Washington should threaten to close off the American market to a China increasingly needing to boost exports, now in a precipitous drop, down 7.3% in the first five months of this year.
Do we risk armed conflict when we force the Chinese to abandon the shoal or Putin to give back Crimea? Yes, but policymakers, employing policies that sounded good to the ear, have let situations drift for so long that there are no good options left. The choice is no longer risk versus no risk. The choice is which awful risk to assume.
The Chinese and Russians may be villains, but it is we, through inaction, who have permitted them to be villainous. We have, with the best of intentions, created an exceedingly dangerous world.
**Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and a Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
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Is Israel doomed to live with terror?
Shlomi Eldar/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
In the course of the second intifada, Yaakov Gilad and Yehuda Poliker wrote a sad hymn on the daily life of the Israelis who experienced the terror of suicide bombers. The words of the song, “What My Love Is Called,” pulled at the heartstrings of anyone who feared being the victim of the next attack. “Who is next in line, and who is standing in the next line?” sang Poliker about the gloomy and bloody reality that continued for about five years.A decade and a half has passed since the beginning of the second intifada. It appears that the current uprising — the "individual" or "knife intifada" are only some of the various names given to the recent terror wave — have brought this sense of personal vulnerability to Israelis. And every time the wave seems to be dying down, along comes another series of attacks that proves it is not a passing phase.
On July 1, Rabbi Michael Mark was murdered in a drive-by shooting. One day earlier, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13, was killed in her sleep at her home in the Kiryat Arba settlement. About three weeks earlier, two residents of Yatta, near Hebron, killed four Israelis while they dined at the Sarona shopping and entertainment complex in Tel Aviv.
In addition to these attacks, recent weeks have seen many other attacks in various places in the country — for example, in the city of Netanya, in the southern Hebron Hills, Ariel and the Etzion settlement bloc.
Terror attacks in the settlements of Judea and Samaria, where about half a million settlers live in close proximity to Palestinian villages and cities, have become routine. While attacks in the cities in the heart of Israel require complicated preparations and effort, attacks in Judea and Samaria are easier to carry out. For example, Muhammad Tarayra from the village of Bani Naim only had to walk a few minutes to reach Kiryat Arba, where he murdered Hallel. In contrast, cousins Khaled and Mahmoud Mahamrah, who perpetrated the attack in the Sarona Market, traveled a long way from Yatta to the Segev Shalom locality in the Negev, where they hid, then went by bus to the city of Beersheba, where they continued on another bus to Tel Aviv.
In the course of the second intifada, when Israel counted hundreds of dead and thousands of wounded in suicide attacks, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued an order to erect a separation fence that would constitute a physical barrier against attackers who were able to easily descend from the top of the Hebron hills to cross the Green Line. The planned separation fence was supposed to be 790 kilometers (491 miles) long. It was intended to do the impossible: separate Israelis and Palestinians while not disrupting the territorial continuity of the settlements with the Green Line localities. The winding route that was designed to keep the settlements outside the separation fence turned the construction into a never-ending saga. About 14 years have elapsed since work began, and the goal of constructing an impregnable physical barrier has not yet been reached.
As of now, only about two-thirds of the fence has been built. It is precisely in the southern Hebron Hills area — through which the Sarona attackers infiltrated — that remains fenceless. Hundreds of Palestinians looking for work pass easily through this very place every day, without any kind of authorization.
The positions of the settlements scattered in the southern Hebron Hills area and the region's complex topography are delaying the completion of the fence and rendering the whole national security enterprise insignificant. Once there is one large breach in the gate, the 500 kilometers (311 miles) of fence that have already been erected are of no use at all. In recent months, the security system has been trying to find effective measures against the terror wave being carried out by young Palestinians. Almost none of the perpetrators have been affiliated with a terror organization of any kind. But deterrence is no simple matter. In light of the nature of the intifada, every Palestinian from age 13 to 30 is seen as a potential attacker.
The following deterrence methods have been tried to date: destroying the homes of attackers, revoking transit and work permits from members of the terrorist’s extended family, erecting checkpoints in potential hot spots (mainly in the Hebron Hills zone, from which about two-thirds of the attackers have come), creating cyberwarfare units and arresting those who incite to hatred or violence on the internet. These measures have not succeeded in stopping the terror wave. Even Israel’s tight cooperation with the Palestinian security apparatus, which according to security sources on both sides has imposed a certain measure of calm, has not wiped out the intifada. Meanwhile, the attack methods have improved. Until recently, attacks were mostly committed by individuals, but now the attackers work in pairs, knives are replaced by firearms and the motivations for continuing attacks seem not to have decreased.
Since the onset of the terror wave, a substantive debate has raged in Israel between the military and diplomatic echelons. It concerns not only the way the Israel Defense Forces ought to fight terror, but also the essence of and reasons for the violence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government links the Palestinian attacks to the jihadi terror wave afflicting the free world. According to Netanyahu, the Israelis live in a jungle of predatory animals and are condemned to live by the sword. When Culture Minister Miri Regev spoke July 7 at the opening ceremony of the Jerusalem Film Festival, she, too, strengthened the “This is our fate” approach. According to Regev, the murder of Hallel Yaffa Ariel is part of the global terrorism problem, just like the June 12 Florida nightclub massacre and the July 5 attack against Turkey's Ataturk Airport. She was answered with boos by the audience.
By contrast, former Mossad Deputy Chief Ram Ben Barak presented a different equation to the Israelis. In a July 1 interview with Channel 10, Ben Barak said, “We have to honestly say that that is the price we are paying for sitting within a hostile Arab population. We can decide that this is a price we are willing to pay, or we can decide that we don’t want to pay it.” In other words, living with terror is not a decree from heaven.

Turkey's pro-government media mired in CIA conspiracy theories
Pinar Tremblay/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
When Istanbul Ataturk Airport was attacked by three suicide bombers June 28, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim appeared on television and said, “Early signs indicate the Islamic State [IS]” was responsible. In the following days, further evidence and arrests by Turkish security forces confirmed a well-planned IS attack. In addition, on June 29, CIA Director John Brennan concurred with the Turkish authorities in an interview, also warning there could be similar attacks on American soil.Yet, conservative, pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) media outlets are presenting a rather different picture.
"The CIA was behind the attacks!” That was the headline of pro-AKP Islamist Yeni Akit daily on June 30. The headline was based on an opinion piece published the same day by the pro-government Takvim daily titled “CIA and the false flag again.” Takvim columnist Ergun Diler said men who have previously been connected to the CIA carried out all the previous attacks in Boston, Paris and Brussels.
With mind-numbing logic, Diler explains the situation as part of World War III, organized around false-flag operations of the CIA. In the piece, he also makes reference to undisclosed foreign experts who have argued that “Turkey is a stronghold of the CIA, where the agency can carry out an attack every other day.” Diler argues that three countries — Turkey, France and Russia — are paying the price for standing up against the United States. Diler is not alone in his allegation of CIA-planned Islamist terror attacks. On the same day of Diler's analysis, several op-eds appeared in unison in pro-AKP media outlets directly blaming the attacks on the United States in general and the CIA specifically. Indeed, since June 29, almost all pro-AKP media have featured two types of analyses about the Istanbul airport attack: One, like Diler, directly and clearly blames the CIA; the more mellow versions suggest IS is a pawn of imperial forces. Here are some interesting arguments from these dailies.
