LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

Bible Quotation for today/Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.
Isaiah06/01-13: "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: �Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.� At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. �Woe to me!� I cried. �I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.� Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, �See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.�Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, �Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?�And I said, �Here am I. Send me!� He said, �Go and tell this people:��Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.� Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes.Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.� Then I said, �For how long, Lord?�And he answered: �Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken. And though a tenth remains in the land,
it will again be laid waste. But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.�

Lebanese Army Announces 3 More Deaths from Ras Baalbek Clashes
Naharnet/Saturday the deaths of three more soldiers from the clashes with armed groups in the Tallat al-Hamra clashes in the outskirts of Ras Baalbek on Friday. A military statement on Friday said that five troops were killed in the unrest that erupted when terrorists attacked an army surveillance post in Ras Baalbek. On Saturday, the army said that it was bolstering its deployment in the area where the fighting took place. It is continuing its pursuit of the remaining terrorists, who fled towards the higher altitudes of the outskirts. It also continued on shelling the routes the gunmen have been taking, as well as their vehicles and fortifications. Scores of gunmen have been killed and wounded in the clashes, added the army statement on Saturday. The army had held the funerals of several of its victims on Saturday.

Report: Two ISF Members Sacked for Smuggling Drugs to Inmates
Naharnet /The disciplinary committee in the Internal Security Forces issued its final decisions related to the ongoing investigations of some officers linked to the smuggling of drugs and other banned material into prisons, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday.
Informed security sources revealed to the daily that the decisions include the sacking of two prison officers for facilitating the smuggling of illegal goods into jails. The colonel and captain had been arrested in recent months on suspicion of being involved in illegal activity at prisons. The sacking was made ahead of the announcement of the preliminary findings at Roumieh prison's B block, which was raided by security forces on January 12. The findings and possessions of the Islamist prisoners, who were in control of the block, will be revealed to the media next week, reported al-Joumhouria. The clearing of block B came after years of warnings that the overcrowded section was a meeting point for militants to plot attacks. "We have ended the legend that was Roumieh prison," Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq had commented in the wake of the operation. The inmates were transferred to block D, which has been renovated and has better security.

Report: Clashes with Armed Groups Aimed at Pressuring Army, Hizbullah
Naharnet /More clashes are expected to take place in the northeastern town of Arsal and other border areas, predicted a security source to As Safir newspaper on Saturday. It expected the recurrence of such unrest as part of efforts by armed groups to pressure the army and Hizbullah �in an attempt to demonstrate their military might�, he explained. These groups are seeking �to impose a new reality on the ground, as well as deplete the capabilities of the army and Hizbullah.� The source revealed that the party went on alert on Friday in the wake of the army's clashes with terrorists in the Tallat al-Hamra area on the outskirts of Ras Baalbek. Residents of nearby areas also took to arms in anticipation of the spread of the violence, it said. Moreover, other security sources noted that the Tallat al-Hamra unrest erupted five days after Israel's strike against Syria's Quneitra region and ten days after the security forces seized control of Roumieh Prison's B block, which was controlled by Islamist inmates. The gunbattles also broke out a day after Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji visited the northern Bekaa to inspect the troops deployed in Arsal and nearby regions. Al-Joumhouria newspaper meanwhile reported on Saturday that prominent Islamic State military commander, al-Ahwazi, was killed in Friday's Tallat al-Hamra clashes. Other Islamic State �emirs� Ghayyath Jomaa and Abou al-Walid al-Ansari were also killed in the unrest. Five soldiers were killed and 14 wounded in Friday's fighting. On Friday morning, said an army communique, terrorist groups attacked an army surveillance post in Tallat al-Hamra near the Lebanese-Syrian border. Fierce clashes then erupted between the two sides and the army managed at noon to seize control of the area and repel the gunmen. A number of gunmen were killed and wounded in the fighting.

