LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
August 30/15

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletins05/english.august30.15.htm

Bible Quotation For Today/Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’
Luke 07/36-50: "One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him that she is a sinner.’ Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.
You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’"

Bible Quotation For Today/God has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction
First Letter to the Thessalonians 01/01-10: "Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of people we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place where your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming."

LCCC Latest analysis, editorials from miscellaneous sources published on August 29-30/15
Cracks within Hezbollah/Samir Altaqi & Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 29/15
What if Tammam Salam resigns/Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/August 29/15
Obama expects better US-Israel ties after Iran deal in place/Associated Press/Ynetnews/August 29/15
The significance of arresting the 1996 Khobar bomber/Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/August 29/15
Do refugees have a place in the paradoxical social media scene/Yara al-Wazir/Al Arabiya/August 29/15
Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS/DEBKAfile/August 29/15
Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe's Double Game/Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/August 29/15
Lebanon’s long winter/Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/August 29/15
New IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) Strategy Goes Public/Michael Herzog/Washington Institute/August 29/15
Analysis: How Netanyahu’s threats pushed the US into a flawed deal with Iran /YOSSI MELMAN /J.Post/August 29/15
 US-Russia Division of Labor and the Two Screens of the Syrian Crisis/Samir Altaqi & Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 29/15

LCCC Bulletin titles for the Lebanese Related News published on August 29-30/15 
Lebanese people rally for reform
Thousands of Lebanese Demonstrate against 'Corrupt' Politicians, Issue Ultimatum
Nouhad Mashnouq: Security Forces Will Withdraw If the Army Leadership Did Not Respond
Cracks within Hezbollah?
Samir Altaqi & Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 29/15
What if Tammam Salam resigns?
Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/August 29/15
Amnesty urges Lebanon to investigate use of force in protests
Report: Ministerial Sources Anticipate Berri's Initiative
Lebanon Urged to Create Commission on Disappearances
Antoine Sfeir Released One Day after Abdcution
Lebanese man Kills Son for 'Personal Reasons' in Barja
Terrorist Trying to Flee With Forged Passport Arrested at RHIA

LCCC Bulletin Miscellaneous Reports And News published on August 29-30/15
Europe Rethinks Train Security after Foiled Jihadist Attack
Turkish Planes Join Anti-IS Coalition in Syria Raid for First Time
Local Ceasefire between Syria Regime, Rebels Ends
Policeman Killed and Seven People Injured in Bahrain Blast
Egypt Court Hands Al-Jazeera Reporters Three Years in Jail
Rouhani vows to defend Iran 'with missiles or other methods', claims military power unscathed
Strange Bedfellows: Saudi Arabia Moves Toward Hamas
Turkey strikes ISIS for first time as part of US coalition
U.N. chief urges stronger response to migration crisis
Kurdish forces free 7 villages in Iraq from ISIS
Syria ceasefire breaks down in three areas
Washington names first envoy for hostages
Bahraini security officer killed in bomb attack
Satellite images confirm Palmyra temple destruction
Virginia journalists shooter ‘identified with 9/11 attacks’

Links From Jihad Watch Web site For Today
Hamas-linked CAIR demands apology from Scott Walker for “enabling ISIS” by referring to “radical Islamic terrorism”
Detroit: Iraqi Christian refugees from Muslim persecution protest proposed mosque
Man who shot Virginia journalists “closely identified” with 9/11 jihadis
UNC’s “Literature of 9/11” course indoctrinates students to love jihad terror, hate America
Pentagon not targeting Islamic State training camps
Sweden: Imam tells Muslims: “Do not befriend the unbelievers”
Muslim mother and her four children leave London bound for the Islamic State
Main Bangkok jihad bombing suspect Mohamed Museyin arrested, bomb-making materials in apartment
Thai police arrest Turkish Muslim suspect over Bangkok Hindu shrine bombing
Robert Spencer’s new book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to ISIS “#1 New Release in Islamic History”
Bill O’Reilly: “Jihad…is a perversion of Islam, we all know that”
Sheikh: Violent Temple Mount thugs symbolize “honor” of Muslim world
Minnesota: Jihad terror suspect gets driver’s license, wants to drive school buses
Egypt: Christian soldier murdered in his army unit

Lebanese people rally for reform
YouStink has issued a 72-hour deadline for the government to meet its demands.
BEIRUT – Tens of thousands of Lebanese gathered at Beirut's Martyrs Square for a mass rally during which the the #YouStink activist group announced the government had 72-hours to meet its demands.
The grassroots group, along with other newly formed activist organizations, had called on citizens to demonstrate peacefuly in the iconic square in the heart of Lebanon's capital in a protest against the government's mishandling of a worsening trash crisis.
The populist movement, which started weeks ago when trash began building up on the streets of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, have taken on broader demands, with common people and a myriad of newly formed activists protesting corruption, poor infrastructure, and Lebanon’s political parties.
YouStink on Saturday specifically demanded Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk step down as well as the government tackle corruption, establish an eco-friendly waste management plan and hold accountable those responsible for suppressing last Saturday's peaceful protest with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The movement further warned it would take escalatory steps if their demands were not met by Tuesday afternoon.
Later in the evening, Lebanon's Environment Minister rejected calls for his resignation and said he would not "abandon his duties."
A festive atmosphere reigned over Martyrs Square in the late afternoon, with protesters from all over Lebanon chanting against the government while holding aloft Lebanese flags and cleverly worder banners poking fun at Lebanon's politicians and cabinet.
Meanwhile, earlier in the day as well as on Friday Lebanese expatriates held protests outside their country's embassies in foreign capitals in solidarity with the #YouStink movement.
Security breaks up Riad al-Solh protest
As night fell and the main rally dispersed, thousands of people moved to the nearby Riad al-Solh Square, the site of previous clashes between youths and security forces.
A number of agitators on Saturday night breached the first layer of the seperation fences blocking the square from the premier's official Grand Serail residence, sparking the Internal Security Forces to call on peaceful demonstrators to disperse so they could tackle the troublemakers.
YouStink organizers called on protesters to leave as well, but a number remained behind until riot police stormed the square, arresting a number of people while putting an end to the vandalism in the seperation barrier and any attempt to encorach on the Grand Serail.
A security source told NOW that the ISF arrested 10 people.
Timeline of today's events
[23:00] Security forces have arrested 10 people so far, a security source told NOW.
[22:50] Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk rejects calls for his resignation, saying he won't "abandon his duties."
[22:45] Security forces are deployed in heavy numbers in Riad al-Solh Square, blocking off Banks Street, the seperation barrier, and the alley from the square alongside the ESCWA headquarters.
[22:40] One protester told NOW's correspondent that a riot policeman hit him with a baton as security forces deployed into Riad al-Solh Square, while his girlfriend was shoved to the ground.
He added that riot police had followed a number of protesters to outside the Mohammad al-Amin Grand Mosque, where some demonstrators had been accused of rioting and hit.
[22:35] Riot police have deployed at the entrance of Banks Street leading from Riad al-Solh, while security forces are conducting arrests. Most protesters have fled from the scene.
[22:30] Lebanese security forces have rushed into Riad al-Solh Square to disperse the rioters in the seperation zone between the square and the
[22:10] The ISF has called on the protesters to disperse after the second seperation fence at Riad al-Solh Square was set on fire by young men. They have warned that they want to deal with the situation in the appropriate manner.
[22:00] The large crowd at Riad al-Solh Square has thinned out as the night has gone on.
[21:55] A group of young men in the barbed-wire seperation zone continue their attempts to breach through the barriers. The ISF had earlier issued a statement calling on citizens to not cross the fences.
Meanwhile, demonstrators in Riad al-Solh Square continue to protest peacefully.
A Lebanese flag on the barbed wire fence at Riad al-Solh Square. (AFP)
[21:30] The large crowd has remained at Riad al-Solh Square, despite the efforts by organizers to get them to leave.
[21:20] #YouStink organizers have withdrawn from Riad al-Solh Square. NOW's correspondent reports, adding that they are working to get the crowd to leave.
[21:12] A fire briefly erupted again along the first seperation barrier between Riad al-Solh and the Grand Serail. Meanwhile a group of youths that breached the wire are continuing to linger in the seperation zone.
[21:05] YouStink organizers are announcing that "those not gathered for a peaceful protest" are not welcome, NOW's correspondent reports.
[21:00] Riot police have gathered in large numbers near the Ferrari dealership at the eastern edge of Beirut's Martyrs Square.
[20:55] A number of protesters have breached the first layer of barbed wire at Riad al-Solh Square and are throwing objects in the direction of the Grand Serail.
[20:35] A peaceful atmosphere has settled over Riad al-Solh Square after the arrival of thousands from Martyrs Square. A number of protesters are dancing to drum beats amid chants.
[20:00] The crowd at Riad al-Solh Square is growing, with a rowdy atmosphere among the crowd as some protesters throw fireworks at security forces standing guard outside the premier's official Grand Serail residence.
[19:40] The crowd in Martyrs Square has been clearing out as the main rally winds down with night settling over the capital.
However, a number of protesters remain at Riad al-Solh Square, where NOW's correspondents report that angry youths, who have been labeled as infiltrators in past demonstrations, are present.
[19:30] Several blasts from sound bombs have echoed through Riad al-Solh Square, the scene of previous clashes between security forces and agitators, NOW's correspondent at the scene reported.
A number of protesters have been gathering at the location.
[19:25] YouStink has given a 72-hour ultimatum for its demands to met. The movement has called for the resignation of Environment Minister It also demanded that the government establish an eco-friendly waste management plan and hold accountable those responsible for suppressing last Saturday's peaceful protest with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The group further warned it would take escalatory measures across Lebanon on Tuesday afternoon if its demands were not met.
[19:10] The We Want Accountability group formed after last Saturday's demonstration is present in the southeast corner of Martyrs Square, where its members are chanting Syrian revolution slogans.
YouStink, meanwhile, has congregated in the northeast quadrant of [18:40] Protesters have been chanting "Revolution, Revolution" and "Down with the government of rascals."
[18:25] Lebanon has been suffering Saturday from rolling brownouts after the electrical grid went offline at 10:25.
Electricite du Liban announced earlier it was restoring service.
[17:58] Protesters from all across Lebanon are descending to Downtown Beirut. One group of dozens of Akkar residents is marching in unison toward the rally.
[17:50] Red Cross is mobilized in areas around Martyrs Square in the event of any repeat of the chaos that engulfed previous protests.
[17:35] Demonstrators gathering in Downtown Beirut.
[17:30] There is a festive atmosphere in Martyrs Square, where thousands had begun to gather earler in the day. Security forces are deployed in the area, after Lebanon's army the day before vowed to protect the rally.
[17:25] A crowd of about 1,000 people is marching from Gemmayze toward the nearby Martyrs Square.
[17:10] YouStink activists are marching from outside the Interior Ministry in Sanayeh toward Downtown Beirut. Their chants can be heard echoing in nearby streets.

Thousands of Lebanese Demonstrate against 'Corrupt' Politicians, Issue Ultimatum
Agence France Presse/Associated Press/Naharnet /August 29/15/Thousands of anti-government protesters marched on Saturday from the interior ministry in the capital's Hamra thoroughfare to downtown Beirut's Martyrs Square in an anti-government protest organized by civil society, which is frustrated with the political class. "You Stink,” which started as an online movement, is the main activist group behind the protest.A “You Stink” member said in a speech at the protest that its battle will continue until the resignation of Environment Minister Mohammed al-Mashnouq and the election of a president. It gave the government 72 hours to meet its demands, warning that after the deadline expires it will take escalatory measures not just in Beirut. The movement's campaign started over the fetid piles of trash mounting in the streets of Beirut and Mount Lebanon after the government closed last month the country's main landfill in Naameh, but it has mushroomed into a movement against the entire political structure. It sees the political class as corrupt and incapable of providing basic services to citizens. Many of the protesters waved Lebanese flags and wore white T-shirts that read "You Stink." They chanted anti-government slogans, urging politicians to leave their posts. In the absence of political party flags which normally dominate such events in Lebanon, the crowd carried banners mocking politicians. "Ali Baba and the 128 thieves," read one, in reference to Speaker Nabih Berri and the 128-member parliament. "Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do," read another. One protester held a placard saying “Politicians are like sperm, one in a million turns out to be human being.” Reflecting concern over renewed clashes, "You Stink" said it deployed 500 volunteers to coordinate with security forces and prevent violence. The Lebanese army and police also ran a joint operations room to guarantee the well-being of protesters. The military deployed troops around Martyrs Square while policemen were present inside the square. The protest came as the London-based rights group Amnesty International called on Lebanese authorities to investigate allegations that security forces have used excessive force to disperse two rallies held last weekend. The rallies outside the Grand Serail drew up to 20,000 people. Security forces fired live rounds, used rubber bullets and hurled stones or beat protesters, leaving scores hospitalized.Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq acknowledged there were "mistakes" that led to the excessive use of force and said an investigation, whose results will be released next week, was under way.

Nouhad Mashnouq: Security Forces Will Withdraw If the Army Leadership Did Not Respond
Agence France Presse/Naharnet /August 29/15/Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq said that he will give orders to the security forces tasked to protect Saturday's civil society demos, to withdraw if the army did not meet his request to join the efforts in maintaining order and security. “I will give orders to all the security forces who are tasked to maintain order during the civil society demos to withdraw if the army did not meet a request to maintain order,” said Mashnouq in an interview to An Nahar. Masnhouq said that his stance stemmed from a negative response he received from the army leadership after he requested them to assist the security forces in maintaining order. A Central Security Council meeting was held later during the day at the interior ministry in the presence of all the security leaders. Following the meeting they said that they requested the municipalities to take the necessary measures to protect the protesters and the public and private properties. A joint chamber of operations between the army and the ISF will be established to coordinate means to preserve the security of the demonstration, they added. Mashnouq had disclosed on Friday that he is "worried" about a mass protest against Lebanon's government planned for this weekend but said he will strive to guarantee the safety of demonstrators. The "You Stink" garbage campaign has called for a massive demo in central Beirut on Saturday to follow demonstrations last weekend that targeted not only a trash collection problem but also Lebanon's stagnant political scene. The protest is to start at 5:00 pm with a march from the interior ministry towards Martyrs Square in downtown Beirut.