On June 30, from Yeni Akit, Ali Karahasanoglu penned a piece titled “Whoever gave IS the brand-new Toyotas is the culprit.” Karahasanoglu wrote, “When we say IS, I think of men with guns and Toyota pickup trucks.” Questioning where these trucks came from, Karahasanoglu discards the possibility that the United States provided the trucks to the Free Syrian Army, which then lost them to IS. He concludes that the trucks are clear evidence of US involvement. Then he argues that the United States showed its jealousy of the Russian-Turkish rapprochement by bombing the airport. He repeats a popular argument that IS is merely a pawn. Another striking piece comes from columnist Ibrahim Karagul of the conservative daily Yeni Safak. Karagul’s piece is titled “This is not terror but a multinational attack: Turkey never kneels down!” Karagul warns his readers about internal and external threats working to conquer and divide Turkey. He concludes that the attacks are intelligence operations, but he can't quite say whether a Western or Eastern agency is behind them. However, he is confident that the hands that control the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Syria and IS are the same.
Posted on June 30, another Yeni Akit columnist, Mehtap Yilmaz, starts her column by asking, “Is there anyone who does not know IS is a project created at Mossad-CIA laboratories?” Indeed, Yilmaz expands the conspiracy even further, saying that not only are the PKK and IS products of foreign forces, but also the Gulen movement. Yilmaz’s fellow columnist Ahmet Varol on the same day published a searing piece arguing IS was created and used by international imperialist forces to destroy Muslim societies from within. On July 7, as further IS attacks — focused particularly on Baghdad — took place during Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the end of Ramadan, Varol titled a new piece “Eids that are bombed,” where he argued that, though IS’ real target is Muslims, “global imperial forces focus on Islam, not on marginal or extremist attitudes, [when] explaining these attacks to their own public.”
The immediate effects of these arguments were also seen on social media, where photos of Brennan were posted with the allegation that he was responsible for the blood spilled at the Istanbul airport.
All of this raises a daunting question. Turkish authorities have openly declared IS as the culprit, while pro-government media outlets — which traditionally refrain from publishing arguments of which the government does not approve — almost turn the official statement about IS involvement on its head. Why do pro-government media following the Istanbul attacks struggle so much to muddy the waters and virtually clear IS?
There are at least two possible explanations for this puzzle. First is the increasing sympathy toward the idea of a caliphate and people's difficulty in accepting a link between Islam and terror in Turkey. Second is the failure to accept how Turkey's foreign policy mistakes have increased its security vulnerabilities.
IS is known to claim attacks where the targets are Shiite mosques or shrines in Muslim-majority countries. But one of the reasons IS is not claiming responsibility for its attacks on Sunni-majority targets is to avoid hurting its credibility and recruitment rates among Sunnis. Next is its inability to explain how even the word "Islam" can be linked to IS atrocities for the majority of practicing Muslims. That is why conservative columnists almost always bring the PKK and other armed non-state groups into their arguments. Even when they accept that IS pulled the trigger, they insist on posing questions such as, "But who provoked IS?"Omer Gergerlioglu, a columnist for the website T24, told Al-Monitor, “Islamists in Turkey are not yet able to face the music. That's why they insist IS is a pawn of foreign forces. Yet, when asked, ‘Would someone blow himself up just to please the foreign forces?’ they have no proper answer, because they have not thought these conspiracy theories through thoroughly.”
Gergerlioglu makes another crucial point — that whitewashing IS could lead to a rise in the number of IS sympathizers and members. He said, “When pundits in prominent media outlets repeatedly generate conspiracy theories, how can we expect the public to react?”Why, then, would these media outlets resort to such confusing conspiracies? Soli Ozel, a professor of international relations from Kadir Has University, wrote an opinion piece noting that in domestic politics, the government in Turkey is almost the exclusive gatekeeper of the news, but in foreign affairs it's not so easy to silence other countries’ media outlets. Hence, in international circles, the government is ready to openly blame and hold IS accountable for its atrocities. Domestically, the pro-government media insists it must be the CIA. Ozel suggests that Turkey's first step in adjusting its handling of foreign policy matters should be to discuss them without turning them into populist slogans for domestic audiences. This confusion indeed has led to quite preposterous results. On July 7, Yeni Akit posted a piece of news titled “Western fashion world supports IS,” in which it claimed last year’s fashion week in New York included a show inspired by IS — indicating Western support for IS. In the same news item was the claim that IS uses a brainwashing technique developed by the CIA to recruit rich kids into its ranks. The news even had a photo of an IS fighter with expensive gear — not to fight, but to hang out in affluent cafes to generate recruits. How does IS lure so many foreign fighters? The secret, according to this news report, is in the expensive fashion items: jeans costing almost $700 (2,000 Turkish lira) and $1,200 (3,300 Turkish lira) shirts, for starters.
Desperate times in Turkish politics are creating increasingly ridiculous news reporting that may have harmful consequences in the near future.

Is Iraq's Kirkuk on verge of becoming independent region?
Omar Sattar/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
Baghdad — The status of Kirkuk province, which is disputed by Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds, returned to the forefront after the Iraqi presidency announced a proposal June 18 to make Kirkuk an independent region. The plan has been met with mixed reactions. The proposal stipulates the establishment of Kirkuk as an independent region, Iraqi Kurdistan, within its current administrative borders and power distributed among its main nationalist components. A Kurd would hold executive power, and the president would be a Turkmen and the speaker of parliament an Arab. The conflict in the oil-rich Kirkuk province would appear to be one of identity more than power or influence. Turkmens view it as a Turkmen area and want it to remain so. On June 18, Iraqi presidency spokesman Khaled Shwani said that Turkmen members of Kirkuk’s provincial council support the proposal for the regionalization of Kirkuk. A majority of the council must approve the measure for it to take effect. Specifics of the proposal must await its approval by parliament.
On June 26, the Turkmen People’s Party and the Turkmen Front rejected turning Kirkuk into an independent region, but the Turkmeneli party and the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) backed it. In a statement to Almaalomah news agency on June 12, ITF member Qassem Hamza said, “The project of a Kirkuk region was submitted by the Turkmen bloc at the provincial council in 2006. This petition served as the starting point of our project. Establishing Kirkuk as an independent region is the best solution for ending the Turkmens’ suffering and claiming their rights. We strongly oppose any monopoly on the decision by the regional government whether Iraqi or Kurdish.” Meanwhile, the Kurds argue that Kirkuk is part of Kurdistan that was sectioned off by force by the former regime. While some Kurds want to reincorporate Kirkuk into the Kurdistan Region, there are others who support the new proposal. Abdul-Qader Mohammad, a member of the Kurdish Alliance parliamentary bloc in Baghdad, told Al-Monitor, “Kirkuk is a province in Kurdistan and should be integrated into the Kurdistan Region using tools provided for in Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution. Since Arab parties have been hindering the implementation of this article, turning Kirkuk province into an independent region might be an acceptable compromise.”
Mohammad added, “Turning Kirkuk into an independent region should start with normalization, which means restoring the situation to the way it was before the Arabization campaigns launched by former President Saddam Hussein’s regime in an attempt to erase Kirkuk’s Kurdish identity.” In his eyes there is a “need to restore to Kirkuk its displaced Kurdish population and treat Arabs brought in by Saddam Hussein as expatriates since they’re not native to Kirkuk.”
He said, “Whoever opposes the idea of an independent Kirkuk region must immediately accept the implementation of Article 140 of the constitution without any delay or procrastination and set aside the excuse that the article was rendered obsolete."
Kirkuk's Arabs are divided on the issue and have not announced any positions or demands.
According to Article 140, and its invocation of Article 58 of the Transitional Administrative Law, normalization in disputed territories, including Kirkuk, must go through three phases: Members of the diaspora must be allowed to return and people not native to the area relocated and compensated if necessary to accommodate the returnees. After conducting a census, a referendum is to be held on whether to integrate Kirkuk into Iraqi Kurdistan or maintain its current territorial status as an Iraqi province. Article 140 also states that normalization in disputed territories should be accomplished by the end of 2007. Mohammad told Al-Monitor that since the normalization deadline has passed, some parties argue that the article has been rendered obsolete, while others claim constitutional clauses cannot be overstepped before implementation.