Report: Iranian general was killed in Israeli strike because he didn't turn off his phone
By YASSER OKBI/ MAARIV HASHAVUA/01/24/2015
Lebanese news outlet reports on findings of the Hezbollah investigation into the airstrike that killed 11.
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An Iranian general killed in an alleged Israeli air strike last Sunday in Syria may have died because he did not turn off his cellphone. The Lebanese newspaper Al-Joumhouria reported on Saturday that a Hezbollah investigation into the strike found that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Mohammed Allahdadi kept his cellphone on in a sensitive area targeted by Israeli intelligence. According to the report, Allahdadi was in the Quneitra area on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights on Sunday with Hezbollah personnel at outposts that the Syrians and the Iranian built in order to counter Syrian rebels along with Syrian army forces. A few days before Allahdadi's visit a joint "operations room" was established with Hezbollah. Allahdadi reportedly was killed along with his personal assistant, his driver and a more junior Iranian officer.
Eleven people total were killed in the airborne attack, including Jihad Mughniyeh the son of the late Hezbollah military leader and Imad Mughniyeh Mohammed Issa, the head of Hezbollah's operation in war-torn Syria and Iraq. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group which is backed by Iran and fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, said six of its members died in the strike. Following the attack Tehran vowed to strike back. "These martyrdoms proved the need to stick with jihad. The Zionists must await ruinous thunderbolts," Revolutionary Guards' chief General Mohammad Ali Jafari was quoted on Tuesday as saying by Fars news agency. Israel has not officially confirmed it carried out the strike.

Five Lebanese soldiers killed in battles with militants
Nidal al-Solh/The Daily Star/Jan. 24, 2015
BAALBEK, Lebanon: Lebanese troops, backed by heavy artillery and helicopter gunships, battled Syria-based jihadis on Lebanon�s northeastern border Friday, killing at least 18 militants and losing five soldiers. Sixteen soldiers were also wounded in the fierce clashes which continued through Friday night in a serious escalation with Islamist militants entrenched in caves in the rugged mountains of the northeastern town of Arsal near the border with Syria. A senior military official said the clashes, which began at 7:30 a.m. in Tallet al-Hamra and on the outskirts of the village of Ras Baalbek near Lebanon�s eastern frontier with Syria, caused �a large number of casualties among the terrorists.� �The Army has lost five martyrs and 16 wounded,� the official told The Daily Star. He added that troops were using heavy artillery and helicopter gunships to pound militant hideouts on the outskirts of Arsal. Prime Minister Tammam Salam threw his weight behind the Army in its ongoing battle against terrorism. He spoke by telephone with Army commander Gen. Jean Kahwagi to assure him of the government�s �full support� for the military�s action to defend Lebanon and safeguard the security of the Lebanese. �The Lebanese stand united behind their Army. They have no choice but to win in this battle which has been imposed on them,� Salam said in statement released by his office. �They will not let a bunch of terrorists break their national conviction and tamper with their stability.�A security source said a soldier went missing and at least 18 militants were also killed in the clashes, which erupted after the militants attacked and tried to capture an Army post in Tallet al-Hamra.
�The terrorists� attack came in response to the Army�s recent successes in foiling a series of suicide attacks and dismantling vehicles laden with explosives,� the military official said. Earlier, the Army said in a statement that it recaptured the Tallet al-Hamra post after militants briefly overran it in the morning. The statement said the attack came in light of an Army ambush Wednesday night against militants attempting to infiltrate the Wadi Hmayyed checkpoint in nearby Arsal, during which four militants were killed. The statement also linked the attack to the foiling of an attempt to transport a bomb-rigged car to Lebanon Thursday. �As a result of the fierce clashes that erupted between the Army forces and terrorist groups, these forces tightened their control of Tallet al-Hamra at noon today after expelling the terrorist elements, inflicting a large number of casualties among them,� the statement said. It added that the Army suffered �a number of martyrs and wounded.��The Army will continue to boost its measures and target the gatherings and routes of the gunmen on the outskirts [of Arsal] with heavy weaponry, in addition to combing the area of the clashes in search for hiding gunmen,� the statement said. Earlier Friday, Kahwagi warned the militants against tampering with the country�s stability. �The Army is carrying out its duties to the fullest, and it is able to repel any attempt to infiltrate peaceful villages in the eastern Bekaa Valley or [those] tampering with the internal stability on all Lebanese territory,� he told reporters at his office at the Defense Ministry in the Beirut suburb of Yarze.
Separately, a brief clash erupted overnight between militant groups themselves on the outskirts of Arsal. Local media said the fight pitted ISIS militants against Liwaa al-Tawhid, an armed rebel Syrian group that was originally formed to coordinate the battle for Aleppo.
The Army dismissed media reports that military outposts in Wadi Hmayyed and Wadi Hosn on Arsal�s outskirts came under militant attacks. Militants last month ambushed an Army convoy on the outskirts of Ras Baalbek, killing six soldiers. ISIS and Nusra Front militants are still holding 25 soldiers and policemen hostage on Arsal�s outskirts after killing four.