Cracks within Hezbollah?
Samir Altaqi & Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 29/15
Special Report
To assume that a political organization or entity can go through a period of intense upheaval in its environment without suffering internal consequences is to assume that this organization or entity is made of metal and not of living people active in real life. Hezbollah is no exception. Yet, due to the secrecy of the group, this assumption is rarely supported by hard evidence. So, the need to have an idea about the extent of the impact of the ongoing turmoil in Syria and the Middle East inside Hezbollah is such that it has to be based on shreds and pieces of information and an intensive analytical work to connect the dots.
Naturally, the group is going through a period of transformation. Its leader Hassan Nasrallah’s enthusiasm to supporting President Bashar Al Assad is based on strategic calculations. But this support came with a high price tag. Militarily, the group suffered a relatively high percent of casualties in Syria so far. Politically, by being involved in the Syrian civil war, the group had to shed its non-sectarian political mask in a region that is getting increasingly divided on sectarian bases.
What is emerging in this new environment with its dynamics, totally different than the status-quo-ante, is a set of challenges facing Hezbollah. The first challenge is to be able to preserve the support of the group’s popular base while South Lebanon’s Shia villages receive boxes containing the dead bodies of their sons killed in Syria on daily bases. The second is to politically navigate in moments of contradicting objectives between the group’s two regional sponsors -Tehran and Damascus. The third is to run an effective battle in unfamiliar land with no direct relation to its population. The fourth is to build a friction-free operational relations with Assad’s army officers and commanders in the field while each side has a different perspective and different ties to the operations’ environment. The fifth is to maintain the group’s readiness and organizational tight discipline, in spite of its involvement in Syria in order to able to respond to any surprise Israeli attack in case the IDF decides to settle its accounts in South Lebanon. And the last is to find a proper political cover for its Syria involvement, all the while trying preserving as much as possible its traditional anti-Israeli, nationalist and non-sectarian propaganda line.
As expected, Hezbollah encountered problems in all these fronts without a single exception. The only challenge that was successfully and fully met was that of replacing its military equipment used in Syria. This was addressed by Assad, Iran and the availability of military hardware is Syria. All the other mentioned challenges were met with varying mix of success and failure. The central point here is to detect the trend of the transformation process occurring in this political organism as a result of the shift in its mission, norms, environment and regional stand.Hezbollah was built to fight a guerrilla warfare in its own natural environment assisted by a strong anti-Israeli media discourse. Nothing of this could be found in Syria. Even the usual unifying anti-Israel themes could not be used in a war where an Arab regime is fighting its own people and bombing groups assisted by other Arab countries. Israel is not there to give the party the opportunity to preserve these unifying themes.
Reports of discontent among Lebanon’s Southern Shias are not new. Mothers of fighters killed in Syria went public with a wave of criticism to Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, coupled with questioning the wisdom of sacrificing lives in a war waged out of the Shia zone in South Lebanon contrary to the “raison d’etre” of the group. While this criticism was containable by Nasrallah and his top lieutenants in the beginning, it later became harder to silence in view of the increasing casualties among the Party’s members. Furthermore, it was only natural that this discontent in the hosting environment be reflected within the group.
We saw old unhealed rifts reemerge, increasing doubts about the future of the group surface publicly and the once collectively revered policies of Nasrallah descending to earth to be subjected to thorough criticism. This general environment encouraged old competition over its leading positions to surface and fueled previously unseen differences between various factions within the organization. The consequences of these emerging signs of internal stress, coupled with the fast moving regional crisis, increasing demands of battle fields in Syria and fear of political foes in Lebanon resulted in a degree of disorganization in the internal iron handed security apparatus of the Party, which is its backbone.
This security apparatus was already showing signs of factionalism for some time. Assad’s intelligence service has considerable assets within the Party’s security machine while the rest follows Iran’s IRGC instructions. Those who worked with Damascus were mostly stationed in Hezbollah’s security command center located in Sfaire while the Iranian wing was centered in Haret Heraik. This division is very approximate and general as in each group there is a considerable number of the other. Yet, each security center of the two has a distinctive approach different than the other. While the competition started mainly out of personal factional frictions, it went, as it always does, to more cohesive political self-justifications particularly that pressures from without were mounting steadily.
The two factions were working together so long as Assad and Tehran’s objectives were almost identical. Personal disputes and differences were pushed out of the picture in the beginning of Syria’s civil war. But now, with the emergence of some differences between Damascus and Tehran, and under the relentless hammer of the shifting environment in Syria, increasing friction between the two groups is detected on more frequent bases than any time before.
Worried about their main asset in the Middle East and of future possibilities of diversion between their goals and those of Assad, Iran’s IRGC sent a group of 200 organizers and inspectors to the South of Lebanon last February. The group arranged their “investigations” with their followers in Haret Hereik. Soon after, the Assad loyalists started to feel the heat. Reports of several investigations by the IRGC team started surfacing. There were “evidence” of theft of funds, sales of arms for private profits, delay in paying salaries and allowances, failure to keep party secrets within the usual rigorous channels and personal favoritism. These leaks started to circulate.
This mishandling of funds and lax in security were not understood in the context of the shift around the group and the deep change in its mission (some of them were, and some were older). They were instantly used to settle personal and political accounts.
In recent debates within the security machine of Hezbollah, the head of this expansive apparatus, Wafiq Safa was blamed for the laxity in enforcing organizational protocols and failure in detecting accumulative erosion in internal discipline. The criticism came amid a wave of blame directed at Assad’s mishandling of the crisis in his country, mismanaging his military forces, costing Hezbollah a high toll of casualties and placing the group’s future at extreme risk.
The pro-Assad faction responded by blaming Tehran for provoking the Arab countries to an extent that the Arabs are now determined to have the head of the Syrian President, not because of him, but because of his relations with Iran.
On the political front within Hezbollah, there are now roughly three factions: The “Iranian faction”, the “Syrian faction” and the “Moderate faction”. The gap between the three groups is widening with the increasing pressure of the evolving situation. The moderate faction is that which believes that Lebanon’s Shias should have restrained their role strictly to the South of Lebanon, avoid any involvement in a fight against the Sunnis in Syria as it threatens their cohabitation with the Lebanese Sunnis, and focus only on protecting their region inside Lebanon.
This “moderate” view clashes with the IRGC’s inasmuch as it reflects a different way of looking at the purpose of Hezbollah. While the Lebanese Shias see the organization as their shield against both Israel and any sectarian injustice, Tehran has always considered it as its own strategic tool in a lager regional game. This difference in looking at Hezbollah was, and still is, in display in the South of Lebanon. In fact, it represents Nasrallah’s major challenge at present.
Nasrallah is seen as trying to balance his position and place himself where he does not openly offend any of the three groups within the party. However, due to the intensity of the Syrian crisis and its fast tempo and also because of the emerging differences between a weakened Assad and a dominant Iran, it is becoming more difficult for the Party’s leader to keep a tight grip on the brewing conflicts within the party’s members and between them and their social environment.
For example, Nasrallah avoided in recent public speeches his usual repetition of absolute support to Assad. The background of this unusual avoidance of the cliché is the internal factionalism and growing internal friction. Assad sees that Tehran’s focuses only on keeping a segment of a divided Syria as its priority. Preserving the regime or a unified nation does not concern the IRGC as these objectives are not connected directly to its strategic agenda.
In Tehran’s rush to get what counts for its own regional strategy, it is promoting Nasrallah’s deputy Sheikh Naim Kassem as the main challenger to Nasrallah. The main “sin” of Nasrallah, in the views of IRGC commander Qassem Sulimai, is that he is questioning the validity of forcing Hezbollah to play a clearer sectarian role.
Kassem recently pushed his self-promotion forward when he published a book in which he describes the late Ayatollah Khomeini as the “historical leader who saved Islam from demise”. The book is blessed widely by the IRGC. On the other hand, Nasrallah does not feel comfortable with the idea of dissecting Syria and he questions Tehran’s calculation that by partitioning it, Tehran’s regional plans could be served. The party’s leader believes that an openly sectarian identity for Hezbollah will negatively impact the party and the Shia community in Lebanon and limit their role there.
Additional problems appeared between Nasrallah and Kassem around a list of internal party appointments. The Iranians are leaking names claimed to be involved in corruption in order to manipulate the course of internal debate, appoint their guys, and pave the road to the rise of Kassem. While factionalism will ultimately manifest itself in many small stories and personal frictions, the essence of the problem inside Hezbollah now should always be seen in its proper political context. Following the Iranian nuclear deal, the IRGC loyalists who work in the Middle East were worried that the US will succeed in ultimately shaping Tehran’s regional policies at their expense. On the other hand, Assad followers were worried that Tehran will exchange Assad Presidency in return for a firmer grip on the South of Lebanon and adjacent areas in Syria.
Similarities between Iraq and Syria, in terms of IRGC’s role in the two countries, are obvious. The IRGC has a specific mandate in its involvement in the Middle East. This mandate gives a far second position in its priorities to indigenous local sensitivities and calculations. The absolute first priority is given to Tehran’s strategic objectives. The argument used frequently by IRGC regional operatives is that Iran’s Islamic revolution is at risk. It is facing existential threat on the hands of enemies everywhere. There is no room for nice political equations in such an existential fight. Nasrallah looks at the matter from the angle of the future of Hezbollah on the Lebanese theatre. It is evident now, for example, that other Shia political groups are remerging in Lebanon, like Amal, as the “correctors” of Hezbollah’s mistakes.
Yet, Hezbollah’s leader has a very short leash.

What if Tammam Salam resigns?
Myra Abdallah/Now Lebanon/August 29/15
NOW asks whether the resignation of the cabinet is a priority for protesters and who would benefit from it
TheYouStink movement has helped expose a bigger issue in Lebanon than garbage collection. When the movement’s organizers called people to take to the streets to demand a permanent and environmental-friendly solution to the garbage crisis, the Lebanese people found an opportunity to voice a wide range of demands. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the public’s goal became putting an end to the corrupt Lebanese political system. The large rally on Saturday, 22 August, saw protesters adopt broader demands, and some began calling for the resignation of Tammam Salam’s government. Even after being attacked, the protesters did not step back. On Sunday, they took to the streets again with the same demands. Between the crisis and a paralyzed cabinet that had already forced Salam to postpone several cabinet meetings, Lebanon’s prime minister considered stepping down from his post the following Monday. “Legally, [if Tammam Salam resigns], the cabinet becomes a caretaker cabinet,” said constitutional expert and lawyer Marwan Sakr. “The cabinet is currently doing the president’s job. If it resigns, it won’t be able to meet except for urgent issues — it will be unable to make decisions unless the decisions are very urgent. It will have less authority.” Moreover, Sakr says that the main problem in Lebanon today is that should Salam resign, the current cabinet wouldn’t be able to nominate a new prime minister due to the presidential vacuum. There would be no authority to nominate a new government.
Protesters’ demands
Speaking to various protest organizers at Riad al-Solh Square in Beirut, it became clear that the organizers, many of whom have declined to allow their real names to be used, do not have a clear roadmap. But they all agree on one demand — putting an end to a corrupt system by holding politicians accountable. Writer and director Lucien Bourjeily, one of YouStink’s organizers, told NOW that the movement’s first demand is that all ministers who are behind the garbage crisis and the violent attack against peaceful protesters during Saturday’s rally be prosecuted. “We did not specifically demand the resignation of the prime minister. We demanded that he be take responsibility for what happened,” Bourjeily said. “If he is unable to do so, then it is better for him to resign. Once he resigns, we need to have parliamentary elections called for by Salam’s caretaker government.”Although not part of Salam’s cabinet, Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea urged Salam not to resign. For the party, as for many political parties and politicians who belong to the March 14 coalition, a president should be elected first so as to avoid a governmental vacuum, and then another cabinet formed.
“I do not accept a president elected by an illegitimate parliament,” said Sanaa, who attends the protests almost every day. “In a perfect situation, I think that the government should resign first and call for parliamentary elections. People will elect new MPs, and I think we will see many new names in the parliament this time because the Lebanese people have already had enough of the old and corrupt ruling class. Afterwards, the new parliament elects a president and then a cabinet will be formed.”
Similarly, Wael Abdallah, one of the “Badna Nhesib” organizers, told NOW that calling for Salam’s resignation is not a priority. “Our priority is to prosecute all politicians who were behind the situation we reached today. We are coordinating with different groups to join our demands and if Salam is unable to hold the criminals accountable, his resignation would be better for Lebanon,” he said.
What happens next?
If the protests are not in Future Movement’s favor, they are definitely not in Hezbollah’s, the Free Patriotic Movement’s (FPM) or Nabih Berri’s favor either. Berri’s Amal Movement was accused of sending infiltrators to cause trouble during the protest so that the ISF would have a reason to attack protesters — a claim Amal has denied. TV channels connected to the parliament speaker, Future Movement and Hezbollah did not cover the protests until the situation in Riad al-Solh became chaotic and violent.
Hezbollah and the FPM had previously blocked the election of a president by boycotting electoral sessions. On Tuesday, they withdrew from the cabinet’s session and did not attend Thursday’s session. Regardless of the intentions behind these abstentions Sakr says that from a legal point of view, the withdrawal of these parties does not paralyze the government. “The withdrawal of FPM and Hezbollah ministers from the cabinet’s sessions does not disrupt the quorum,” he told NOW. “They are claiming that their withdrawal will affect the government’s decisions because current ministers previously agreed that the cabinet — during the presidential vacuum — should only take decisions signed by 24 of the ministers. This is a legal heresy because a caretaker government should function according to the normal rules. Unfortunately, the March 14 coalition agreed on it for a while.”
Many protesters feel the resignation of the cabinet would not change anything. To them, the cabinet was not doing its job in the first place, and pressuring it from the street might push it to make crucial decisions. “If the cabinet resigned, the situation would be exactly the same. The next step will definitely be to call for parliamentary elections,” said Bourjeily. “Our priority is to have elections now, even before the resignation of the cabinet.”
But to be able to call for new parliamentary elections the parliament should resign first — according to the constitution, a government can’t dissolve a parliament. Therefore, even if the cabinet resigns, it can’t call for parliamentary elections before the end of the parliament’s term. “In my opinion, demanding the cabinet’s resignation is not right at the current time,” said Sakr. “It will further paralyze the state’s institutions. The institutions are not functioning normally because of the presidential vacuum.”
“The best solution is an escalation in demands. The first demand today should be the election of a president. When a president is elected, everything will become easier. Afterwards, the cabinet can resign and call for parliamentary elections being a caretaker government. And then, a new cabinet is created.”