Salim al-Muslimawi of the National Iraqi Alliance (NIA), a member of the Iraqi parliament’s regions committee, told Al-Monitor, “The constitution specifies the requirements for turning a province into a region, but disputed territories like Kirkuk are subject to a special constitutional clause. Therefore, these territories should not undergo the phases of legal regionalization.”In accordance with paragraph 2 of Article 117 and Articles 118-121 of the constitution, a law was adopted on Feb. 11, 2008, establishing special procedures for establishing regions within provinces. As per this law, the provincial council must submit a petition to the federal government in Baghdad, which then refers the petition to the electoral commission to conduct a referendum on regionalization. “As NIA, we oppose turning Kirkuk into an independent region given the current security situation, the Islamic State’s [IS] presence in many areas of Kirkuk, in addition to other subjects of dispute in Kirkuk,” said Muslimawi. “We believe that the province’s future must be discussed on a national level in order to reach a solution that gains everybody’s approval.” He added, “We hope that political disagreements concerning Kirkuk are postponed until after the war with IS. Then we can discuss the future and means of application of Article 140 or other fair solutions.”Any agreement on Kirkuk's future seems unlikely in the near future amid the existing divisions and given its significant oil resources. The issue appears to require a historic settlement with compromises by all the parties to guarantee Kirkuk’s legal status, by referendum on integrating it into Kurdistan, regionalization or preserving its current status as a province with administrative affiliations to Baghdad. Armed conflict might become an option if disagreement over Kirkuk’s future intensifies.

In Defense of Tony Blair
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/July 09/16
In the past few days the bulk of the British media and a good part of the political-intellectual elite have been indulging in a new favorite sport: lynching Tony Blair. Headlines and streamers in newspapers from all parts of the political spectrum have used such words as “monster”, “demon” and, even “terrorist” to underline their hatred of the former Prime Minister.
The immediate trigger for this volcanic eruption of hatred is the publication of the final report of the so-called Chilcot commission’s seven-year long inquiry into British participation in the 2003 war that toppled President Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.
Holding such inquiries has been part of the British political tradition since the mid-19th century. The stated aim is often to find out “the truth” about some big event, most recently major IRA attacks and the Hillsborough disaster that claimed the lives of dozens of football fans from Liverpool.
However, the real, unstated, aim is always to provide a common narrative that could reconcile opposing camps around a simulacrum of consensus and thus contribute to the restoration of public serenity. The method used is to listen to everyone, pick up a little of each account of the event, and come up with a synthesis that everyone could use to “prove” the “rightness” of their own version.
This is what has happened with the Chilcot report. It avoids the real questions, but gives those who opposed the toppling of Saddam Hussein enough winks and nods to encourage their belief that the whole thing was a disaster from beginning to end.
Though the report has almost nothing explicitly critical to say about Blair it drops enough hints to point him out as the scapegoat without which no “inquiry” is ever complete. Anyone reading the report, which comes in 2.6 million words, or at least its summary in 250 pages, might gain the impression that Great Britain had been in the driving seat in the war to get rid of Saddam. The fact is that Britain, one of 48 nations coalescing under US leadership, provided less than 10 per cent of the forces involved and, after the war, was in charge of only one of Iraq’s 18 provinces.
In many civilizations the scapegoat plays a crucial role in helping society overcome its tensions and contradictions when they reach a break point. Initially, the scapegoat was a human sacrifice but sometime around 1000 BC Zoroaster and then the Greeks replaced the human sacrifice with an animal. In Abrahamic religions, Abraham was ordered to replace his son, offered as human sacrifice, with a lamb. In Christianity it is Jesus who plays the role: atoning for the sins of mankind by giving his own life.
In pre-Colombian Mexico, the Aztecs used their chief as the sacrifice, organizing a feast that lasted seven days and seven nights at the end of which the scapegoat would be dressed in the most luxurious finery, taken to the top of a watch-tower and pushed from there down to his death.
To be sure, Blair isn’t an Aztec chief, and even less a Christ-like figure. But he is a scapegoat. By lynching him, albeit metaphorically, everyone else is cleansed and thus society can reach reconciliation.
But let us see how a real inquiry, one not aimed at fudging things to satisfy everyone, might have tackled the issue. Such an inquiry would have sought answers to six questions.
The first is whether the war was necessary. The question has been asked about every war from the dawn of time and since peoples started waging war on one another. At the end of Homer’s Odyssey, narrating the history of the Trojan War, Achilles asks a broken Priam, Hector’s father, whether it had all been worth it. “Old man! I hear that you, too, were once happy,” the Achaean warrior jibes at the fallen Trojan king.
Was the Second World War necessary? Not necessarily. Britain and France had already accepted that Hitler should gobble up Czechoslovakia. Why couldn’t they accept that he do the same to Poland?
The answer to “was the war necessary?” could always be: “no”. One could always refuse to fight and pray for a peaceful solution. However, war has always been and is likely to always remain part of a range of tools available to man for conflict resolution and imposition of one’s will on adversaries and foes.
What we face here is a matter of judgement. A nation’s leader(s) must decide whether or not war is necessary. In the case of Britain, the leadership, headed by Blair, decided that it was. The issue was discussed at Cabinet level 28 times, always securing massive endorsement. In the heat of debates over the war only two ministers decided to resign. With the exception of the small Liberal-Democrat Party, the rest of the leadership elite, in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, voted massively in favor of the war.
Toppling Saddam Hussein was also popular with, and strongly urged, by the British media. Even the BBC which always tries to equivocate dared not argue that keeping Saddam in power in Baghdad was a good idea. That assessment was confirmed in the British general election that followed the fall of Saddam. Blair led Labour to an unprecedented third consecutive victory, confirming his record as the leader who secured the largest number of votes in the history of British parliamentary elections. So, on this second question, Blair is as guilty or not guilty as almost everyone else. To scapegoat him beyond reasonable limits is unjust.
The third question, often asked but skirted by Chilcot, is whether the war was legal. Since there is no universally approved mechanism for making a war legal, one has to refer to the legal system in the nation concerned and, beyond that, to the position of the United Nations. As far as British domestic law was concerned the war was certainly legal because it had secured the overwhelming approval of the Parliament.
What about the UN? In its 70 years of existence the UN has specifically approved two wars: the Korean War and the war to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. In the same period the world has witnessed over 300 wars of all sizes without the UN taking a position on their legality or otherwise. Under Blair himself Britain went to war in Sierra Leone, to restore the legitimate government, and in Kosovo to protect Muslims from being massacred by Serbs without obtaining a specific UN authorization. More recently Russia has invaded Georgia and Ukraine without the permission of the UN.
Incidentally, it is curious that the loudest in the anti-war movement demostrate only when Western democracies and their allies go to war, never against Russia, China or Khomeinist Iran.
Theoretically, of course, the UN Security Council could pass a resolution declaring a war illegal. However, this has never happened and is unlikely to happen because the UN Charter itself recognizes the right of self-defense which depends on the decision of the member states and not the UN.
Blair is, of course, criticized for not having tried to secure specific permission from the Security Council to invade Iraq, as had been the case in the Korean War and the war to liberate Kuwait. Those who closely followed the events of those days know that such permission would not have been granted as both Russia and France had publicly stated they would veto any attempt at removing Saddam Hussein by force. So, was Blair guilty on that score? The honest answer is: no. He is only guilty of deciding not to allow Russia and France to dictate British policy on that issue.
The fourth question is whether the intelligence on which Blair built part of his case for going to war was flawed. The answer is: yes. Some of us knew this from the start. Two months before the war I wrote and narrated a 30-minute program on the British Channel Four television precisely about that, arguing that the case for getting rid of Saddam had to be built on facts of his murderous rule not incomplete reports about his WMDs.