Israel warns Lebanon, Syria against attacks
The Daily Star/Jan. 24, 2015/OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel warned Lebanon and Syria Friday not to allow any attacks on Israel from their soil, hoping to avoid reprisals for an Israeli airstrike in Syria that killed an Iranian general and a senior Hezbollah fighter. �Israel will see the governments, regimes and organizations beyond its northern border as responsible for what emanates from their territory,� Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement. �[Israel] will exact a price for any harm inflicted on Israeli sovereignty, civilians and soldiers.�The strike on Syria�s Qunaitra killed six Hezbollah fighters, including commander Mohammad Issa and Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of slain Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh. Iranian Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was also killed in the attack. Fears of retaliation by Lebanon�s Hezbollah or other groups have risen since Sunday�s attack, prompting Israel to move troops and equipment toward its northern borders with Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah is expected to comment on the strike in a speech on Jan. 30 during a memorial to honor the fallen fighters. Observers believe that Hezbollah would eventually hit back, particularly after remarks made by its leader few days before the attack. In his interview last week with Al-Mayadeen satellite news channel, Nasrallah said �the frequent attacks on different sites in Syria is a major breach. We consider that those hostilities target the resistance axis.��[Retaliation] is an open issue ... it could happen any time,� he said. Hezbollah�s last military confrontation with Israel took place in summer 2006, when the Jewish state launched a nearly monthlong war against Lebanon which killed around 1,200 Lebanese, mainly civilians, and 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

Defense lawyers poke holes in Diab�s STL testimony
Elise Knutsen/The Daily Star/Jan. 24, 2015
BEIRUT: Former MP Salim Diab endured a grueling cross examination at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon Friday, as the defense sought to cast him as an unreliable witness. Antoine Korkmaz, the lead defense attorney for suspect Mustafa Baddredine, repeatedly drew attention to apparent inconsistencies and opaque points in statements that Diab had given to U.N. investigators in the wake of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri�s assassination. Diab, who was Hariri�s electoral campaign manager, testified that on two occasions he had shared information with the U.N. International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC), the body charged with looking into the massive blast which ripped through Downtown Beirut on Feb. 14, 2005, killing the former prime minister and 21 others.
Diab admitted that he had told investigators about hearing a rumor regarding an individual who was supposedly paid $500,000 to change the route of Hariri�s convoy the day of the assassination. Diab apologized in court Friday, saying that he could not recall the source of that information. Diab also said that after hearing that the Syrian government wanted to kill him in the summer of 2005 he pleaded with an important sheikh from Aleppo to resolve his case. Diab apologized profusely once again, saying that he did not remember the name of the sheikh. Diab shrugged off some of the questions by responding that he was in �a state that was very bad� for months after the assassination. When pressed by Korkmaz to �make an effort,� Diab insisted that he was not willingly withholding any information.
�I wish I could give you more information about everything, but I am not here to say anything that I don�t remember for sure,� Diab said. Separately, the family of former MP Adnan Arakji rebutted testimony which Diab gave Thursday. Diab had claimed that the Syrian government compelled Hariri to include the late Arakji on his electoral ticket in the 1996 parliamentary elections. �Claims that the late Arakji was imposed on the slate of Martyr Rafik Hariri are totally baseless,� a statement by Arakji�s family said. �Particularly because he was highly popular, specifically among Beirutis and this cannot be ignored,� the statement added. It said, however, that Arakji had business and friendship ties with Syrian leaders and people for over 50 years, adding that �we are proud of this friendship.�Diab�s testimony is part of the political evidence being presented before the U.N.-based tribunal tasked with prosecuting those responsible for killing Hariri. Five Hezbollah members are being tried in absentia for the crime.