Amnesty urges Lebanon to investigate use of force in protests
By Reuters | Beirut/Saturday, 29 August 2015/Lebanon should investigate allegations that security personnel used excessive force to disperse anti-government protesters in Beirut last week, Amnesty International said on Saturday ahead of another planned mass protest march in the capital. Protests drew thousands onto the streets before turning violent last weekend, injuring dozens and triggering a threat from Prime Minister Tammam Salam to resign as head of the national unity government. Another demonstration is planned in central Beirut starting at 6 p.m. (1500 GMT). The "You Stink" campaign has mobilised independently of the main sectarian parties after the government failed to agree on a plan to dispose of Lebanon's uncollected trash, leaving piles of refuse rotting in the summer sun.
Security forces last week had fired water cannons and teargas against demonstrators, some of whom threw stones and sticks at riot police. "Lebanese security officials responded to overwhelmingly peaceful protesters in downtown Beirut by shooting into the air with live rounds, firing rubber bullets, tear gas canisters, and water cannons, and in some cases hurling stones and beating protesters with batons and rifles," said Lama Fakih, Senior Crisis Adviser at Amnesty International. Protest organisers have blamed the violence on "infiltrators" linked to political movements and Salam has vowed to bring to account officials responsible for what he has described as an excessive use of force. "The use of violence by some protesters does not absolve the security forces from blame over targeting of the overwhelmingly peaceful protest movement more broadly," Fakih said. Amnesty, quoting figures from the Red Cross, said that at least 343 people were treated for injuries and 59 more were hospitalized after the protests. For the protesters, the mounds of festering trash reflect the failings of a state they say is rotten with corruption from the inside out. They have called for the environment minister to resign, for snap parliamentary elections and a transparent resolution to the garbage crisis. Protesters handed out leaflets stating their demands in Beirut on Saturday and a number camped out overnight in a square close to the government headquarters where security forces have installed additional concrete barricades and barbed wire. Failure to agree a solution has exposed wider political deadlock in Lebanon, where sectarian and power rivalries have been stoked by the Syrian war next door. The government has said it is working to find a plan for the garbage but agreement has proven elusive. On Tuesday the powerful Shi'ite Muslim party Hezbollah and its Christian allies walked out of an emergency cabinet meeting in protest at a proposed disposal plan.

Report: Ministerial Sources Anticipate Berri's Initiative
Naharnet /August 29/15/Ministerial sources following up closely on the contacts between political factions said they are waiting for the initiative expected to be kicked off by Speaker Nabih Berri to hold consultations to bring the rival politicians on the dialogue table either in Ain el-Tineh or in parliament. The Speaker is thoroughly studying the initiative and has not failed to test the waters, exploring the reactions in advance, the sources told al-Joumhouria daily on Saturday. Speaker Nabih Berri has been holding contacts with Lebanese political parties to revive the all-party talks that he had launched in 2006, reports say. The speaker first chaired the dialogue in the spring of 2006. But the talks were interrupted by the summer war between Israel and Hizbullah. The dialogue resumed in the fall of that year. It was later chaired by former President Michel Suleiman, who in May last year oversaw a largely-boycotted national dialogue session at Baabda Palace before the end of his term. The session called for continued talks on the country's defense strategy and stressed the importance of the implementation of the Taef accord. The boycott came as a result of deteriorating ties between Suleiman and Hizbullah after the former president urged the party to avoid inflexible equations that hindered the birth of the government’s policy statement. Suleiman has been hailed for leaving a mark in history after overseeing the agreement between the March 8 and 14 camps on the Baabda Declaration, which stressed Lebanon's dissociation policy from the Syrian war. Despite its approval, Hizbullah has sent its fighters to Syria to help the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad against rebels seeking to topple him.

Lebanon Urged to Create Commission on Disappearances
Agence France Presse/Naharnet /August 29/15/Lebanon should form a "national commission on disappearances" to investigate those still missing since the country's civil war, a rights group said Saturday. On the eve of the U.N.'s International Day of the Disappeared, Human Rights Watch also called on Lebanon to prosecute recent cases of enforced disappearances on its territory and ratify the U.N.'s relevant convention. "Despite repeated promises, Lebanese authorities have yet to provide the families of the disappeared with any answers about the fate of their loved ones," said Nadim Houry, HRW's deputy Middle East director. "Lebanon cannot move forward without adequately dealing with its past." The New York-based group said an estimated 17,000 Lebanese were kidnapped or "disappeared" during the country's devastating civil war. Scores of those "disappeared" during Syria's military presence in Lebanon after the war are believed to have been transferred to detention in Syria, HRW said. Their families have continued to lobby for transparency regarding the fate of their relatives. They have drafted a bill to create a national commission to investigate those cases, but no government action has been taken. HRW described enforced disappearances as "among the gravest crimes in international law and may constitute a crime against humanity if part of a bigger attack against the civilian population."

Antoine Sfeir Released One Day after Abdcution
Naharnet /August 29/15/Municipal council member of the town of Dekwaneh Antoine Sfeir, has been freed on Saturday after he was kidnapped a day earlier, the state-run National News Agency reported. Sfeir was abducted in Dekweneh by a man from the Dandash family and has been taken to the Bekaa town of Hermel. The abductor set him free after settling “personal financial matters,” NNA said. Sfeir was released and has headed to the eastern city of Zahle. NNA later said that he has given his testimony to the ISF Information Branch in Zahle.

Lebanese man Kills Son for 'Personal Reasons' in Barja
Naharnet /August 29/15/A man fatally shot his 24-year old son on Friday for “personal reasons,” the state-run National News Agency reported. Moussa Terro from the Chouf town of Barja shot his son, Moustafa, Friday night for what was described as personal reasons. The young man was taken to hospital suffering from a serious injury but he later succumbed to his wounds. Police opened investigations in the case.

Terrorist Trying to Flee With Forged Passport Arrested at RHIA
Naharnet /August 29/15/The General Security arrested at the Rafic Hariri International Airport a Lebanese fugitive while he was trying to flee the country to Venezuela through Turkey, the state-run National News Agency reported on Saturday. The runaway has been in hiding since 2001 trying to flee several arrest warrants including a death sentence against him. He was trying to escape using a forged passport using the name of his brother, NNA added. He is wanted on terror charges including belonging to the Fatah al-Islam militant group, forming a terrorist ring and having schemes to bomb the Italian and Ukrainian embassies and security positions in addition to having bombed several restaurants and supermarket in different Lebanese regions.

Europe Rethinks Train Security after Foiled Jihadist Attack
Associated Press/Naharnet /August 29/15/European countries will increase identity checks and baggage controls on trains after American passengers thwarted an attack on a high-speed train from Amsterdam to Paris, France's interior minister said Saturday. Bernard Cazeneuve said the checks would be carried out "everywhere it is necessary" but did not give other details. He spoke after an emergency meeting in Paris with top security and transport officials from nine countries and the European Union in the wake of last week's attack attempt. He called for better coordination on intelligence and security across Europe's border-free travel zone, and "coordinated and simultaneous actions" by European security forces, saying that is "indispensable" to protecting train travel. He also said officials are looking at ways to work with the aviation industry on improving train security. The suspect in last week's attack had been on the radar of European surveillance but bought his ticket in cash and showed no ID, and brought an automatic rifle and a handgun onboard unnoticed. The ministers were also talking about giving train security staff more powers, and increasing the number of mixed patrols of international police teams on cross-border trains, according to four French security or justice officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. One thing not on the table Saturday: calling into question the principles of Europe's border-free travel, known as the Schengen zone. The security officials said there's no way to monitor each passenger and bag without choking the continental train system, which Europeans rely upon heavily. "We can't do and don't want complete, comprehensive checks on people or luggage in trains in Germany or Europe," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on the sidelines of the meeting. He said the main issue is to improve targeted cooperation and the exchange of information on suspicious people. France alone sees tens of thousands of international train passengers daily, in addition to millions of daily domestic train travelers. The country's national rail authority SNCF is concerned about the cost of additional security, according to one of the French security officials. Countries involved in Saturday's meeting were France, Belgium, Britain, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, as well as the European Union's top transport and interior affairs officials. EU officials were expected to press for the increased use of closed circuit cameras in trains and stations and more metal detectors at entrances. The European Commission was to raise the idea of using full-body scanners for people who try to board at the last minute. Another idea is the more concerted use of passenger information, which some companies already collect, like the traveler data collected in air transport. Plainclothes "rail marshals" are another possibility. The results of Saturday's conference will be debated by Europe's rail security group on Sept. 11, and forwarded for EU transport ministers to discuss when they meet October 7-8.

Turkish Planes Join Anti-IS Coalition in Syria Raid for First Time
Agence France Presse/Naharnet /August 29/15/Turkish warplanes have for the first time joined raids by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State positions in Syria, the foreign ministry said Saturday, after Washington urged Ankara to play a full role in the battle against the jihadists. "Our fighter planes ... along with planes from the coalition yesterday (Friday) evening began joint operations against (IS) targets which pose a threat to the security of our country," the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement. Turkey, which had been accused of complacency towards the IS fighters in neighboring Syria, last month launched what it called a war on terror on two fronts: targeting IS jihadists in Syria and also Kurdish PKK rebels and their bases in northern Iraq. U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last week called on Turkey to commit to a full part in the U.S.-led air campaign and take better control of its border with Syria. Carter said Ankara had agreed in principle to join the anti-IS coalition but should add its own fighter planes to the "air tasking order," the military structure coordinating strikes. "They need to join the ATO (Air Tasking Order) and they need to work more on controlling their border. And we've made that clear," he said. "Their leadership has indicated that this needs to be done. It's overdue, because it's a year into the campaign, but they're indicating some considerable effort now."The Turkish move came after 33 people were killed in an attack on July 20 in its southeast blamed on IS. Ankara and Washington also announced on August 24 an accord to allow U.S. planes to launch strikes against IS from a Turkish base. And on Tuesday the Pentagon said that the U.S. and Turkey had "finalized technical details for Turkey's full inclusion" in the anti-IS operations. Turkey's involvement in the battle against the IS militants had been limited as it focused on an air and ground campaign against the Kurdish PKK separatists. The escalating violence between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants, shattering a 2013 ceasefire, has for now killed off hopes of ending the three-decade-long insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. The military offensive in the border region with Syria and Iraq, with the deaths so far of around 60 Turkish security forces, has added to the political turmoil in the country. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was forced to call new elections after his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its overall majority in parliament in June and then failed to form a coalition government with the opposition. Erdogan on Wednesday urged voters to choose "stability" in the November 1 polls -- in a clear message to vote for the AKP thereby avoiding the instability caused by shaky coalition governments that marred Turkish politics before the party came to power in 2002.

Local Ceasefire between Syria Regime, Rebels Ends
Agence France Presse/Naharnet /August 29/15/ A brief truce between Syrian regime forces and rebel groups in three key towns ended early Saturday as the warring parties resumed clashes and shelling, a monitoring group and a mediator said. Pro-regime forces, including Hizbullah, had agreed on a 48-hour ceasefire, until dawn on Saturday, in the rebel bastion of Zabadani and the government-held villages of Fuaa and Kafraya. "The ceasefire has collapsed in Zabadani, Fuaa, and Kafraya this morning," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A Kafraya resident speaking to Agence France Presse by phone said "dozens of shells have fallen on the town since early morning." According to Abdel Rahman, "there are clashes and shelling in Zabadani, and opposition fighters are shelling Fuaa and Kafraya." But he had no details on who initially began firing and whether there were any casualties. Fuaa and Kafraya, the last two regime-held villages in Syria's northwest Idlib province, have been surrounded by a rebel alliance including al-Qaida's affiliate Al-Nusra Front. The siege came in retaliation for a fierce offensive on Zabadani, along Syria's border with Lebanon, by pro-regime forces early last month. Warring parties were negotiating to reach a broader deal including rebel fighters leaving Zabadani and the evacuation of civilians from Fuaa and Kafraya. But the talks failed overnight. The resumption of hostilities was confirmed by Mohammad Abu Qassem, secretary general of Syria's Tadamun (Solidarity) Party and a mediator of the truce."The truce has ended, the negotiations have failed, and military operations have resumed in Zabadani, Fuaa, and Kafraya," he told AFP. This marks the second time a local ceasefire has collapsed for the three towns this month. The first ceasefire began on August 12 as a 48-hour truce and was extended for another day as negotiators tried but also ultimately failed to reach a broad deal. The earlier talks also faltered before reaching an agreement on Zabadani's fighters and the fate of civilians in Fuaa and Kafraya, whose residents are minority Shiite Muslims. The rebels have also sought the release of prisoners held by the regime. More than 240,000 people have been killed since Syria's conflict began in March 2011, and half of the country's population has been displaced by the war.

Policeman Killed and Seven People Injured in Bahrain Blast
Agence France Presse/Naharnet /August 29/15/A policeman was killed and seven people, including a child, injured in an explosion Friday evening in a predominantly Shiite district of Bahrain's capital Manama, authorities said. Four police officers were among the injured, one of them seriously, Information Minister Isa Abdulrahman Al Hammadi told Agence France Presse. Two parents and their child were also hurt in the blast in Karanah suburb, he said. The minister said the explosives used in the apparent bomb attack was "very similar" to that seized by authorities last month which "came from Iran". In July, Bahraini authorities declared they had foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons from Iran. A few days later, two police officers were killed and six others injured in a bomb attack on Sitra island outside Manama. Bahraini authorities said earlier this month they had arrested five suspects over the attack. Police chief Major General Tariq al-Hasan said the suspects had links to Iran's Revolutionary Guards and the Iran-backed Shiite militant movement Hezbollah. Sunni-ruled Bahrain frequently accuses Iran, a Shiite power, of backing demands by members of the kingdom's Shiite majority for political reforms. The tiny but strategic U.S. ally has seen frequent unrest since a Shiite-led uprising four years ago demanding a constitutional monarchy.