But, here, too, scapegoating Blair is both inaccurate and unjust. British Intelligence reportedly employs an army of spies and analysts, many of whom were mobilized to find the truth about Saddam’s WMDs. If they didn’t, they, too, are to blame. The British Parliament, especially national security committees of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, could have asked questions and probed deeper. They didn’t. The media could have made a fuss. They didn’t. The opposition parties could have tried to shoot Blair’s fox. They didn’t. So, on matters of intelligence, Blair was not careful and exacting enough. But he was not alone in that deficiency.
The fifth question is that Blair violated international law which forbids the use of force for regime change. No doubt, the US-led invasion produced regime change in Baghdad which could be regarded as violating UN rules in spirit if not in the letter. But for that charge to stick we must first prove that the aim of the invasion had always been regime change and not the implementation of 17 Security Council resolutions violated by Saddam.
When the first US contingents arrived in Baghdad, Saddam and his government made the fatal mistake of simply running away to hide. Thus by the time the capital had been captured there was no regime to change. The rational thing to do would have been for Saddam to stay, offer surrender as the government of Iraq, and ask for negotiations with the victors of the war. That was what the Nazis and the Japanese did after their defeats in the Second World War. Saddam didn’t do that. Thus on that score, too, Blair cannot be blamed. There was no regime for Blair or anybody else to change.
Finally, the question is whether or not “the monster” Blair failed to adequately prepare for post-Saddam Iraq. Blair-bashers make much of this issue, although they know that Britain played no more than a supportive role on that score. After Saddam’s fall I met Blair in Downing Street at his request to discuss the future of Iraq. It soon became clear that the British were only focused on keeping peace in Basra and trying to re-start southern Iraq’s economy by reviving the dead port of Um Al-Qasar.
However, before the war there had been much planning by three committees of experts, most of them Iraqis in exile, working in Kuwait. This is why Iraq was able to have a new constitution, approved in a referendum, so fast, followed by elections for a parliament. A new Iraqi currency was quickly put into circulation and the period of “occupation” under American “Pashas” Garner and Bremer, under the UN flag, lasted just over a year. (In Allied-occupied West Germany, occupation lasted more than four years. Japan spent seven years under direct US rule.)
If we remember that Blair was only the second violin in the war that finished Saddam Hussein we might agree that he alone cannot be guilty of not preparing for the post-war period, either.
In a democracy, as power belongs to the people, any credit and/or blame must also be extended to the people as a whole. If toppling Saddam Hussein was a political version of the Original Sin, let’s not blame it only on “Demon Blair.”

Terrorism – No One is Safe Anywhere
Amir Taheri/Asharq Al Awsat/July 09/16
When the first wave of terrorism linked to the Middle East started in the 1970s, the assumption in the West was that the disturbing phenomenon reflected Arab anger over the Israel-Palestine issue. By the 1980s, however, a new wave of terror had appeared, striking principally in Europe, linked to the Khomeinist revolution in Iran. This time the assumption was that Shi’ites wanted to avenge their unspecified humiliation against unspecified foes. By the 1990s a third wave of terror had struck, this time assumed to be linked to Muslim anger over the American military presence in parts of the Middle East. By the year 2000, however, it must have become clear to anyone who wished to see that the phenomenon was not rooted in any of those particular issues.
Peace between Israel on the one hand, and Egypt and Jordan on the other didn’t tone down terror attacks. Nor did the Oslo accords between Yasser Arafat and the Israelis achieve a reduction in terrorist violence.
Khomeinist terror was not abated by the fact that the Reagan Administration, in cahoots with the Israelis, smuggled arms to Khomeinist Iran to defeat Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 1985, the Americans unrolled the red carpet for Mehdi, son of Hashemi Rafsanjani, then President of the Islamic Republic, at the White House without securing immunity against terror attacks by Iran-controlled groups in the Middle East and beyond.
By 2001, there were no American troops in the so-called Muslim heartland. And, yet, the 9/11 attacks were unleashed against the United States, claiming almost 3000 lives. Since then a new situation has developed in which, in the words of Al-Qaeda theoretician Yussef Al-Ayyeri, in his book “Governance in the Wilderness”, no one is safe anywhere in the world except in parcels of territory controlled by “true Islamic authorities.” In the past 15 years we have had no fewer than 400 attacks of various dimensions in more than 60 countries across the globe.
The world made two big mistakes in its analysis of “Islamist terror.” The first was to link it to specific issues, assuming that once those issues are addressed terrorism will fade away. Three decades and thousands of deaths later we have learned that, unlike old terrorists who had specific territorial or ideological grievances that could be addressed and removed, these neo- terrorists don’t want anything in particular because they want everything.
The second mistake was to assume that we have good and bad terrorists. Many intellectuals and even some governments in the region supported various terror groups because they believed that their aims were just or that they would operate only against “others.” Some Western powers made the same mistake. The French paid protection money to Palestinian groups for years in exchange for not hijacking French aircraft. The Germans and some other Europeans turned a blind eye to Khomeinist terrorism in exchange for business contracts and the illusion of influence.
Even today, Tehran mullahs are vehement in their claim that terrorism by Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and kindred groups in Iraq and Yemen is “truly Islamic”. At the other end of the spectrum, there are Arab states that long maintained a difference between legitimate and illegitimate use of terror and violence. But when Iran and the Arab states, not to mention poor Bangladesh and harmless Malaysia, are hit by terror groups claiming to be “truly Islamic”, they feign disbelief.
For the past 15 years the world has been trying to agree on a definition of terrorism and failed. The issue has been on the agenda of the G-7 and G-8 summits and at least two summits of the Islamic Conference Organization. Every year, the United Nations’ general Assembly has grappled with the issue, getting nowhere. The issue has also been the bread-and-butter of countless think tanks across the globe, again with no results.
There are several reasons for this. The first is that the contemporary world automatically assumes that every definition contains an element of ethical judgement. Such an assumption would have surprised Aristotle, the father of definitions, who knew that describing things as he found them was a cold, almost clinical, act that implied no moral evaluation. Such evaluation was the province of ethics, an entirely different category. Aristotle would first establish whether a proposition was true or not before telling us whether he agreed it with it or not. Facts were sacred while opinion was free.
The second reason is that the dialectics of subject-object relationship is perverted in this case. Let us explain. Take war as an example. Both he who initiates it and he who is its victim agree on what it is. Both call it war. The initiator may also call it: just war, war of resistance or he may use any other
adjective that he deems fit for his own purposes. The same is true of the victim. Both, however, agree, that what they are involved in is war. That fact made international agreement on a definition of war possible and, in time, helped codify its rules.
The same thing could be said of theft. The thief may well justify his act on whatever grounds: he did it out of poverty or revenge or wanted to take from the rich and give to the poor etc. But he does not deny that taking someone else’s property illegally is theft.
In the case of terrorism, however, there is no common definitional ground between the perpetrator and the victim. The victim, if he stays alive, shouts that he has been struck by terrorism. The perpetrator, if he has the courage of admitting his deed, boasts that he is doing something else: waging holy war, for example. This was not always the case. Until recently, terror was recognized and understood, though with distaste by many, as a fact of human life. Homer knew it well and described it in the Iliad ,whose hero Achilles bears the nickname “the terror”.
The leaders of the French Revolution in 1793 took pride in describing their policy as The Great Terror. Robespierre and Saint Just had no qualms about being called “terrorists.” The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, contains several couplets that preach terrorism, especially against counter-revolutionaries and foreigners.
The Russian Narodniks were proud of calling themselves “terrorists” while anarchists, from Prince Kropotkin to the vagabond Nechaev, praised terrorism as “the highest form of revolutionary action.” Some of Dostoevski’s heroes vacillate between terrorism and Christianity as alternative paths to salvation.
In 1905, Heydar Amoghli, a pioneer of Communism in Iran, called his secret organization “The Terror Committee”. Its members were called “terrorist brothers.” Likewise, Gavril Princip, the Serbian nationalist who assassinated Franz Josef, the Austrian crown prince, in Sarajevo in 1914, took pride in calling himself “terrorist”.
The Bolshevik leader Lenin did not shy away from preaching terrorism as a means of furthering his revolution. His colleague and rival Trotsky authored the notorious “Edict on the Hostages” which made it legal for the revolutionary regime to kidnap the children and wives of Czarist government officials and to assassinate them as “a means of spreading terror”.
From 1920 to 1960 the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and in the 1940s and 1950s, the Fedayeen Islam in Iran openly boasted of using “terror in the service of the sacred cause”.
The problem is that those who conduct acts of terror today refuse to be described as terrorists. This is because terrorism has not only lost its revolutionary luster but has been universally recognized as a barbarous form of political violence. There is, of course, no chance that terrorism will ever regain the romantic aura that it once enjoyed. Thus, there is little possibility that those who use terrorism will ever acknowledge their deeds in such terms. As long as no one is ready to admit that he is a terrorist, no one will be able to impose a universal definition of terrorism.
So what is the way out? We could, of course, shrug our shoulders and admit that in a world that asks “What is the definition of a definition?” there is little chance of defining terrorism in universally acceptable terms. After all, there are many facts of life that we cannot define in such terms. For example, we all know what stupidity is but will never agree on its exact definition. Or we could approach terrorism as a method, a form of action, and refrain from even the slightest hint of ethical judgment when proposing a definition.
Such an approach could provide us with a possible definition: terrorism is any act or series of violent acts against civilians designed to persuade a part or the whole of a community or a group of communities to do something that the terrorists like or to stop doing something that the terrorists do not like.
Once the method has been defined, the international community could then debate whether or not to legitimize and codify it or declare it a crime and combat it. One wonders what Aristotle would have said.

Why Brexit won – and how Arabs can be happy with Britain’s choice
Paul Crompton/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
I didn’t vote in the EU referendum last month. Perhaps living in the UAE for 10 years has given me a real detachment from my homeland, and perhaps also because it wasn’t like we would actually vote to leave, would we? But now, as the shattered Bremain camp schlep through the five stages of grief – simultaneously, so it seems – facts must be faced. These facts are clear: the June 23 referendum was free and fair, the bewildered bloc is almost begging for a speedy divorce, and neither of Prime Minister David Cameron’s probable successors have expressed the wish to run back to the sucker-laden tentacles of Brussels. The decision of more than 17 million Britons to leave the European Union was not, as the Liberal left imply, a vote for racism and xenophobia, any more than opting for Remain was a vote for the big banks and the establishment – although that could certainly be argued. Instead, as voting maps show, the referendum was a mandate from those thousands of “little people” who live worlds apart from the glittering streets of London and hallowed halls of Westminster. The people far from the madding crowd, who Thomas Gray described in his Elegy as those who “kept the noiseless tenor of their way.” The people who feel they’ve too long been left high and dry by lofty, unelected Eurocrats dictating a planet-sized plethora of petty, bewildering rules from afar, slowly turning a proud nation that once helped defeat tyranny and despair into a submissive, kowtowing client state. It’s a vote of independence, sovereignty and freedom from thousands of small business owners, farmers, and the working class, worn down by years of freewheeling immigration policies that have long lowered wages and strained public services. The disconnect between EU power and British people is easily shown by statistics. National turnout in the UK’s European parliament elections stood at 35.6 percent in 2014, a figure little changed from dismal showings in previous ballots. Among established EU member states in western Europe, only the Portuguese showed less interest. By contrast, turnout on June 23 stood at 72.2 percent. With this in mind, here are some quick pointers as to why Arabs can look forward to a post-EU Britain:
Future trade deals:
So far, 11 countries have nodded at fresh trade deals with the UK – no strings from Brussels attached. These include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland and India. Unique among most European states, Britain exercises a certain amount of diplomatic clout from its 53-member Commonwealth, an organization mostly made up of former colonies. And its monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, is still head of state of 16 countries, including her own. As the shattered Bremain camp schlep through the five stages of grief – simultaneously, so it seems – facts must be faced With their vast natural resources high in demand from a very resource-hungry nation, Gulf states could easily benefit too. Late last month, economists and experts from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain - four of the six states that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council - told me that for better or for worse, the Gulf was in a good position to benefit from a post-Brexit Britain. “The EU and UK are going to be under greater economic pressure than before, meaning that if the GCC countries play their cards right they can get more favorable terms in economic deals, such as trade and investment agreements,” said Omar al-Ubaydli, a Bahraini economist. His comments were echoed by Tim Fox, the chief economist of the UAE’s biggest lender, Emirates NBD, who said a day after the Brexit vote that Britain’s now likely exclusion from the long-stalled free trade agreement between the EU and GCC “may actually breathe new life into the UK's trading relationships with the Gulf, as well as with other parts of the world.”Britain’s poorer friends in North Africa can also benefit from Brexit, a triumphant-sounding Crispin Blunt, the chairman of the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, wrote last week. A “nimble and independent trade policy executed straight from London” would far outweigh the “cumbersome mechanisms of Brussels,” Blunt said. “Now Britain will be free of Greek, Italian, and Spanish lobbying that prevented us from increasing Tunisian olive oil imports to support the fragile North African economy,” he added. “Now Britain will be unencumbered by country of origin requirements that stopped us concluding trading arrangements with Jordan as they develop long-term economic solutions to the pressures of forced migration.”
Arms deals:
While the global weapons trade is not the sort of industry you’d want to push in public (unless you’re Nicholas Cage’s tormented character from Lord of War) sadly, in a time where ISIS and other terrorist groups threaten just about everyone, it’s more important than ever. Britain is the world’s sixth largest arms exporter, and the fifth largest economy overall. The Middle East market makes up nearly two-thirds of the UK’s lucrative weapons export business, with arms going to the governments of Algeria, Libya, and Egypt as well as the Gulf. While the EU has criticized the UK’s deals with Saudi Arabia, the world’s second largest arms buyer, its two most powerful states, France and Germany, have been up to the exact same business. With the ever-protectionist bloc looking ever deeper into itself, a free-trade deal between the UK and multiple Arab states would help both sides.
Immigration:
The EU’s current immigration madness - and I’m not referring to the well-meaning but insane open-door policy of Europe’s real ruler Angela Merkel - was perhaps best summed up back in February from an unlikely source: a 16-year-old schoolgirl. Speaking out from the audience on a BBC panel show, Lexie Hill, who wasn’t old enough to vote in the EU referendum, scolded a stony-faced parliamentarian: “[Under current EU rules] we can have someone unskilled within Europe coming in without any questions, but a really talented doctor from India has to go through a really intensive process,” she said to wide applause. “It doesn't make sense.”Lexie’s argument was one that many want to say but can’t, because it could be seen as racist. But she exposed one of the most gaping flaws of the current Brussels-imposed system: it’s long been hard for a qualified and accomplished professional from outside the EU to just come and work. Yet until the EU slammed the doors on most foreign migrants earlier this year, it was remarkably easy to come as a very questionable ‘refugee’ on the back of a lorry, aided by an enormous illicit people-smuggling network the bloc unintentionally encouraged. That’s not to say that immigrants do not provide the most enormous benefits to British society, a fact that many media outlets are very quick to point out. But there are rather less positive things to say about our immigration system. According to an Oxford study last month, “three quarters of EU citizens in the UK would not meet current visa requirements for non-EU overseas workers if Britain left the bloc.”When (and if) the EU’s freedom of movement rules are trashed, the UK would have the freedom to welcome in the world’s best, brightest, and crucially, its neediest. The current system hinders both. Whether you’re in favor of Brexit or passionately against it, let’s not kid ourselves – the upcoming divorce is going to be bitter and painful. But as everyone who’s emerged from an unhappy relationship knows, there is hope through all the tears.