Egypt Court Hands Al-Jazeera Reporters Three Years in Jail
Naharnet /August 29/15/An Egyptian court sentenced three Al-Jazeera reporters to three years in prison on Saturday, in a shock ruling that sparked international condemnation. Canadian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed were in court for the verdict, while Australian journalist Peter Greste was tried in absentia after his deportation early this year. The court said they had broadcast "false" news that harmed the country. Several co-defendants, accused of working with Al-Jazeera, received similar sentences. Canada called for the "immediate return" of Fahmy, while Qatar-based Al-Jazeera denounced the verdict as an "attack on press freedom". "It's a dark day for the Egyptian judiciary," Giles Trendle, the English channel's acting managing director, said at a news conference in Doha. "Rather than defend liberty and the free and fair media, the Egyptian judiciary has compromised its own independence."The retrial was ordered early this year after an appeals court overturned an initial sentence of seven years in prison, saying the prosecution had presented scant evidence against the defendants.
Dangerous precedent'
Fahmy's lawyer, London-based Amal Clooney, told reporters after the verdict she would press the Egyptian presidency for a pardon.
"It's a dangerous precedent in Egypt that journalists can be locked up simply for reporting the news and courts can be used as political tools," she said. Al-Jazeera's head of litigation, Farah Muftah, said in Doha that the ruling would be appealed before the Court of Cassation once the judge publishes the basis for his sentencings. Relatives and supporters were dismayed by the verdict. "I'm shocked. Terribly shocked. We waited for an acquittal and then found ourselves stuck again in the case. This is illogical," Fahmy's brother Adel said.
Greste described the jail terms as "devastating". "We did nothing wrong. The prosecution presented no evidence that we did anything wrong and so for us to be convicted as terrorists on no evidence at all is frankly outrageous," he said. The journalists were arrested in December 2013, months after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and launched a deadly crackdown on his supporters. At the time, Qatar, which owns Al-Jazeera, was supportive of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood movement. Judge Hassan Farid said Saturday that it was clear to the court that the reporters "were not journalists" and had broadcast "false news" while operating in Egypt without a permit. Mohamed received an additional six-month sentence for possession of a bullet he had picked up covering protest violence. Fahmy and Mohamed, who had been released on bail in February at the start of the retrial, were taken into custody. Lynne Yelich, Canadian minister of state for foreign and consular affairs, called on Egypt in a statement "to use all tools at its disposal to resolve Mr. Fahmy's case and allow his immediate return to Canada". The trial has become an embarrassment for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who as army chief ousted Morsi from the presidency in 2013. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said she was "dismayed" by the outcome. British Minister for Middle East and North Africa Tobias Ellwood said the sentencings would "undermine confidence in Egypt's progress towards strong long-term stability based on implementing the rights granted by the Egyptian constitution". In the initial trial, two British Al-Jazeera reporters who had left the country were tried in absentia and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Politicized trial'
Sisi has said he wished that the Al-Jazeera journalists had not been put on trial. He may pardon them if he chooses. Fahmy, who gave up his Egyptian citizenship in hopes of being deported as Greste was in February, said ahead of the verdict that the trial was "politicized". "If justice is to be served we should be acquitted as impartial journalists," Fahmy, who formerly worked for CNN, said on the eve of the session. The three were accused of having supported the Brotherhood in their coverage. However, during the trial, the prosecution failed to find fault in their reporting. "The technical committee that was appointed by the judge gave the court a report stating that none of our reports were fabricated," Fahmy said. Al-Jazeera's Arabic channel had been supportive of Morsi and Islamists, but Fahmy, Greste and Mohamed worked for its English-language news channel. Fahmy said they were "shocked" to discover that the broadcaster was unlicensed during their trial, when a prosecutor presented evidence to that effect.

Rouhani vows to defend Iran 'with missiles or other methods', claims military power unscathed
REUTERS/08/29/2015/Iran's military capability has not been affected by its nuclear deal last month with six world powers, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday, moving to reassure hardliners that the deal was no sign of Iranian weakness. "With regards to our defensive capability, we did not and will not accept any limitations," Rouhani said at a press conference carried on live television. "We will do whatever we need to do to defend our country, whether with missiles or other methods."Last week, Iran unveiled a new surface-to-surface missile it said could strike targets with pinpoint accuracy within a range of 500 km (310 miles), a move likely to worry Tehran's regional rivals. Rouhani said at the ceremony that Iran's military might was a precondition for peace, after being criticized by hardline factions in Iran's multi-tiered leadership for negotiating with Western powers they see as fundamentally hostile to the Islamic Republic. Under the July 14 pact, Iran agreed to strict limitations on its nuclear program to ensure it cannot be turned to developing atomic bombs, in exchange for a removal of international sanctions imposed on Tehran. Iran denies ever seeking bomb capability from its nuclear program. According to the deal, any transfer to Iran of ballistic missile technology during the next eight years will be subject to the approval of the UN Security Council, and the United States has promised to veto any such requests. An arms embargo on conventional weapons also stays, preventing their import into and export out of Iran for five years.

Strange Bedfellows: Saudi Arabia Moves Toward Hamas
By THE MEDIA LINE/J.Post/08/29/2015
Saudi Arabia has reached out to the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, inviting its leaders to Riyadh, and offering to negotiate between Hamas and the rival Fatah movement. The outreach to Hamas, which is still being funded by Iran, is one way that the Sunni Saudi Arabia is trying to cement alliances with other Sunni states in the Middle East. It is also part of new Saudi King Salman’s more activist policy in the region, which has ranged from public talks with Israel to being in the forefront of air strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen. “Under King Salman, Saudi Arabia is acting as a regional power,” Theodore Karasik, of the Institute of Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, told The Media Line. “The whole idea is to pull together a Sunni bloc of countries to kick out Iranian influence (in the region). Riyadh would be the stepping stone for a Sunni-led bloc of countries.”Early next month, King Salman will meet with President Obama in Washington – his first visit there since ascending the throne. On his way back to the Middle East, he is expected to stop in Egypt. On the agenda will be Egypt’s relationship with Hamas. Relations between Egypt and Hamas have deteriorated since Egyptian president Abdel Fatah el-Sisi launched a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and previous president Mohamed Morsi, who was sentenced to death earlier this year. Hamas is an offshoot of the same Muslim Brotherhood movement, and under Morsi, ties with Hamas were close. “There is a systematic crackdown on the Brotherhood and it is becoming more evident because of the execution verdicts and the deaths of the two parliament members,” Maha Azzam, an expert on Egypt at Chatham House in London told The Media Line. “The aim is to hit really hard at the opposition and weaken the Muslim Brotherhood.”One of the reasons that Hamas is moving closer to Saudi Arabia is hopes that King Salman can intervene with Sisi to open the Rafah crossing from Gaza into Egypt. It has become increasingly difficult for the 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza to leave as both Israel and Egypt have kept their borders closed. Hamas, which is also Sunni, is still being funded by Shi’ite Iran, although Palestinian media reports say that money has decreased sharply, and Hamas is facing a serious financial crisis. For Saudi Arabia, it is an opportunity to become the regional leader of a moderate Sunni bloc also supported at least quietly by Israel, which also strongly opposes the Iran nuclear deal. In June, the incoming director general of Israel’s foreign ministry, had a public meeting in Washington with Anwar Eshki, a retired Saudi general and long-time adviser to the Saudi King. Both came to speak at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations and both pointed to Iran as the chief threat to regional stability. Saudi Arabia has long feared that a nuclear Iran would destabilize the region and that Saudi Arabia could be a target of an Iranian strike. While the Obama Administration says that the nuclear deal currently being debated in Congress will make it less likely that Iran will become a nuclear power, Israel and Saudi Arabia fear that Iran will deceive the international community and continue to develop its nuclear program. “There are those in Saudi Arabia who are seeking closer ties with Israel and vice versa,” Karasik said. “Saudi intelligence officials have been meeting quietly with officials from Mossad. This kind of cooperation established a base for the two sides to meet and with the Iran threat many people feel the two countries will be forced closer together.”

Turkey strikes ISIS for first time as part of US coalition
Ynetnews/Associated Press/08.29.15/Jets hit ISIS targets in Syria Friday under auspices of US-led coalition; ISIS inches closer to strategic town just miles from Turkish border. Turkey announced Saturday that its fighter jets have carried out their first airstrikes as part of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State group in Syria. A Foreign Ministry statement said the jets began attacking ISIS targets late Friday across the border in Syria that were deemed to be threats to Turkey. After months of hesitance, Turkey agreed last month to take on a more active role in the fight against ISIS. Turkish jets used smart bombs to attack Islamic State positions in Syria, without crossing into Syrian airspace and later Turkey granted US jets access to a key air base close to the Syrian border. The Turkish attacks that began Friday were the first launched as part of the US-led campaign and came after Turkish and US officials announced they had reached a technical agreement concerning their cooperation, which calls for Turkey to be fully integrated into the coalition air campaign.
"Our fighter aircraft together with warplanes belonging to the coalition began as of yesterday evening to jointly carry out air operations against Daesh targets that constitute a threat against the security of our country," the Foreign Ministry said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS. "The fight against the terrorist organization is a priority for Turkey."The statement did not give more details on the targets. On Thursday, Islamic State militants seized five villages from rebel groups in northern Syria as they advanced toward the strategic town of Marea near the Turkish border. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other groups said ISIS carried out a suicide bombing on the outskirts of Marea amid fierce fighting in the area. The ISIS advance was in the northern Aleppo province near where Turkey and the United States have agreed to establish an ISIS-free safe zone.

U.N. chief urges stronger response to migration crisis
By AFP | United Nations/Saturday, 29 August 2015/U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed Friday to governments to step up their response to Europe’s migrant crisis following more drownings at sea and the discovery of migrant bodies in an abandoned truck in Austria. Ban praised leaders and communities who were taking action to cope with the flow of migrants, but added: “Much more is required.” “I appeal to all governments involved to provide comprehensive responses, expand safe and legal channels of migration and act with humanity, compassion and in accordance with their international obligations,” he said. The U.N. chief said he was “horrified and heartbroken” by the loss of lives in the Mediterranean and the grim discovery of more than 70 bodies crammed inside a truck that was abandoned near the Austrian border with Hungary. Indications are that many of the victims were Syrian refugees, including children. Rescuers pulled 76 bodies from the Mediterranean after two boats carrying 500 migrants sank, the latest tragedy in a series at sea. More than 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, a large increase from last year, the U.N. refugee agency said. “The Mediterranean Sea continues to be a death trap for refugees and migrants,” said Ban in a statement. The U.N. chief announced plans to convene a special meeting on September 30, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, to discuss global concerns about migration.“This is a human tragedy that requires a determined collective political response. It is a crisis of solidarity, not a crisis of numbers,” he said.

Kurdish forces free 7 villages in Iraq from ISIS
By AFP | Washington/Saturday, 29 August 2015/Western-backed Kurdish fighters freed seven villages from the clasps of ISIS in northern Iraq in recent days, the U.S.-led coalition battling the militants said Friday. But the extremists still control broad swathes of land in the war-torn country, where ISIS has waged a terrifying offensive of forced religious conversions and beheadings. Bolstered by coalition airstrikes, the Peshmerga fighters wrestled back more than 200 square kilometers (80 square miles) near the town of Tuz since August 26, the Combined Joint Task Force said. Planes and drones conducted a total of 25 strikes, helping the Kurdish forces in “liberating seven villages,” a statement said. Elsewhere in Iraq, the situation remains more static, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s Central Command (Centcom) said. In Ramadi, capital of the key battleground province of Anbar, Iraqi forces continue to try and isolate the city, which fell into IS hands in May. “It remains a challenging fight” said Centcom spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder. Meanwhile in the Baiji area north of Baghdad, where fierce fighting has lasted for months, Iraqi forces “continue to hold their ground” at an oil refinery that has been scene of much fighting. Within the city of Baiji itself ISIS has taken “back some ground but they paid a very heavy price for it.”
Overall, Iraqi forces “are dealing with some tough challenges in certain areas,” Ryder said, but ISIS is under pressure to allocate its resources and “continues to lose fighters and leaders at a high rate.” On Thursday, two suicide attacks claimed by ISIS killed two Iraqi generals in Anbar.

Syria ceasefire breaks down in three areas
Reuters, Beirut/Saturday, 29 August 2015/A ceasefire in a Syrian town near the Lebanese border and two villages to the north has broken down after renewed shelling, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Saturday. The truce between the Syrian army and the Lebanese group Hezbollah on the one side, and Syrian insurgents on the other, came into effect in the western town of Zabadani and the Shi'ite Muslim villages of Kefraya and al-Foua in the northwest on Thursday. It had been extended late on Friday but had collapsed by the morning, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Britain-based Observatory. Local ceasefires in Syria's four-year conflict have tended to be fragile, and U.N. attempts to forge larger truces in other parts of the country, such as in the northern city of Aleppo, have come to nothing. Zabadani has been at the center an offensive by Hezbollah and the Syrian army against insurgent groups. The area is important to the Syrian government because of its proximity to the capital Damascus and the Lebanese border.
The two villages, in the province of Idlib, have been under attack by insurgent groups. The area borders Turkey and is mostly rebel-controlled after advances against the military this year. The sides in negotiations had discussed evacuating the wounded from the three areas under the ceasefire but so far none have been transported out, the monitoring group said.

Washington names first envoy for hostages
AFP, Washington/Saturday, 29 August 2015/The United States named a senior envoy Friday to work for the safe return of hostages after criticism of its response to the kidnap and murder of Americans held in Syria. One year ago journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were killed by the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, triggering critical debate over Washington's handling of the crises. President Barack Obama ordered a review of U.S. policy in hostage cases that led to new protocols for coordinating the national response and helping victims' families. Foley's parents welcomed the naming of former senior diplomat Jim O'Brien as “First Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs,” attached to the State Department in a coordinating role. Secretary of State John Kerry said: “Jim will be focused on one overriding goal: using diplomacy to secure the safe return of Americans held hostage overseas.”“To that end, he will be in close contact with the families of American hostages,” said Kerry, in a nod to criticism from Foley and Sotloff's families that they were kept at arms' length. After Foley's murder, his family complained the Obama administration had kept them in the dark about developments and had threatened to prosecute them if they sought to pay a ransom. Parents Diane and John Foley, who have worked on hostage issues and supported hostages' families since their son's killing, including in collaboration with the U.S. government, hope O'Brien will save other families from the same heartbreak they suffered. In a statement, they said they were “hopeful that under his leadership many of our American hostages will return home. “We sincerely welcome him and look forward to working with him.”The envoy will work with the newly created “hostage fusion cell,” which brings together diplomats, CIA spies and FBI agents to handle hostage cases. Kerry said O'Brien will “meet with foreign leaders in support of our hostage-recovery efforts, advise on options to enhance those efforts, participate in strategy meetings with other senior U.S. policymakers, and represent the United States internationally on hostage-related issues.”O'Brien previously served as a presidential envoy to the Balkans, but has most recently been working for a private strategy group founded by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. In July, after a policy review, Obama announced the fusion cell and said families would not be threatened with legal action, but reiterated that it remains U.S. policy to make no concessions to kidnappers.

Bahraini security officer killed in bomb attack
By Staff Writer | Al Arabiya News/Friday, 28 August 2015/One Bahraini security officer was killed and several others injured as a result of a homemade bomb attack in the village of Karana, Al Arabiya News Channel reported. “The terrorist attack also resulted in wounding four other security officers, one of them critically. A citizen and his wife were also injured while they were passing as the attack happened and a child was also hurt,” Bahrain ministry of interior said on their Twitter account. Bahraini Information Minister Isa Abdulrahman Al Hammadi told Agence France-Presse the explosives used in the apparent bomb attack were "very similar" to that seized by authorities last month which "came from Iran". In July, Bahraini authorities declared they had foiled an attempt to smuggle weapons from Iran. A few days later, two police officers were killed and six others injured in a bomb attack in the mainly Shi’ite village of Sitra outside Manama. Sporadic protests and small-scale clashes still persist in Bahrain, while bomb attacks have increased since mid-2012.(with AFP)

Satellite images confirm Palmyra temple destruction
By AFP | Geneva/Saturday, 29 August 2015/Satellite images confirm the destruction of the Baal Shamin temple in Syria's Palmyra, the United Nations said on Friday, after international condemnation of the act claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.
The U.N. training and research agency UNITAR said its satellite programme had compared images of the site taken on June 26 and again on August 27. "We confirm the destruction of the main building, while surrounding columns seem to be less affected," UNITAR said in a statement. The grainy images show that the famed temple, considered the second-most significant in ancient Palmyra, "has been blown to bits," spokesman Einar Bjorgo told AFP. "It has been flattened," he said. The destruction, which reportedly happened last Sunday, just days after ISIS fighters beheaded the 82-year-old retired chief archaeologist of Palmyra, sparked widespread outrage. The U.N. has slammed the destruction of the temple as a "war crime," and the act has raised concerns for the rest of the UNESCO World Heritage site. Famed for its well-preserved Greco-Roman ruins, Palmyra was seized from government forces in May, prompting concerns IS might destroy it as it has other heritage sites in parts of Syria and Iraq under its control. ISIS published images earlier this week showing militants placing barrels and small containers, presumably containing explosives, into the temple, as well as similar containers placed on parts of its columns. The images, which appeared to be screenshots from a video, also showed a large explosion apparently as the temple was blown up, and then a pile of rubble at its former location.

Virginia journalists shooter ‘identified with 9/11 attacks’
By Ian Simpson | Reuters/Saturday, 29 August 2015/The gunman who killed two Virginia television journalists on air carried out a well-planned assault and identified with mass murderers and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, authorities said on Friday. The shooter, Vester Flanagan, gave no sign of his destination or next move when he fled after gunning down the journalists from Roanoke station WDBJ7 on Wednesday, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. “It is evident that Wednesday morning’s attack was well-planned and premeditated” and Flanagan apparently acted alone, the statement on the shooting investigation said. Flanagan, a former station employee, fired 17 rounds from a 40 caliber Glock pistol when he attacked reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward as they were conducting a live interview at Smith Mountain Lake in southwest Virginia, the statement said. Flanagan shot himself during a police chase in northern Virginia and died. The woman who was being interviewed was wounded and hospitalized. Evidence and his writings show that Flanagan “closely identified with individuals who have committed domestic acts of violence and mass murder, as well as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.,” said the statement. Almost 3,000 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. The statement said two Glock pistols were recovered from Flanagan’s rental car. No other firearms have been found. The on-air killings have brought renewed calls for gun control in the United States and in Virginia, where the National Rifle Association gun lobby is headquartered. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, vowed to press ahead with legislation on background checks for gun buyers, although the Republican-led legislature has rejected his gun control efforts.
Citing a federal law enforcement source, USA Today said Flanagan had legally bought the handguns. He passed a background check despite his apparent emotional problems, it reported. In a fax to ABC News the day of the shooting, Flanagan, who was black, called himself a “powder keg” over what he saw as racial discrimination. He was fired from CBS affiliate WDBJ7 in 2013. A search warrant for Flanagan’s rental car said police were tipped to him when he sent a text message to a friend “making reference to having done something stupid.”In the car, police found a pistol, 9mm ammunition, more magazines and a pistol case. Other items included stamped letters, a to-do list and briefcase with three license plates, a wig and sunglasses, the warrant said.

Pentagon confirms militant killed in U.S. air strike in Syria was recruiter
By AFP | Washington/Saturday, 29 August 2015/A militant hacker who was killed this week in a U..S air strike in Syria was actively recruiting Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) sympathizers to carry out lone wolf attacks in the west, the Pentagon said Friday.
Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said Junaid Hussain was specifically targeted in an air strike that killed him August 24 in Raqqa, Syria. He declined to confirm reports that a drone was used to kill Hussain, but he said the British-born militant and propagandist was the sole casualty of the air strike. “He was involved in actively recruiting ISIL sympathizers in the West to carry out lone wolf style attacks,” Ryder said, using an alternative acronym for the ISIS group. Hussain was believed to be behind a number of cyberattacks, including on Central Command websites and Twitter accounts. Ryder said he was responsible for “releasing personally identifying information of approximately 1,300 U.S. military and government employees and specifically sought to direct violence against U.S. service members and government employees.”“This individual was very dangerous,” said Ryder. “He had significant technical skills.”Still, a U.S. defense official said that as a hacker Hussain was not in the top ranks. The information he posted about U.S. military personnel was cobbled together from open sources on the Internet, and was not obtained by penetrating Pentagon computers, the official said. In 2012, he was sentenced to six months in prison in Britain for illegally gaining access to former British prime minister Tony Blair’s address book and publishing information from it. He was also cited by two gunmen who attacked an exhibit featuring cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed on May 3 in Garland, Texas. In Twitter messages just before the attack, which was repelled by police, the assailants called on people to follow Hussain, who reportedly responded on Twitter after the shooting: “Allahu Akbar!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire.

Obama expects better US-Israel ties after Iran deal in place
Associated Press/Ynetnews/Published: 08.29.15
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama on Friday compared tensions between the United States and Israel over the Iranian nuclear deal to a family feud and said he expects quick improvements in ties between the longtime allies once the accord is implemented.
The president's comments came as momentum for the nuclear accord grew on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers will vote next month on a resolution to disapprove of the deal. Democratic Sen. Tom Carper became the 30th senator to publicly back the agreement, saying Friday that it was a good deal for America and for allies like Israel. "Like all families, sometimes there are going to be disagreements," Obama said in a webcast with Jewish Americans. "And sometimes people get angrier about disagreements in families than with folks that aren't family."Obama said once the nuclear accord is implemented, he expects "pretty quick" improvements in US-Israeli relations.
"As soon as this particular debate is over, my hope is that the Israeli government will immediately want to rejoin conversations that we started long before about how we can continue to improve and enhance Israel's security in a very troubled neighborhood," he said.
Obama said Washington and Israel have been in talks "for months" about getting security talks back on track, and those talks could include the next-generation missile defense and improved intelligence.If Senate Democrats can amass 41 votes in favor of the deal, they could block passage of the disapproval resolution. Obama has vowed to veto the resolution if it passes, and Democrats could hold off Republican efforts to override his veto if they get 34 votes - just four more than they have now. The looming congressional confrontation has sparked a summer of intense debate between supporters and opponents of the nuclear accord. The deliberations have also divided Jewish Americans, with leaders of many organizations expressing concern about long-term damage to the community.
The president encouraged skeptics of the agreement to "overcome the emotions" that have infused the debate and evaluate the accord based on facts."I would suggest that in terms of the tone of this debate everybody keep in mind that we're all pro-Israel," he said. "We have to make sure that we don't impugn people's motives."
While Obama was measured in his remarks Friday, he has spoken passionately about the nuclear accord in the past, accusing those who oppose the deal of supporting war over diplomacy. Earlier Friday, his spokesman equated an anti-deal rally Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz plan to hold next month to a "pro-war rally."
Obama also infuriated congressional Republicans earlier this month when he compared opponents of the agreement to Iranian hardliners who chant "Death to America" in the streets of Tehran. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said Friday that Republicans were still waiting for the president to retract that assertion. The US negotiated alongside Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China for nearly two years before finalizing a landmark accord to curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief.  As he has in previous speeches and interviews, Obama sought to refute criticism of the accord point by point. He disputed the notion that Iran would funnel the bulk of the money it receives from the sanctions relief into terrorism, saying Iranian leaders are more likely to try to bolster their weak economy. He also said the agreement wasn't built on trusting Iran's government, which frequently spouts anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric.
"It's precisely because we're not counting on the nature of the regime to change that it's so important for us to make sure they don't have a nuclear weapon," he said. Friday's webcast was hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and The Jewish Federations of North America. Organizers said thousands of people participated and questions submitted online were selected by the moderators. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the fiercest critics of the nuclear agreement, took part in a similar webcast hosted by the same organizations earlier this month. While Obama and Netanyahu have never had a warm relationship, the US president's pursuit of diplomacy with Iran has deeply strained ties between the leaders.
In the weeks following completion of the nuclear deal, Israeli officials have resisted discussing increased security assistance with the US because they say such talks would imply acceptance of the accord. Reuters contributed to this report.

The significance of arresting the 1996 Khobar bomber
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya/August 29/15
Who would have thought that the head of the terrorist cell that carried out the Khobar bombing in Saudi Arabia would be arrested after being on the run for 19 years? Arresting Ahmed al-Mughassil in Beirut and handing him over to Saudi authorities in Riyadh has turned the page on one of the most important and dangerous security and political cases. This is because the operation was plotted in Iran, the victims were from the U.S. and the crime was committed on Saudi territories. This case also involved other countries such as Canada, Syria and Lebanon because of the presence of the suspects on their territories.
It is said that the violent attack in the summer of 1996 was so big that the explosion was heard from Bahrain. The force of the bomb caused a10-meter crater in the ground and destroyed one side of the Khobar towers. Nineteen U.S. forces were dead and about 500 others were injured. Perhaps it would have ranked the worst terrorist operation in the world, in terms of injuries, if the perpetrators did not put the bomb in a water truck, which reduced the force of the explosion.
When it comes to terrorist crimes, there are files that can neither be closed with the passage of time nor through political reconciliations
The bombing may have also been followed by a series of explosions planned by the Iranians in Saudi Arabia in 1996, if a customs agent did not stop a truck crossing the border from Jordan to Saudi Arabia, because he suspected it being too low on the ground, indicating it contained something heavy. When inspected, they discovered huge quantities of explosives, thwarting other planned operations.
The guns hired by Iran
Those who were engaged in the terrorist operations, whether Saudi or not, were merely guns hired by Iran for political purposes. Iran would eventually get rid of them at a later stage. Syrian authorities got rid of another wanted Saudi man in the terrorist cell, after Saudi security services discovered his whereabouts, two months after the bombing. When Saudi authorities asked the Syrian authorities to hand him over, they denied his presence at first and later claimed that he committed suicide in prison by eating soap... Well, nobody believed that story. Later on, Syrian authorities handed over another wanted Saudi man who was in hiding there, and a third was later handed over in Lebanon.
When it comes to terrorist crimes, there are files that can neither be closed with the passage of time nor through political reconciliations. The perpetrators will be pursued no matter how far they get or what regime is protecting them. The regimes that hired them to kill, will sell them at the appropriate time later on.
It is Iran that has expanded the concept of modern state terrorism since the early 1980s. It used it as a key tool in its foreign policy to blackmail and threaten forces and various governments in the Middle East and beyond. The assassinations of significant figures in Lebanon after 2005 were part of a Syrian-Iranian policy to impose Iran’s project in Lebanon and the region. It initiated its plan by kidnapping westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s. During the decade that followed, Iran was behind the bombings in France and South America. When we put Iran’s numerous attacks within the framework of its stated policies, we wonder if it has now reached its goals.
But in fact, Iran has not succeeded in achieving anything important, as it was not able to change regimes, or even influence them and force them to alter their policies. This is with the exception of Lebanon, which has always been an easy ground for Iranian activities, and of course, Tehran’s ally – the Syrian regime. Violence has failed to achieve any significant accomplishment for Iran. Its policy has resulted in the presence of U.S. and other western forces on Gulf waters, while they wanted them out of the region. This is what led to an increase in Iran’s isolation and misery.

Do refugees have a place in the paradoxical social media scene?
Yara al-Wazir/Al Arabiya/August 29/15
The world of social media is a complicated one. Many in Middle East credit it with the Arab uprisings of 2011 and while the revolts may not have produced democracy, they have surely produced hundreds of thousands of refugees. In some cases, the same tool used for freedom is now being used to hurl abuse at refugees.
Online abuse against refugees is not something to which we can turn our backs to – it’s a serious concern. Although Palestinian refugees have existed in the region, and around the world, for decades, they have already adapted and assimilated into their communities. For decades, communities have not had to deal with the notion of “new” refugees in the same magnitude we are seeing now.
Online abuse against refugees is not something to which we can turn our backs to – it’s a serious concern
People around the world now have to deal with this notion, and online hatred is not making anything easier for those who have already lost their homes and belongings. The danger with this online hate is that it instigates more hate, and instils a culture of rejection of foreigners. This xenophobic rhetoric should come to an end now.
Online negativity towards the situation does not only impact the refugees from a psychological standpoint, but also puts their lives in danger.
Disappointingly, public criticism of racist rhetoric on social media is not substantial enough for social media giants to react. It seems that Germany has felt the issue of refugees hit home - literally. As well as announcing that they are expecting 800,000 refugees to make their way to Germany in the coming year, this week the German government issued a statement calling on Facebook to act to limit racist posts.
While the public may not always be able to provoke social media giants to change their ways, the public can bring together all the positive influencers and inspire them to collaborate. After a photograph of a Palestinian-Syrian refugee carrying his sleeping daughter over his shoulder while he sold pens in Beirut’s heat went viral, the public responded. The strong solidarity inspired the photographer to set up a crowd-fund and raise over $5,000 in the first 30 minutes. The campaign has now reached over $70,000 in just 24 hours. What is most inspiring is that the refugee photographed, Abdul, doesn’t want to keep all the money to himself, but he wants to share it with other refugees in need.
The two different sides of how social media has decided to deal with the refugee crisis show the true dichotomy that exists within society. On the one hand, a society’s natural instinct is to be protective its land and reject foreign intrusion. It is like the human body when it experiences a foreign organism in the bloodstream. On the other hand, there are those who realize that not only must we adapt to the changes that the political world has imposed on us, but rather help these organisms thrive.

Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS
DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis August 29, 2015
The war to stop the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has entered a dark tunnel. And with it the bottomless conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq. The search for a ray of light moves next week from Moscow to Washington, when Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz makes his first visit as monarch for talks with President Barack Obama. The three worried Arab rulers received in the Kremlin Tuesday, Aug. 25, by President Vladimir Putin could only talk in circles: Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi,is embattled on three fronts, Sinai, his border with Libya and Cairo; Jordan’s King Abdullah II – is wedged between two wars; and UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has sent his army to fight the Yemen insurgency alongside Saudi Arabia.
For them, resolving the Syrian conflict looked like the silver bullet, the key to ending all their troubles. But whichever Russian or Iranian plans and ideas they considered for a way forward, they were all forced to come back to the same impasse. Even Putin and Obama can’t get around or ignore two solid facts:
1. In the year since the US built an international coalition for fighting ISIS, the brutal Islamists have not been cut down; they have instead been empowered to seize more turf outside their Iraqi and Syrian conquests, such big oil fields in Libya, an ascending threat to Egypt and big plans for Lebanon.
2. A major letdown has followed on the high hopes reposed in Iran. The nuclear deal negotiated with the six world powers - and the elevated regional status conferred on Iran - hinged closely on US expectations that Tehran would put up effective military resources for tackling ISIS.
But the Revolutionary Guards, the popular Syrian and Iraqi forces the Guards established,and the Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias they imported – none have proved a match for ISIS and jihadi tactics.
In Syria, ISIS stands fast, unthreatened in the terrain, towns and oil fields they have captured, in the past year - excepting only on fringe fronts, where they have been forced back by local Kurdish rebel fighters.
Hizballah is a big part of the disappointment. It was supposed to serve as a bulwark against ISIS invading eastern Lebanon from Syria. Instead, these Lebanese Shiite fighters, allies of Assad’s army, are bogged down in a bitter battle for the strategic Syrian town of Zabadani, after failing to breach Syrian rebel defenses in forays from the south, the north or the center.
The door is therefore open for the Islamist State to march into Hizballah’s strongholds in the Lebanese Beqaa valley and head north to the port of Tripoli for a foothold on the Mediterranean.
Whether Bashar Assad stays or goes, which might have made a difference at an early stage of the Syrian insurgency, is irrelevant now that his army and allied forces are in dire straits.
In Iraq, the forces fighting ISIS are equally stumped. The jihadis are in control of a deadly string of strategic towns, Ramadi, Faluja, the refinery city of Baiji, Mosul, and most of the western province of Anbar, including Haditha which commands a key stretch of the Euphrates River.
Here, too, the Islamist terrorist army’s lines remain intact, unbroken either by the undercover Jordanian Special Forces campaign 200 km inside Anbar, albeit backed by US and Israeli military and intelligence assistance; by the “popular mobilization committees” set up by the Iranian general Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy of the Al Qods chief Qassem Soleimani, or less still by US-trained Iraqi army units.
This week, the impasse spurred two combatants into chilling escalations:
--- Iran began shipping its solid propellant missile, Zelzal-3B (meaning “earthquake”), across the border into Iraq, in the hope that this powerful projectile, with a range of 250km , would give the Revolutionary Guards their doomsday weapon for tipping the scales against ISIS.
--- The Islamists, for their part, embraced a new tactic, known in the west as “SVBIED mobile defense.” Scores of armed vehicles are packed tight with hundreds of tons of explosives and loosed against military convoys on the move and static enemy positions and bases.
This tactic quickly proved itself by killing the 10th Iraqi Division’s chief, deputy and its command staff, as well as the deputy chief of Iraqi forces in Anbar.
In Moscow last week, Putin offered his three Middle East guests Russian nuclear reactors, arms, joint pacts for fighting terror and assorted ideas for the future of Bashar Assad. But he too had no practical proposals for bringing the Islamic State down.
President Obama may likewise offer King Salman all sorts of assistance for standing up to ISIS, but he will find no buyers in Riyadh for his failed policy of reliance on Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, for liquidating the Islamist threat looming against the oil kingdom from neighboring Iraq. Neither is US aid much use for stemming the tide of pro-ISIS radicalism spreading among young Saudi men.
As matters stand today, therefore, the Islamic State faces no tangible threat – even if Iran does go ahead and achieve a nuclear bomb.

Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe's Double Game
Bassam Tawil/Gatestone Institute/August 29, 2015
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6352/dividing-arabs
*Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be "zero." Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to major American cities, directly from Iran, from South America, or -- making identification and retaliation impossible -- from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.
*Obama with one hand allows Iran to glide to nuclear capability and encourage the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula -- while with the other hand, he claims to support Israel.
*Qatar's role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS.
*Hamas, since last year's war, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of developing businesses and turning the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas's failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.
*The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam's taqiyya [dissimulation] -- religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: "Death to America; Death to Israel."
The United States is playing a double game in the Middle East: empowering Shiite Iran, while at the same time enabling Sunni ISIS to overthrow the moderate Arab regimes, as if to stop Iran.
The Americans are well aware that the Sunni Arab countries around Iran will now have to arm themselves to the teeth, thereby gutting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
America, despite its power and the image it projects of working against ISIS in Iraq, does not touch ISIS in its real headquarters, Syria, where ISIS actually could actually be hurt. So nothing really changes, and both Iran and ISIS continue to strengthen.
Even as the members the UN Security Council, eager do business with Iran, voted to allow Iran to build nuclear weapons, the Iranians continue to fund Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip -- all Iranian proxies -- in order to split the Arab ranks.
In other words, the hypocritical Obama administration, in backing the Iranians, keeps trying to sabotage the Arabs and provoke dissension.
The U.S. "divide-and-conquer" policy can also be seen in America's ongoing support for Turkey and Qatar, both loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey and Qatar, however, do nothing but foment incitement and support terrorist organizations. Both countries have totally abandoned the real existential interest of the Arab nation: its historic battle against Iran.
Qatar's role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS, which is working against the West and against moderate Arab regimes.
The worst, however, is Turkey, which supports ISIS -- the enemy of the West -- despite Turkey being a member of NATO. Turkey also expends inordinate efforts at retaining its control of occupied Cyprus. Above all, its hypocrisy is scandalous. While it claims to care about the independence and human rights of the Palestinians, Turkey is really nothing but a radical Islamist country now denying independence and human rights to its own Kurdish citizens. At the same time, it supports Hamas and Iran in their effort to crush the unity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO as the only legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.
Turkey, like many other nations, including the countries that negotiated with Iran, is just waiting for the sanctions to be lifted from Iran, so that its dubious military and economic relations with the Mullahs will finally be acceptable.
Turkey and Qatar have also divided the Sunni Islamic camp and fragmented the Arab ranks. Both countries give the Palestinians political support, the deluded hope of "return," and funding that is used for rebuilding Hamas's military capabilities and kidnapping tunnels.
It is both folly and underhandedness for the United States to provide these countries with even a tattered umbrella of military aid.
Not only the U.S. but Europe, which supports Iran, would like to see Hamas -- a terrorist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood -- become stronger at the expense of the Palestinian people.
Europe would like to empower Hamas even further by handing it diplomatic and political support. There are rumors that the UN is planning to grant Hamas observer status in the General Assembly, as it did the Palestinian Authority.
We all know that the issue of Palestine could have been resolved long ago by establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state next to Israel, and giving the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees living in the Arab states full citizenship. But the manipulations employed by the Europeans and Americans deliberately perpetuate the Palestinian issue by using "good cop - bad cop" tactics.
Europe and the U.S. whitewash not only Hamas's threats to Israel, but also, more importantly, its deadly subversion of Palestinian Authority. Both Europe and America totally disregard Hamas's planned coup against PA leader Mahmoud Abbas last year, Hamas's war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and the unspeakable treatment of its own people at home. Only one year ago, Hamas was murdering its own citizens extra-judicially, and ordering them to be cannon fodder for the benefit of international television crews.
Hamas, since then, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of to develop businesses and turn the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas's failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are now operating against Egypt and Israel not only from the Gaza Strip, but from the Sinai Peninsula as well. Thus, in addition to allowing Iran to sail to nuclear weapons capability, President Obama encourages the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula with one hand, while with the other hand he claims to support Israel.
After all is said and done, if we Arabs had joined ranks -- even temporarily and even with Israel -- we could have long ago put a stop to Iran's plans for expansion.
But because of our own shortsightedness, we waited too long and now the Iranians have established footholds in the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, and are increasing their control of Arab states such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be "zero." Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to the major cities of the "Great Satan," the United States, directly from Iran, from South America, or -- making identification and retaliation impossible -- from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.
The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam's taqiyya [dissimulation] -- religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: "Death to America; Death to Israel."
U.S. President Barack Obama (left). Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (right).
By this point, near the end of the process of Sunni Muslim self-destruction, a large part of the Arabs' energy has been wasted on internal wars and the misallocation of resources to the barren, useless confrontation with Israel, even while many Arab states secretly collaborate with the Zionists.
All that will be left for the Arabs will be to continue to argue among themselves and with the Israelis about the Palestinian issue. We should instead stop the distractions and the wounds we are inflicting upon ourselves, and put the Palestinian problem behind us by granting equal rights and citizenship to Palestinians residing in Arab countries, in order to shift our focus totally, if belatedly, to the real battle: The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Lebanon’s long winter
Hisham Melhem/Al Arabiya/August 29/15
I avoid writing about Lebanon. I have a very conflicted relation with the country of my birth. I have the sweet and painful memories of childhood and youth, of losing my father at age eleven, of first love, and writing the first poems, and discovering how liberating imagination can be while reading novels, watching (mostly American) movies and listening to music. Summertime in Qoubaiyat, my parent’s ancestral village in Northern Lebanon with my brother Michel and Sitti Martha were the sweetest. I still see a cocky kid roaming the rugged mountains trailing his older brother and admiring the way he handled his hunting rifle. Our fearless dog was our constant companion; we protected each other, and on the numerous occasions when dogs engaged in fights, their owners joined the melee. We all had scars. And we all practiced stoicism. In mountain cultures you learn early on how to endure and how to inflict pain unflinchingly.
In my youth I was thoroughly politicized. I was firmly in the Left, given my social and economic conditions, which forced me to start working in factories at age eleven. In my late teens I had hostile views against the Lebanese system, particularly its contemptible, and predatory political class, resembling the views of the Anarchists of the 19th century that I studied later on in America. I had friends from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, and I could not tolerate a political system based on sectarian preferences and divisions. In Lebanon, the state sees you as a member of a religious community, not as a citizen. There was, and still is a tenuous balance among the communities, which flares up in spasms of communal violence every few years. But for all its flaws, the Lebanese system allowed for basic freedoms and a modicum of state institutions. At that time we did not appreciate that the communal balance made it impossible for the weak state to become a repressive Leviathan like most Arab states. In a typically Orwellian sleight of hand some Lebanese politicians celebrated this paradox claiming that ‘Lebanon’s strength lies in its weakness’.
Sophisticated but not civilized
For most of the 20th century Lebanon’s aura and its cultural contributions were incommensurate with its size. Beirut boasted the best universities, newspapers and publishing houses in the Arab world along with Egypt. You would meet in its cafes and lecture halls the best and the brightest from neighboring countries. Even its paradoxes were liked. People came to Beirut to prosper and to create, to seek refuge from persecution, but also to engage in intrigue and to peddle conspiracy theories. Lebanese politicians exude outward sophistication and they are quick to tell you that they are fluent in three languages. But if you scratch them slightly, you would discover how sectarian and petty they are. Beirut was full of energy and spunk, it had an abundance of self-confidence and cockiness, and that may explain why no one noticed the onset of decline.
Lebanon was reeking rottenness long before its garbage was decomposing
The civil war, and the decades of tensions, polarizations and foreign interventions that followed exposed the country’s myriad vulnerabilities. When Lebanese fight, they like the company of outsiders, so they invite them to the fray. The Syrian army was welcomed by its allies, just as the Israeli army, was greeted by its collaborators. And the same goes for Iranian ‘advisors’ and political operatives, and the western powers that landed in Beirut after the Israeli invasion of 1982.
That was the onset of decline. The warlords agreed to a series of ‘reforms’ that were supposed to lead to ridding the system of sectarianism, and the establishment of a Senate for better representation of the religious communities, but most of the reforms were not implemented. In fact sectarianism after the war became more entrenched, and all the ills of the pre-war system re-asserted themselves with vengeance, particularly what the Lebanese call ‘political feudalism’, that is passing the mantel of political leadership of the community or sect, or even the small political party from father to son, proudly and unabashedly. This political/feudal class of leaders shows that a Lebanese politician can be sophisticated but not necessarily civilized.
The dog days of summer in Beirut can be nasty. Suffering from many indignities resulting from unprecedented political dysfunction and paralysis that allowed the position of the presidency to remain vacant for 15 months, a broken parliament that rarely deliberate (but of course found the time and the energy to renew its mandate, illegally some legal scholars content), the Lebanese finally said enough when they were surrounded in the last few weeks with mounting pyramids of uncollected garbage. For the second time in a decade, Lebanese activists not affiliated with any bankrupt or compromised political groups or bosses, along with angry average citizens took to the streets. The youth, Lebanon’s only remaining hope, organized peaceful and smart demonstrations seeking a solution to the immediate problem but in transparent,(public bids, not subject to the machinations of shady companies beholden to politicians) and in environmentally acceptable way. The recent demonstrations were marred by violence cause by what the organizers called ‘hooligans’ who, in an organized fashion, disrupted the demonstrations by attacking and provoking the police. Some activists and commentators accused the Amal militia controlled by the Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berry of being behind the disturbances. Mr. Berry, with support from Hezbollah, has monopolized the speakership of Parliament for decades. For crass political expediency, the unscrupulous Berry on many occasions would refuse to convene the parliament, with support from Hezbollah and from the Free Patriotic Movement, headed by Michel Aoun, a man who suffers from a malignant case of megalomania, who is bent on keeping the presidency vacant unless he becomes president.
Something other than garbage is rotten in Lebanon
Lebanon was reeking rottenness long before its garbage was decomposing. During and after the war, Lebanon began to lose its unique role in the region. Lebanese universities are no longer the magnet for Arab students; Beirut is no longer the place for regional conferences, and its once lively and freewheeling media has lost its regional dominance and non-Lebanese satellite news and entertainment channels have been dominating the Arab market for years. Many Lebanese have yet to come to grips with the fact that their country is diminishing domestically and regionally. Lebanon’s free space has been shrinking steadily because of the deepening political dysfunction and the growing military power of Hezbollah and its debilitating political aggressiveness. The inherent contradictions of the Lebanese system, along with the bloody machinations of the Syrian regime and Hezbollah, which are suspected of assassinating former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, and other critics of Syria, have hallowed out what was left of Lebanese institutions and allowed Hezbollah to penetrate these institutions in dangerous ways (Hezbollah’s men monitor who enters and leaves the airport) and even to collude with the army.
The modern day assassins
Today, Lebanon faces new fundamental, even existential threats to its being as a state that still enjoys some, albeit shrinking freedoms. Syria stupendous violence, which drove close to a million and a half Syrian refugees to Lebanon, and more dangerously, Hezbollah’s military intervention on the side of a regime that has been waging a brutal war against its own people for more than four years, constitute a litany of challenges that could literally unravel the brittle Lebanese system. What is difficult to understand is the degree of willful denial of reality that Lebanese leaders exhibit.
Lebanon today, is dominated and intimidated by Hezbollah and its allies and hooligans. It is impossible to enact anything politically meaningful if Hezbollah is opposed to it. In 2008, Hezbollah unleashed its thugs on West Beirut and subdued it with little resistance. Hezbollah is a disciplined, efficient, and fascist-like sectarian force in the service of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran guides Hezbollah spiritually and politically and supports it militarily and financially. Hezbollah’s operatives act as the modern day Assassins who are dispatched by the Iranian regime to engage in terror beyond the border of the Islamic Republic. The regime in Damascus was saved by Hezbollah muscle and blood.
It has been ten years since I visited Lebanon. I was in Beirut when the city shook violently when PM Hariri was assassinated. I watched the dark plumes rise over the city. But a different darkness was setting in. Then the trail of blood and tears became longer and more treacherous. Even before the assassinations, Lebanon and I were drifting apart. Every time I am in Beirut I would experience a cultural shock. Having normal conversations, that is not laced with conceit or conspiracies became so rare. The political discourse, to the extent one could call it such sounded surreal or otherworldly. The political categories that others use to explain political events or decisions seemed to be alien in Lebanon. Sometimes when I am asked about U.S. policy in Lebanon or the region, I would be allowed to say few words before I am interrupted and forced to listen to a lecture about the ‘real’ U.S. objectives in the Middle East. There is very little to watch on Lebanese television stations, or deserve to be read in its newspaper, (something that can fairly be said about a wide segment of Arab media). In recent weeks I have found myself asking, what is the matter with America? What is the matter with Egypt? Now I am asking the Lebanese, including myself, what is the matter with Lebanon? It has been a treacherous journey into a long winter. And the Lebanese continue to smell garbage, not spring.
I have been watching the demonstrations with awe, and trepidation. What is good about this nascent movement is that it is spontaneous and not lead by a centrally organized group with clear and delineated leadership roles or a political plan or objectives. But that is precisely what could be its Achilles heel. Luckily Lebanon escaped the horrors of the Arab uprisings. This should not be an uprising to bring down the ‘Lebanese regime’ because there is no such thing. The demands should remain limited, very well defined, and can be implemented, while insisting on the things that appeal to all communities, and please keep it peaceful, peaceful, peaceful. I have some wonderful friends among the activists and commentators who are in the middle of this movement. They keep me away from succumbing to total despair about the prospects of the land of my ancestors.
__________
Hisham Melhem is a columnist and analyst for Al Arabiya News Channel in Washington, DC. Melhem has interviewed many American and international public figures, including Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, among others. He is also the correspondent for Annahar, the leading Lebanese daily. For four years he hosted "Across the Ocean," a weekly current affairs program on U.S.-Arab relations for Al Arabiya. Follow him on Twitter : @hisham_melhem

New IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) Strategy Goes Public
Michael Herzog/Washington Institute/August 29/15
The IDF's first-ever public strategy paper highlights the complex challenges posed by substate actors in a fast-transforming landscape, and it could serve as a basis for U.S.-Israeli security dialogue on the Iran nuclear deal. On August 13, the Israel Defense Forces published a thirty-three-page document titled "IDF Strategy." This is a shorter, unclassified version of a comprehensive document designed as the conceptual framework for the new IDF five-year plan, "Gideon," which has yet to be approved by the government.
This document, bearing the imprint of new chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, is unique in Israel's history because it not only defines and bases itself on elements of a national security doctrine, but was also released to the public. Israel has not had a formal, written national security doctrine since the time of its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The last attempt at developing one in 2004-2007 (the Meridor Comission), was completed but not put to government approval; the "IDF Strategy" draws on that effort.
The unprecedented publication may be motivated by a desire to shape the lively public debate on prioritizing national resources between security and socioeconomic needs -- specifically, to shift it from a technical discussion of budgetary inputs to a strategic discussion on required security outputs. The new document explores the fundamental changes in Israel's strategic and operational environment, which has seen rapid, violent upheavals and the collapse or weakening of state frameworks. The high degree of strategic and budgetary uncertainty has left the IDF without a formal government-approved multiyear plan since 2011.
STRATEGIC SHIFTS
The document highlights several major changes in Israel's strategic landscape:
Extreme, violent, and well-armed substate actors have replaced neighboring state armies as Israel's main military threat; these include Hezbollah in Lebanon/Syria and Hamas in Gaza (nonstate jihadist elements are also accumulating on Israel's borders, but for now they do not pose the same level of threat). In the past fifteen years alone, substate actors in the Lebanese and Palestinian theaters have forced Israel into five rounds of major armed conflict.
These actors can now target Israel's civilian population centers and vital strategic facilities with significant firepower, potentially affecting the country's societal resilience and ability to conduct a continuous war effort. This threat is constantly growing in volume, pace, range, accuracy, payload, and survivability. In addition, sophisticated military capabilities could undermine the IDF's offensive capacity in the ground, air, and sea theaters. The threat also includes extensive subterranean activities; during last year's Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, the IDF exposed an extensive network of cross-border tunnels dug by Hamas for offensive purposes.
These substate actors are operating from civilian areas in a bid to deny Israel's freedom of action or undercut the legitimacy of its war effort. This kind of warfare therefore encompasses nonmilitary dimensions such as legal, humanitarian, and media issues.
Israel's political standing in the West has eroded over the years, complicating efforts to gain increasingly needed international legitimacy for fighting armed elements in civilian areas. Clearly, the main cause of this erosion is the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though the document does not explicitly make this point.As the domestic costs of national security grow, so are the pressures to invest more in the economy and society.Interestingly, the document does not mention the Iranian nuclear threat directly. This has led some commentators to conclude that unlike Israel's government, the IDF does not attach the same severity to this threat following the P5+1 nuclear agreement. Yet Iran does in fact play an important part of the strategy underlying the document. First, while the IDF does not expect the nuclear threat to come to fruition during the next five-year plan's timeframe, it does call for enhancing deterrence and maintaining preparedness for potential preemptive strikes against "countries with no joint border [with Israel]." Second, the IDF believes that substate actors "supported by Iran" do pose an imminent threat. Privately, its leadership is troubled by the prospect of these actors enjoying Iranian resources unfrozen by the nuclear deal.
RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGE
The IDF identifies three basic situations for the use of force -- Routine, Emergency, and (full-scale) War -- distinguishable from one another by the scope of military and national resources involved and defined by different logics. Although armed conflicts with substate actors usually fall under "Emergency," the IDF continues to focus its force buildup mostly on "War," but with added versatility for Emergency. In the latter situation, the IDF could be directed to achieve "military decision" (see below), especially by destroying significant enemy capabilities, or to conduct a limited campaign focusing on strategic targets. Either mission would be designed to eliminate the enemy's will to fight and achieve long-term deterrence. In Gaza, for example, the IDF would seemingly prefer to apply this concept by using a mixture of debilitating firepower and limited ground operations rather than conquering the territory and fully dismantling Hamas's military capabilities.
The IDF strategy document assumes a protracted series of armed conflicts with substate actors and strives to force long lulls by achieving and maintaining credible deterrence. It also envisions building "cumulative" deterrence through a series of unequivocal military victories. Yet the new strategic and operational environment has compelled the IDF to redefine deterrence and the two other traditional pillars of its military strategy (early warning and military decision), and to add a fourth pillar: defense.
Deterrence is now defined in terms relative to the nature and diversity of the threat, unlike its near-binary role in preventing full-scale wars. It requires constant boosting, for which purpose the IDF developed the concept of a "campaign between wars" -- namely, clandestine, covert, and overt activities in Routine situations in order to thwart emerging enemy threats, especially the acquisition of specific arms. Early warning is now an element of intelligence superiority, which is to be achieved before and during any armed conflict. The term military decision also assumes a more relative character, corresponding to long-term deterrence, while consistent with the traditional Israeli goal of fighting short conflicts (it is often joined by the amorphous term "victory," which the document defines as "achieving the political goals set for the campaign, leading to a post-bellum improved security situation").
The defense pillar has been added to address the significant threat of enemy fire on Israel's heartland. The most important element of this pillar is the ongoing development of a multilayered active defense system against rockets and missiles. If compelled to prioritize what it will defend first in a given conflict (e.g., when facing Hezbollah's enormous rocket arsenal), the IDF would focus on preventing disruption of the war effort and protecting critical national infrastructure before protecting civilian centers. The document also takes potential enemy conquest of Israeli territory into consideration, including possible evacuation of civilians (a departure from the Israeli ethos), yet it calls for denying the enemy any territorial gain by the end of the confrontation.
Notwithstanding the growing weight of defense, the IDF continues to prioritize offensive action in both the buildup and employment of its forces. In this context, it strives to rebalance the relationship between firepower and ground maneuver, which has in recent years tilted increasingly toward the former with an overemphasis on achieving significant burnout of enemy capabilities over the course of a conflict. Under the new concept, the two have to reinforce each other, thereby creating synergic and systemic effects. The IDF document sets the goal of preparing tens of thousands of targets in Lebanon and Syria and thousands in Gaza ahead of a conflict, and striking thousands of targets daily during a conflict, including targets of opportunity. To enable this, the IDF is revolutionizing connectivity within and between service branches, combat units, and intelligence assets. Ground maneuvers will be launched from the outset of a conflict (unlike in the 2006 Lebanon war), including a new emphasis on surprise operations aimed at centers of gravity in the enemy's operational or strategic rear, employing significant ground or special forces led by new command structures. The overall offensive concept is based on maintaining Israel's qualitative edge as well as its air, naval, and intelligence superiority, and on ensuring critical mass of forces and capabilities.
Finally, the document breaks new ground in devoting attention to the nonkinetic aspects of armed conflict, adopting a multidisciplinary approach toward it. It regards cyberspace as another front, for which a Cyber Arm is being established. It highlights the need to prepare for the war of perceptions and to thoroughly address legal, humanitarian, and information dimensions; that is, Israel must strive to create and maintain political legitimacy for the use of force in order to enhance the IDF's freedom of action in the current international environment.
CONCLUSION
The "IDF Strategy" is an important contribution to Israel's strategic thinking and public discourse on national security. It deserves to be solidified by a governmental national security strategy. The bottom line is that Israel faces extremely complex challenges in a fast-transforming landscape, posing acute strategic, operational, and domestic dilemmas. These challenges are epitomized by Iranian-supported Hezbollah, with its arsenal of over 100,000 rockets and its capacity to fire over 1,500 daily for weeks. As Israel prepares for the consequences of a nuclear deal that could compound existing uncertainties and threats from Iran's proxies, the IDF document should provide a sound basis for bilateral U.S.-Israel strategic dialogue on major Israeli security concerns for the coming years.
***Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, IDF (Ret.), is The Washington Institute's Milton Fine International Fellow. Previously, he served as head of the IDF's Strategic Planning Division and chief of staff to Israel's defense minister, in which capacity he was involved in developing IDF strategy and updating Israel's national security doctrine.