And Britain’s powerful place in the world ensures there’s hope for all.

Neither Chilcot nor Brexit are a reason for Arabs to rejoice
Faisal J. Abbas/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
Pity the Arabs, so desperate for a victory that many of us would even rush to celebrate a non-achievement, or even worse, an adversity. Two examples of this sad phenomenon emerged recently out of the United Kingdom: Brexit, where a slim majority of the British population voted to leave the European Union, and the recently announced Chilcot report findings. Let us start with the latter, an issue that relates much more directly to us, given that it is a public inquiry into Britain’s highly-controversial role in the 2003 Iraq War. Is it just me, or were the highly-anticipated findings not worth the wait? Frankly, the report didn’t present anything we didn’t already know. After all, we all knew - by now - that former British PM Tony Blair was pre-committed to the US military campaign, that the WMD evidence wasn’t concrete and that the UK rushed into the war. Interestingly, Sir John Chilcot (who headed the inquiry) has not in any way expressed a view on whether military action in Iraq was legal or not; nor does his 2.5-million-word report resolve the question of whether Mr. Blair – and others responsible for the UK’s involvement – must face court action. The Chilcot report is nothing more than a gigantic ‘performance feedback form’ that took seven years to fill; much like the government bureaucratic exercises that are often ridiculed in the classic BBC television series, “Yes, Minister”. At best, as pointed out by The Guardian, the inquiry has ‘left the door open’ for the former prime minister to be independently prosecuted. This, of course, will require plaintiffs coming forward, evidence that Mr. Blair did commit something illegal (which the inquiry didn’t actually present), in addition to enormous financial resources and long years of litigation. In other words, it seems that the Chilcot report is nothing more than a gigantic ‘performance feedback form’ that took seven years to fill; much like the government bureaucratic exercises that are often ridiculed in the classic BBC television series, “Yes, Minister.”How British papers covered Tony Blair's response to the Chilcot Inquiry.
Furthermore, unless those celebrating among us heard his words differently; the fact remains that - despite previously admitting Iraq war mistakes - Mr. Blair didn’t actually apologize for going to war. On the contrary, he’d “do it again!”Nevertheless, it isn’t surprising that some Arabs view this as a victory. After all, some of us also considered Hezbollah winning the 2006 war against Israel a victory, despite a death toll of over 1000 Lebanese, of which the majority were civilians. If those causalities could speak, they’d probably have a different view of who won and who lost. Similarly, neither the half a million Iraqis who have lost their lives since 2003 nor the Iraqi people living under ISIS today will consider the Chilcot report a victory of any sort. I, of course, say this while maintaining that Saddam was a mass-murderer and a brutal dictator who had to be removed; however, the way Iraq was mismanaged following the invasion was an utter disaster. The truth is, war in any way, shape or form will never be a pleasant choice, unless the outcome is. As such, going to Iraq and failing afterwards is just as bad as deciding not to intervene militarily to stop the Assad regime masters in Syria, a choice that has led to the death of 250,000 people.
‘Brexit’ beyond immediate gains
The other case where many Arabs rushed to conclusions was in the reaction to Brexit. Almost immediately following the EU referendum on June 23, many observers concluded that Britain leaving the European Union would be a good thing for the Middle East. The majority of those with such arguments took a very narrow-sighted view. To them, the devaluation of the pound sterling meant an immediate opportunity to invest and better trade terms, particularly once/if the UK leaves the EU single market. It is saddening that anyone would exchange short-term financial gains for principals, collective stability and a long-term mutually beneficial relationship. Indeed, one shouldn’t forget that to many in the Arab world, the EU represented hope. It represented a much-needed real life example that warring nations could put their differences aside and work together for the benefit of their citizens.
In the Arab world, the EU represented hope. It represented a much-needed real life example that warring nations could put their differences aside and work together for the benefit of their citizens. With the UK outside the EU, we lost a valuable partner at the decision-making table. Indeed, the UK maintains its seats at the Security Council and NATO, however, it served as an indispensable, influential and pragmatic ally in Brussels. This doesn’t apply to a country like Holland (which we don’t have the same strong ties with) nor with countries like Estonia or Luxembourg that are almost irrelevant from a Middle Eastern perspective. More importantly, Brexit enthusiasts among us seem to forget that they are siding with the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a political bloc that has been described as both ‘racist’ and ‘fascist.’ In fact, many UKIP supporters voted in favor of Brexit because they thought it was a way to keep Arabs and Muslims outside the UK. Finally, with the British pound at a 30-year low, global financial firms considering to move out of London, both Scotland and Northern Ireland opting to remain in the EU (and possibly out of the UK!), no clear post-Brexit plan and none of the Leave campaign’s promises guaranteed, one has to wonder if Brexit enthusiasts seriously can’t see what is coming, or if they are nothing more than a bunch of ‘merchant-bankers’ (feel free to apply the cockney slang meaning) who only care about their personal gain!

Drowning in blood and grief
Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
There is a bad moon rising over American cities. One can sense the coming of more blood, more grief and more tears. The time of rage and fire is upon us; and the vengeful rhetoric of men of blind passion and discord will drown the voices of compassion, empathy and humanity. We have been accustomed to expect in short intervals spasms of violence that defies rational understanding. The names of these cities are drilled in our collective memory: Blacksburg (Virginia Tech.), Killeen (Fort Hood), Tucson, Aurora, Newtown, Washington, DC, Charleston, San Bernardino, Orlando, and now Dallas. It is as if we are engaged in a sickening nihilistic ritual of attaching a shooter’s name to each American city. We know that some of these massacres that killed civilians of all ages including children have been inspired by terror groups, or racial hatred, or by individuals driven by unfathomable human impulses similar to those characters that inhabit the novels of Dostoyevsky and Balzac.
The terror that visited Dallas in the form of Micah Johnson, a 25-year-old military veteran who served in Afghanistan, was driven by vengeful wrath against the police shooting of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier in the week. The Dallas police chief, David O. Brown said the shooter “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers”. For days, the nation was riveted while watching videos of the killing of Alton B. Sterling, 37, in Baton Rouge in front of many witnesses who captured his sudden violent death on video, and the killing of Philando Castile, 32 in Falcon Heights, whose slow death in his car was streamlined on Facebook Live by his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds a passenger with her 4-year-old daughter. The history of racially motivated violence in America, preceded the establishment of the Republic, but what makes the killing of these young black men more toxic and immediate now is the fact that it is, like Johnson’s rampage and terrorism in general, a digital phenomenon that can be watched by millions when posted on social media. Ever since a white police officer fatally shot a black teenager in Ferguson, two years ago, dozens of unarmed African-American young men have been killed by mostly white police officers throughout the country. These deadly encounters with the police, as well as the mass shooting attacks have brought to the fore America’s stark social, cultural and political paradoxes. After each spasm of violence loud civic debates erupt, about the proliferation of guns, lingering institutional racism, economic dislocations and income inequality, but the so-called “national conversation” has led the country nowhere. The carnage in Dallas – the worst attack on the police since the 9/11 terror attacks- has reminded some of the violence experienced by cities like Detroit and Newark during the struggle for civil rights and to end the Vietnam war. Shrieking headlines like the one on the front page of the New York Post may be good for business, but they are deceptive and reckless. The American house is not about to collapse, even though racial tension- always beneath the surface- has reared its ugly head during the administration of the first African-American president.