Analysis: How Netanyahu’s threats pushed the US into a flawed deal with Iran
YOSSI MELMAN /J.Post/08/29/2015
PRIME MINISTER Benjamin Netanyahu is correct in his criticism of the nuclear deal signed recently between world powers and Iran. Indeed, it is not a good deal. But it is Netanyahu who substantially brought this about.
This conclusion is based on talks with Israeli and US officials who were ‒ and still are ‒ privy to the inner workings of the Israeli government, its defense, nuclear and intelligence agencies, and their dealings with US counterparts.
Netanyahu’s public warmongering ‒ threatening to bomb Iran since he came to power for his second term in 2009 ‒ and his confrontational and defiant policies unwittingly played a major role in shaping the US strategy against Iran.
Netanyahu’s threats made the Obama administration nervous that an Israeli military strike would escalate into a general war in the Middle East, which would hurt its allies, especially Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and cause grievous damage to US interests in the region.
The US president and his advisers decided to do everything possible to avert a war by means of a negotiated solution, even if it resulted in a flawed deal.
Israel’s words and actions under the two previous prime ministers, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, were based on two tenets. First, not to make it appear that Israel was spearheading the campaign ‒ “to be positioned on the rear slope,” in Israel military parlance, to stop Iran’s nuclear program. This position, recommended by the Mossad, Military Intelligence and the Atomic Energy Commission, derived mainly from fears that if Israel took a leading role in the campaign, it would backfire.
After all, Israel is considered by foreign observers to be the sixth largest nuclear power in the world and questions were bound to be asked why the international community was focusing only on Iran, and not on Israel, too.
“If you have butter on your head, don’t stay out in the sun,” a former senior Israeli official summarized.
The second reason not to be at the frontline of the struggle was that all major Israeli strategic decisions traditionally are coordinated with the US. On the Israeli side, the overall responsibility for executing the anti-Iranian policy was given to the Mossad. Its chief at that time, Meir Dagan, became the undisputed “czar” of attempts to slow down Iran’s progress to a nuclear bomb.
The Israeli policy, which was shared and accepted by US president George W. Bush’s administration, was to create the conditions that would cause the Iranian leadership to understand that it was under international siege, which eventually might lead to its collapse. In other words, to make the Iranian leaders realize that their choice was between the continuation of the nuclear project or the regime’s survival.
To accomplish this goal, between 2004- 2009, Israel and the US defined a common strategy, carried out in three interwoven fields.
In the first arena, sanctions were imposed by the UN Security Council, and another set was unilaterally adopted by the US and EU.
The cornerstone of the sanctions regime was the embargoes imposed on Iran’s oil and gas industries and banking system. Probably the most crippling measure adopted in a later stage was cutting off the Islamic Republic from access to the SWIFT network enabling global money transfers.
Incidentally, when the idea of the SWIFT sanction was first introduced by the Mossad in 2010, Netanyahu was hesitant. He was concerned that implementation of the measure would one day boomerang and be used by the international community against Israel because of its occupation and settlement policy in the West Bank. It took a while, with the intervention of the governor of the Bank of Israel, to convince Netanyahu to okay the initiative.
The second pillar of the Israeli-American effort was to exploit ethnic divisions in Iran by establishing useful contacts among Azeri, Kurdish, Arab, and Baluchi minorities who felt persecuted.
The third layer was covert operations – a Mossad specialty. According to foreign reports, it was a combination of assassinating key Iranian nuclear scientists and sabotaging (in Israeli intelligence parlance, “poisoning”) equipment destined for Iran’s nuclear program.
It was reported that, beginning in 2003, front companies were set up in several countries, which managed to gain the trust of Iranian nuclear procurement networks and sell them flawed technology and equipment. Later, this idea was taken to a new level, and instead of “poisoning” the equipment prior to purchase, it was decided to damage the equipment on Iranian soil. Thus, the idea of “state-sponsored offensive cyberwarfare” came into being. The culmination of this measure was the Stuxnet computer virus, which succeeded in damaging Iran’s uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
The US media revealed a few years ago that the Stuxnet and subsequent viruses were a joint project of the Israeli and American intelligence communities. But, according to new information obtained from US sources, the truth is that the idea was initiated and executed by the Mossad. Around 2006, the Bush administration enhanced the level of intelligence cooperation between the two countries. The new partnership, on a wide variety of initiatives, was named “The Olympic Games.” Stuxnet was just one event in these games.
At this stage, it was the CIA that asked to be privy to the project already underway and to be given credit for it. The Mossad readily agreed.
IT WAS also agreed by the leadership of both countries that the military option was an important tool for suffocating the Iranian leadership, but must be used only as a last resort.
This policy was unexpectedly reversed, however, when Netanyahu came to power in 2009, along with defense minister Ehud Barak.
Both of them started flexing military muscles, making public threats. To give credibility to these threats, they poured $3 billion into the Israel Air Force and intelligence community, to improve readiness for a military strike. They also ordered the military and the intelligence community to carry out a series of exercises and preparatory measures that would signal not only to the Iranians, but also to the world – especially the US – that they mean business.
At first, their new approach seemed to be working. The international community increased the sanctions, bringing the Iranian economy to the verge of collapse. The Obama administration was still cooperative, but began to show signs of anxiety. Top US officials, such as Leon Panetta – then CIA director and later secretary of defense – began, periodically, calling Israeli counterparts to ensure that the Netanyahu-Barak fist-shaking was still just part of a ploy and not a change of heart. But when then Mossad director Dagan ‒ who believed that the military option should be exercised only if a “sword was at the throat” of Israel and opposed any such strike at that stage – started to consider that Barak and Netanyahu were serious, American anxiety grew.
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who at first benefited from the budgetary allocations showered on the army, began to realize that if a military strike was ordered, the onus of execution would be on him. He joined Dagan in opposing the strike.
Still, it is possible that Netanyahu and, above all, the manipulative Barak deceived both Dagan and Ashkenazi. Knowing that both the intelligence and military chiefs had great credibility in the US, Barak and Netanyahu hoped that by instilling in them the impression that a military strike was inevitable, the Obama administration might begin to believe it, as well. If indeed that was the case, it should be credited as one of the greatest cases of deceptive psychological warfare in history.
At a certain stage, Barak met with Panetta and informed Netanyahu Dagan, Ashkenazi and others privy to the deliberations that Panetta would not oppose a military attack. When Panetta learned about it, he became furious and sent a special messenger with the transcript of the conversation to prove that Barak was wrongly presenting his position. At first he was embarrassed, but later Barak explained that it was a matter of a misunderstanding.
Whether Netanyahu and Barak really meant to attack, or were simply bluffing, the Obama administration did not want to take chances.
They decided that only a negotiated deal with Iran could prevent military chaos in the Middle East.
In the summer of 2013, the US reached out to Iran to engage in secret talks, which eventually led to the nuclear deal signed July 14.
The US based its approach on the notion that there were only two alternatives: military strike or agreement. It chose to ignore the middle-of-the- road possibility of continued covert actions and sanctions while negotiating with Tehran.
THE HASTINESS of the US approach led to a less than perfect deal.
True, it pushed Iran back from being a nuclear threshold state with just two to three months’ capability time of developing a bomb to one year. It also decreased Iran’s number of centrifuges by 65 percent and its stockpile of enriched uranium dramatically from 10 tons to 300 kilograms. It also ruled out the possibility of Iran’s producing plutonium in the nuclear reactor in Arak. There are a few more benefits and advantages to the deal, which will last 10 to15 years.
However, one of the handicaps of the agreement is the lack of punitive measures instilled in it. In any commercial contract, whether apartment rental or employment contract, there are clauses ensuring retribution in case of violation.
But not in this one.
Also, the weaknesses of the deal are in the clauses regarding inspection. Yes, it is better than what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) used to have in place, but it still leaves in question how the implementation will be carried out, in accordance with negotiations between the IAEA and Iran.
Two major holes are still unfilled. Will Iran be allowed to produce samples from its own suspected sites? If so, it would give Iran the chance to cheat the inspectors. The second problematic issue is the 24-day grace period given to Iran to respond to any IAEA requests to visit and inspect suspicious sites.
Another problematic aspect of the deal is that it paves the way for Iran to purchase – probably from Russia – better air defense systems, which would make a future military strike, both by Israel or the US, much more dangerous.
For years, Netanyahu fought hard to persuade Russian President Vladmir Putin not to sell the advanced ground-to-air S-300 missile systems to Iran. Now, through his defiant approach, Netanyahu has enabled Iran to receive these sophisticated weapons on a silver platter.
Netanyahu should have taken a different approach.
Instead of fighting the Obama administration in his futile efforts to team up with the Republicans, he should have tried quietly to coordinate his concerns with the US administration in order to influence the outcome of the deal, to accommodate Israeli concerns.
It is not too late to reach out to the Obama administration and try, together, to define a new set of red lines to determine what would be considered by Washington and Jerusalem to be substantial violations of the nuclear deal, and what punitive measures should be taken under such circumstances.
Barak and Netanyahu declined to comment on this story.
**Yossi Melman is an Israeli security commentator and co-author of ‘Spies Against Armageddon.’ He blogs at www.israelspy.com and tweets at yossi_melman
This story first appeared in the Jerusalem Report.

 US-Russia Division of Labor and the Two Screens of the Syrian Crisis
Samir Altaqi & Esam Aziz/Middle East Briefing/August 29/15
In the beginning of this coming November, talks about the future of Syria will start officially under UN auspices. Two screens will be put in front of all of us. The first will transmit alive the work of Stafan de Mistura’s four committees: Security and civilian protection-Terrorism- Political and legal issues-Reconstruction. The second screen will be dark. It is supposed to transmit the unseen web of channels where pressures, persuasion, exchanges and deals are made. Because it all goes secretly, the second screen has nothing to show us.
Like that shrewd desert nomad who dismantled the TV set to get the pretty woman he just saw on the screen, let us take a look behind the dark screen.
There are no pretty women back there. Only grim men all talking at the same time. Yet, all the big words exchanged boil down to some simple facts. Too simple to justify the crowd. Everyone knows that Assad cannot rule Syria anymore. Even the man’s supporters understand that. Everyone knows that ISIL is evil. It killed Muslims more than it killed anybody else. Why is all this fuss then?
The “logical” answer to all questions lies is one single “master pass word”: Get rid of Assad and form a national unity government so everyone fights what everyone sees as evil: ISIL.
Yet, one hate to admit it-You cannot use the word “logical” in the Middle East anymore. Devils dwell permanently in one place-the details, even the simplest problem and the most logical solution fragments in our fingers into hundreds of tiny little details. And devils have all the fun in the world in making what is simple very complex.
Still, there is quite a bit behind the dark screen. In Oman, it is whispered that the US started already its secret regional negotiations. The idea of having such talks was already discussed between Secretary John Kerry and Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif on the corridors of their nuclear talks. However, the Iranians said that they rather finish first with the nuclear talks before embarking on any other track. Sort of “We will not give up any of our cards before we get the big prize-the nuclear deal”. And now, with the nuclear deal signed, and the few weeks of picking the breath over, the regional talks started exactly in the same place where the nuclear talks began in secret behind a similar screen.
But what is exactly the connection between the de Mistura talks, visible on the first screen, and the Oman secret talks invisible on the second? None, so far. De Mistura is trying to stir the hay in hope he may locate the small pieces of gold. The Muscat talks are heading to the mine directly. For if a regional arrangement is reached, the branches of the regional crisis can be trimmed relatively easy.
It appears from putting all bits and pieces together that Secretary Kerry reached a kind of division of labor with foreign minister Lavrov. What we may be seeing is that the US leaves the public diplomatic track to the Russians and the UN while Washington goes directly behind the dark screen.
Aware of Arab suspicions of tilting towards Iran, the US left favored quite diplomacy. If Mr. Kerry proposes that Assad remains in power for some time, he wouldn’t be blamed in Arab capitals for cozying up to the Iranians. This will even look as “taking the Arab side” while “those Russians” are playing games. To that extent, the US hinted to the Arabs and the Syrian opposition that it has nothing to do with the “Russian games”.
Whatever the case, it makes little difference if there is indeed a Russian-US prearranged set of steps or that these steps are simply taking place on two different tracks due to genuine different assessments. Objectively, the two roles complete each other in many ways.
The Russian-de Mistura track gives the administration some space to breath (as if 5 years were not enough). It enables it, through reading the details of the Russian de Mistura track, to gauge the extent to which the relevant parties are ready to go.
But wouldn’t that mean that Russia will lose favor with the Arabs? The Saudis seem to have given up on Moscow. King Salman cancelled any plans for a Moscow visit and is coming instead to Washington. Yet, the Russians had nothing to lose in Riyadh anyway other than some amateurish promises of future deals if they change their policies. But they know that if they change their policies, they will lose some very concrete gains. Iran has just been rehabilitated on the global theatre, with substantial assistance from Moscow, and it has a lot that the Russians want.
Not only that Russia did not lose anything it already has in its relations with the Saudis, it is gaining with other Arab players. King Abdullah II of Jordan, President Abdel Fattah Al Sissi of Egypt and Mohammed bin Zayed the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi were all in Moscow last week talking Syria among other things. Moscow seems to be gaining slowly from the US lack of a dynamic regional strategy. And Washington seems to have already given Mr. Lavrov the green light to do what he can, so far as it is in the visible screen. The US does not seem interested to walk the walk and have a dynamic strategy. It believes it is a costly business. The Russians, however, are doing it without paying anything whatsoever. They just gain.
In playing different roles, the US and Russia’s plan, if there is one, seems to be connecting, at one point, what the US has in hand with what the Russians accumulated. If this is indeed the case, and we certainly do not know if it is, it will be a master piece of diplomacy. In fact, it might work.
De Mistura told everyone that his joint venture with the Russians, which goes under the not very inspiring name “Geneva-3”, is being actively prepared. Geneva-3, he said, will be characterized by an even less inspiring name-“a process”. It will take all the time it needs. Listeners were thinking of one thing while the soft spoken UN envoy was explaining his plan. They heard the word “process” before-The infamous grey-haired Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinians which has gone missing some time ago and still missing until now.
Four committees, a Geneva-3 (1 and 2 went missing as well by the way), and a process on top? Too much to swallow. What Mr. de Mistura serves cannot be called a decent appetizer. Yet, what seems to be buried deep in the head of the UN envoy is that he should keep the theatre opened and lighted waiting for what Secretary Kerry will deliver later. He will test the actors, rehearse an act or two and measure how far each can go. True that Mr. de Mistura is using very unattractive words, but they, with some assistance from the Security Council, are doing the job. The meal will not be fancy, so do not expect a mouthwatering appetizer.
We don’t know more about what is behind the dark screen however. We tried all the tricks, including the nomad’s, to no avail. If we shoot a bullet in the dark we would venture a guess: A regional détente around a kind of grand bargain that starts from the mother of all crisis-Syria. Sort of exploring what President Rouhani called “The Third Way”, though we do not know the first two. If we are unlucky and nobody screams in the darkness, it will be a narrow regional modus-operandi between the US and Iran. And that will be unfortunate indeed. For you cannot build a relation with any country in abstraction. It has to be around concrete problems that are important to both sides.
De Mistura promised that all issues will be on the table. But what about the fate of Assad? No, not that one. The armed opposition? Not that one neither. Then let us talk about the weather today. Transitioning Syria without saying transitioning to what is a waste of time. What could be extracted from the envoy is that the Syrian butcher will depart “at one point down the road”, if all goes well.
The devils are back. What does it mean “if all goes well”? Does it mean that Iran will have certain “privileges” in Syria, particularly related to access to Hezbollah? Will the opposition backers in the Arab World accept that? Could Syrian opposition groups sign a deal that give their country sovereignty minus a corridor or unchecked land or air cargos crossing to Lebanon? Will ISIL let all “go well”? Will Assad do? Will Jabhat Al Nusra suddenly learn how to sing Lennon’s “Imagine”. Lots of devils.
But all these crucial issues are left to the dark screen. For those who ask why de Mistura does not say anything about the future of Assad or the rest of these thorny issues, the answer is that because he shouldn’t. That is not his piece in the division of labor. These questions are to be answered in a larger trade behind the dark screen.
This is why de Mistura’s Geneva-3 is risky. It has to have more contents than just jumping in the air in order to attract the players, and it has to have less contents to avoid answering the real questions. He is the theatre keeper and boy-scout explorer. His job is not to answer specific questions, but to see where everyone stand. And who knows, he may even be able to get the parties ready for the meal which is being was prepared somewhere else when it is already prepared.
The only problem, and it is a big one, is that ISIL is there and Nusra is there and they are expanding. Some mean guys are heading to cut off electricity on both screens. They are advancing to a point where all this show will turn to be obsolete and too ridiculous to continue.
If they will have the last laugh, this laugh will be at all these diplomatic tricks and division of labor. The rate of progress does not reflect the urgency of the situation on the ground. The situation needs more fire under the pots.
Another risk seems to appear in the fog. If we gaze hard enough in Mr. de Mistura’s and the UN screen we will see how he formed the representatives of the Syrian opposition. None of the participants represent any of the major fighting forces on the ground.
The assumption is: The fighting forces on the ground could be addressed through regional powers. The civilian opposition is the one that should eventually form the transitional government in participation with the regime’s representatives.
Fine, let us see then if this “schizophrenic” approach-bombs for ISIL, Arab pressure for non-ISIL , and government seats for the civilian opposition-will work.
In the South, Zahran Aloush, the powerful leader of Jaish Al Islam, just received an open letter from his own fighters asking why he remains passive and postpones attacks on regime sites south of Damascus while Assad continues his merciless slaughter in the region particularly in Douma.
Let us imagine the following scenario: ISIL intensifies its propaganda war against the Southern Front, accusing Aloush of betraying the people of the South to suit his regional sponsors’ wishes (it is claimed that Aloush is restraining his forces in response to “recommendations” from across the borders). At one point, and under fully understandable ISIL-Nusra propaganda, it is likely that a portion of Aloush forces, as well as friendly groups outside the Southern Front, would join ISIL under the slogan of defending civilians and in the name of loyalty to the objective of fighting Assad until the end.
This is just one example that will give an idea that non-ISIL Islamist commanders maybe turned, unintentionally, into marginal players while their bases move to Nusra or ISIL’s camp that will certainly look more consistent during the period of diplomatic maneuvering.
The civilian opposition groups are really the good guys. But the ground of the fight shifted a large deal and have been fully submersed in the boiling waters of militarization. If you do not have a gun, you do not count. Will these nice guys accept to be used as a nice coat of paint covering an unchanged situation on the ground?
It is clear that the de Mistura entertaining show will go on with his endless meetings aimed at doing on specific job: Preparing the platform for the birds to land whenever they are ready.
But what if the birds land somewhere else?