Lives shortened by violence and suicide
Much has been written about urban violence and degradation, the alienation of African American youths, and the plight of those mostly white middle aged men who lost their jobs to globalization. The predicament of these two groups is in large part a function of the failure of imagination and sound economic planning on the part of government and corporate America. The lives of the new marginalized Americans whether in major cities or in small towns that were deprived of their local industries by the flight of capital and jobs overseas, resemble the life of man in the state of nature described by Thomas Hobbs as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. I watched Dallas, like I watched Orlando and San Bernardino and after I asked why, I felt that these cities also became capitals of pain on the road to redemption. The lives of African-American youths in the cities are shortened by brutish violence, (gang and drug related) and the lives of those white men who lost jobs and hopes are shortened by growing use of drugs and suicide. The number of people who were shot and wounded in Chicago this year is 1773, and those shot and killed so far is 344. Most of the victims are black, either in black-on-black violence or in confrontations with the police. Life in some neighborhoods of Chicago is shockingly similar to Hobbes’ description. Recent studies have described suicide rates among middle aged white men as a “silent epidemic”. The suicide rate among middle aged white men in the last decade has risen by 28 percent due to limited education, lack of income or because of loneliness. Addressing these problems will require allocating tremendous financial and human resources, to provide health care, economic retraining and investment in new industries and new partnerships with the private sector, conditions that are not likely to be met any time soon given the political gridlock in Washington.
A house divided
The political dysfunction in Washington is unprecedented in modern times. The areas of collaboration between the two parties are shrinking rapidly; in fact they are vanishing. Politics has become a zero sum game, and political compromise has become a dirty concept. The Republican Party took a strategic decision in 2008 not to cooperate with the new President Obama. The leaders of the Grand Old Party never objected to bigots in its ranks like Donald Trump when they questioned the legitimacy of Obama as a citizen and as a president. During the current presidential race, Republican candidates insulted and demonized non-white communities and minorities such as Hispanics, Muslims and others. The Senate refuses to carry out some of its duties which include confirming or rejecting the President’s nominees to the Supreme Court. It looks as if the Republican Party has purged itself from moderate and compassionate conservatives. And now the Party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower has allowed itself to be high-jacked by Donald Trump. It is impossible to even engage in a civil debate about ways to reduce gun violence in America, even after deranged violent men massacre children in schools or worshipers in a church. The United States is one of those few countries in the world where the right to bear arms is guaranteed by a Constitution that is practically impossible to amend. And yet the gun lobby perpetuates a myth that the current President would like to prevent people from owning guns. The National Rifle Association has collected the souls of many members of the House of Representatives until further notice. In such a warped gun culture a gun is seen by some as a stairway to heaven. The political discourse has been poisoned in recent years particularly since the election of President Obama and the emergence of the Tea Party. President Obama’s shortcomings are a plenty, but one can still engage a President while disagreeing with his policies. Watching and listening to Republican and Democratic leaders one gets the impression that they will continue on their current political trajectories even if the polarization gets deeper.
The differences in outlook and objectives are fundamental: what are the powers of the Federal Government, what is fair taxation, will we pursue unbridled international trade agreements, and when and how we exercise the right to use military force overseas. More than a 150 years ago, specifically in the 1850s, the failure to settle some similar differences plunged the young country in the Civil War. Of course, the United States is not now in a similar situation, but clearly, there are politicians in Washington today who are ready to be subversive just to prevent the act that brought them to Washington: good governance.
Watching the agonies of the victims of violence in Dallas and other major cities, realizing that many victims were made dispensable by a whimper not a bang, I am reminded of the countless victims who are being killed with violent bangs, daily and at times by the hundreds, in the other cities on the other side of the world: Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, and Beirut. At one time I did something morbid, when I tried to count on a daily bases the number of Arabs who were being killed by other Arabs or their pretend friends. I thought of it as a daily harvest of blood. I could not do it for more than few days. These Arab cities became in my mind capitals of pain on the road to eventual redemption and liberation. I watched Dallas, like I watched Orlando and San Bernardino and after I asked why, and realized that I will not fully understand the answer, I felt that these cities also became capitals of pain on the road to redemption. There is a bad moon rising over American cities, but the dawn cannot be that far away.

Why US-Russia talks on Syria will lead to nowhere
Brooklyn Middleton/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
If President Obama’s administration really did intensify cooperation with the Russian military in Syria – as recent reports have indicated they may be planning – the US would be forced to silence its own calls for Bashar al-Assad’s departure and would lose any remaining credibility with the Syrian opposition and the fighters its supporting on the ground. It is difficult to assess how the administration would plan to up cooperation with an actor that has repeatedly sabotaged DC’s own strategic interests in Syria or how the US and Moscow would come even remotely close to agreeing on which groups should be targeted in coordinated airstrikes. Given that Russia’s own definition of what constitutes a terrorist organization in Syria is: Any group opposed to the criminal Assad regime, there is every reason to assess the talks will lead to nowhere while Syria, most especially Aleppo, burns. The Russian military is guilty of a mounting number of war crimes, including conducting airstrikes on hospitals and medical clinics with total impunity. The US must maintain a level of moral clarity and refuse to cooperate with such an actor. The international community, including the US, has failed Syrians at every stage of this conflict; it would be indefensible for the US to now partner with one of the chief supporters of Syrians’ primary enemy. Moral issues aside, Russia has repeatedly and intentionally targeted US-backed forces on the ground. What must continue to be reiterated is that the primary goal of Russia’s intervention in Syria is to secure the future of the disgraced Syrian government and they will work to obliterate all factions that threaten such a reality. As recently as last month, Military Times reported that the Russian Air Force twice targeted New Syrian Army members in al-Tanf on June 16, reportedly prompting anger from the Pentagon.
Stopping the bombs
That the US has not yet successfully pressured Russia to stop bombing the forces DC is backing on the ground is perhaps the strongest evidence that military cooperation between the two remains extraordinarily unlikely. Russia will never be a true partner to the US in Syria; the continued talks between the two countries should instead be focused on the dire humanitarian crisis in the war-torn country and addressing the regime’s utter disregard for the basic tenets of international law. The fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda should indeed be a joint effort – but not with any of the Assad regime’s key allies
The latest three-day sham ceasefire unilaterally declared by Assad came to a conclusion on July 8 – with reports indicating that approximately 60 people were killed in both airstrikes and attacks by rebels on the final day alone. Meanwhile, the very last road to Aleppo has reportedly been cut off by regime forces, trapping hundreds of thousands of people; the long-feared development could lead to the utter slaughter and starvation of thousands. It is not the time for meaningless talks while Syria bleeds itself to death. Future discussions between Russia and the US should focus on how critical humanitarian aid will be transferred and how to prevent coming atrocities in besieged Aleppo. The fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda should indeed be a joint effort – but not with any of the Assad regime’s key allies.

Has technology defied Arab values?
Fahad Suleiman Shoqiran/Al Arabiya/July 09/16
The information technology revolution has managed to create an analytical space that aims to uncover the hidden aspects of several dimensions. At the start, it was promising because it was going to bring everything closer, break borders, defeat intellectuals, end roles, intimidate politicians and mobilize for revolution. They are no longer sites for communicating as much as sites for connecting. Communication has its basis and approaches where responsibility is a condition, and where parity among those present must exist for dialogue to be interactive. However, suggested formulas in the available applications are based on reviving all that has collapsed from social values, as dialogue has disappeared and the other’s existence is being cancelled.
Individuals
Individuals have not been raised in a manner where they later acknowledge that other people around them are partners in dialogue, refining truth and nourishing meaning. The presence of others and its effect on individuals have been studied when analyzing human behavior. The idea of “all” is essential in the individual’s behavior. Aristotle said: “For what appears to all, this we call being.” Heraclitus said: “The walking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.” This matter was significant to Hegel. There is a struggle over leadership among Arabs. This is why it is impossible to create a general space that enables people to freely and equally discuss ideas and visions.
In his book “The Phenomenology of the Spirit,” he says the presence of others “is essential because understanding the self is only achieved through others by being open to them and overcoming isolation. One’s self can thus abandon isolation and become open to others to seize their recognition as a free and aware self. However, the self is faced with the obstacle of the other’s desire - the other has the same desire. This leads them to venture with their lives in a struggle that ends with one’s concession of his freedom.”
This controversy between the individual and others, and between an individual and another, is what causes controversy for people in cities and in gatherings that create societies. The self alone cannot create this emergence because values are not a selfish product or individualistic outcome. They are the outcome of controversy between a group of individuals. In her book “The Human Condition,” Hannah Arendt said: “Values in distinction from things or deeds or ideas are never the product of a specific human activity, but come into being whenever any such products are drawn into the ever-changing relativity of exchange between the members of society. No one, as Marx confirmed and he’s right, produces values while he’s in isolation. He could’ve added that in isolation, no one even cares about these values. Ideas and ideals only become values when put within the context of social relations.”The necessary presence of others is absent in Arab social reality and virtual reality. Individuals are in a constant struggle with each other. This state of rejecting others has increased on websites of social connection. The controversy among a group of individuals in society creates lively discussions and a huge existential understanding. A person can only test himself and his values through others, because that is where he exists - with them. His presence is stronger and clearer with the presence of others. This is the nature of man’s presence. A city can only be formed in its bright form by activating communication and general discussion, as these produce scientific meanings and social values. Communicating gains its value from the fact that it is a civil reaction to opinions - a reaction that is more civil from people in the past as they interacted with others through struggle and murder, particularly when they lived in the jungle. The presence of others thus becomes part of the city’s life.
Dialogue
The relations between millions of Muslims and Arabs through the modern tools of contact has not created any value worth mentioning, and has not expressed anything about their history that is rich in prestigious debate, serious dialogue and knowledge. Rather, they have dug up racial and sectarian matters that were long forgotten. Political affiliations became in control of approaches, debates and battles. Struggles among different movements dominated the scene on these websites. These tools exposed the fragility of values, and showed how people deny the presence of those around them. They rejected the opinions of others that are worthy of discussing. These tools lost their civil characteristic. Tools of contact turned into tools for division, rejection and struggle. All this shows that Arab societies are drowned in the notion of the self. This is why you see the desire to become a poet, muse or cleric in every Arab. You do not see the desire to become a debater or intellectual who spreads knowledge and philosophy. There is a struggle over leadership among Arabs. This is why it is impossible to create a general space that enables people to freely and equally discuss ideas and visions. This is all due to ignorance. There are modern tools in our hands, but our feet are drowned in the mud of decadence.
**-This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on July 7, 2016.

5 reasons Rouhani may not win second term
Ali Omidi/Al-Monitor/July 09/16
TEHRAN, Iran — As the faction most opposed to the government, Iran's hard-liners have made it their goal to make Hassan Rouhani the first Iranian president not to be re-elected for a second term. In fact, this objective was sought since their loss of the executive branch back in 2013. They simply cannot fathom being barred from the presidency for another five years until the 2021 presidential election. Thus, they're determined to seize back control of the executive branch as soon as possible. Their latest move, the war over pay stubs, is considered to be in this line. As has been the case with previous Iranian presidents, Rouhani's political fortunes are hard to predict. Numerous members of the ruling elite believe that he will be serving a second term. For instance, Speaker Ali Larijani, a Principlist, has emphasized that Rouhani is "on the whole moving in the right direction," adding that "some people believe Dr. Rouhani will serve for only one term. I would say 'no' since I don't think that is very likely." Meanwhile, former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani believes that "given Rouhani’s popularity and his performance with the [conclusion] of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], he is without a serious rival in the 2017 presidential election."
At present, there are five key economic and political variables that can play an important role in determining whether Rouhani will get a second term.
First is the scapegoating of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for all current economic problems. Rouhani and his Cabinet look to the previous administration as the cause of the current economic dire straits. This is a line of reasoning that, even if valid, does not satisfy average — and particularly vulnerable — Iranians. In the Rouhani administration's telling, even the most popular policies of the previous administration were wrong and problematic. Indeed, Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi has called the Mehr Housing Project a "disaster." Comments such as these are seen by the lower classes as a sign that the government does not represent them. These citizens question what Rouhani has done for them, since many of them were able to own homes and were also given a monthly income in the form of cash subsidies as a result of Ahmadinejad's populist programs. Though the cash payments were disastrous for the economy, Rouhani has been unable to convince the poor that these kinds of policies are problematic.
The second reason is the advanced age of some members of Rouhani’s Cabinet and their closed-loop conduct. The Rouhani administration does not engage in constructive collaboration with elites outside its inner circle. Economists such as Farshad Momeni, Mohammad Raaghfar and Jamshid Pajouyan have expressed their dissatisfaction with what they call the government's lack of economic strategy as well as its "closed-loop nature." Of note, the administration is also made up of many older officials, something that is not necessarily considered positive as far as public opinion is concerned. Indeed, the average age of Rouhani's Cabinet members is 57, making this administration the oldest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. These aged politicians are very conservative and unable to make radical economic and political changes. Lack of willingness to change the status quo will frustrate part of Rouhani's sympathizers.
Third comes the continuous crippling economic recession. Although the announced strategy and makeup of Rouhani's economic team initially inspired hope, it has failed to live up to public expectations. Without a doubt, the continuous recession and its consequences — especially for the labor market — have worked in favor of Rouhani's rivals. The administration's only hope was for a noticeable positive change in economic conditions after the lifting of sanctions. However, in reality, no such change has occurred. In the Iranian calendar year 1393 (ending March 20, 2015), the economy saw positive growth, but it came to a standstill in the following year (ending March 19, 2016). It has been predicted that during the current Iranian calendar year (ending March 20, 2017), economic growth, which is connected to increasing oil exports, will reach 3%.
In this regard, the administration has not met the public's expectations, and it is unlikely that the economy will perform well in the near future. It can be assumed that the situation will likely be better than in the 18 months preceding Rouhani's election. The problem is that people will compare their current situation with that of the welfare years of 2006-10 — funded by record windfall from oil revenues — when Ahmadinejad was in power.
Fourth, the continued pressure of the United States and the blocking of banking operations due to US sanctions threaten Rouhani's re-election. In this vein, the recent confiscation of Iranian assets after a US Supreme Court ruling in favor of families of terror victims seeking compensation signals trouble ahead. There are also the issues of the Canadian judiciary confiscating $15 million worth of Iranian assets, the continuous aggressive tone of the US Congress and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's attitude toward Iran. These kinds of developments have resulted in Iranians questioning the benefits of the JCPOA. While sanctions have formally been lifted, it will take time until conditions return to normal. Though the better-informed citizens recognize this, the wider Iranian society — and particularly the lower classes — does not. They expect an immediate impact, such as drastic price declines, which have not occurred. Fifth, Rouhani's inability to curb the actions of powerful institutions outside his control hurt his chances for a second term. The mass disqualification of all prominent Reformists prior to the February 2016 parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections did not sit well with Reformists and pro-democracy activists. Moreover, the continued house arrests of the leaders of the Green Movement, jailing pro-democracy activists such as Narges Mohammadi as well as the Guardian Council's disqualification of Minoo Khaleghi after her election as a member of parliament from Isfahan are other high-profile grievances.
In addition, Reformists are dissatisfied with the Rouhani administration's lack of action on the reported cancellation and changing of votes in cities such as Ahar, Bandar Lengeh and Tabriz, where the Reformists had won the majority of votes. Additionally, the election of hard-line Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati as the chairman of the Assembly of Experts, even though he was barely elected to the clerical body, was also a blow to the Reformist camp. Meanwhile, social issues such as the cancellation of licensed music concerts, restrictions imposed on filmmakers and morality police harassing "poorly veiled" women — even though Rouhani has expressed his disagreement with such actions — are perceived as the president’s failures. Indeed, Rouhani has so far not gone further than verbally criticizing these actions.
Finally, there is worry that state bodies that are beyond Rouhani's control will step up their efforts to sabotage him during the last year of his current term, so that public op