The Saudi King and the American Rabbi
Omer Benjakob/Ynetnews/Published: 01.23.15,/ Israel News
Rabbi Marc Schneier spoke with Ynet about his unique relation with Saudi King Abdullah, who he says was a trailblazer in Jewish-Muslim interfaith dialogue and committed to peace, not just between Israel and Palestinians, but in the entire region.
"I found the Saudi leadership and the tone set by the king to be very understanding and concerned with the Jewish community," says Rabbi Marc Schneier about his now deceased friend � King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
"The king was progressive, he wanted to move the kingdom forward, both domestically, but also in terms of religion. Even if it was two steps forward and one back, the movement was always forward. I found him to be a very significant partner and personality in terms of advancing interfaith dialogue � in particular with the Jewish community."
Rabbi Schneier, who is one of America's most prominent Jewish figurers, and a trailblazer in promoting Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue, found a friend in the Saudi king, who he said was a supporter of Jews and inter-religious cooperation.
The king, Rabbi Schneier explains, was first and foremost a pragmatist and a moderate. His interfaith efforts were preceded by the 2002 Saudi peace initiative (known as the Arab Initiative):
"The Saudi peace plan (2002) was before the interfaith push in 2007, but he was very pragmatic and recognized Israel was here to exist and decided to focus on how Muslims can go about dealing with that. It is no coincidence that during the last war in the summer, in addition to hearing comments from Egypt and such about the risks of Hamas� you could also hear similar comments coming from the kingdom. This trickled into other Gulf States as well."
According to the rabbi, he was a man dedicated to peace and one of the first to think about the conflict in political and not religious or ethnic terms.
"Whether it�s Iran or radical Islam, he knew this was a new challenge not only to Israel but also one for moderate Arabs states, and led the attempt to view the conflict not as Jews versus Arabs or Muslims, but of moderates versus radicals.
"The king's desire was to see peace � he was the author of the Saudi peace plan � which was very radical at the time," the rabbi said, recalling a lunch he held with the Saudi ambassador to the US, Adel al-Jubeir, in which the diplomat urged the rabbi to try to convince Israel to reexamine the peace initiative.
"I found the Saudi leadership and the tone set by the king to be very understanding and concerned with the Jewish community," the rabbi said.
Interfaith
Rabbi Schneier recalls their first meeting, when he was invited to participate in an interfaith summit in Madrid hosted by the late king; it was the first time Jewish leaders were invited to participate in such an event.
"He hosted about 200 religious leaders from around the world including some 30 Jewish leaders. It was dynamic exchange," Schneier recalls.
However, things didn't go as smoothly as could be hoped after one of the participants, a prominent cleric from Saudi Arabia, said that interfaith dialogue is possible with all faiths except Jews.
"At one of the sessions I was asked to comment about interfaith relations and a very prominent Saudi cleric said Muslims can dialogue with everyone but Jews � 'how can we dialogue with a faith that is chosen and perceives itself as superior,' he said � the exchange received a lot of media attention.�
"The Saudis really were very outraged by the comments of the Saudi cleric and were very supportive of the Jewish faith."
The rabbi recalls another story from the same conference, which shows how far the king was willing to take his commitment to moderation.
"About a week before the conference, I learned that Rabbi Yisroel Weiss, from the radically anti-Zionist Neturei Karta and who used to attend former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conferences, was set to attend.
"This was the Saudi's first foray into the world of interfaith and they invited him to speak at the conference. When I learned he was attending and shared this with my Muslim colleagues at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), they called the Saudis and told them this was an affront to the Jews. Together with the ISNA we said we would not attend the conference if the invitation stood.
"Without missing a beat, the royal family canceled his invitation to speak and rescinded his invitation to the conference. That is a good anecdote about how they worked to create reconciliation between Jews and Muslims worldwide."
Schneier recalls how his own interfaith activities, as president of the New York-based Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, spiked the king's interest. Schneier, who is the author of the first book to be penned by a rabbi and an imam (Sons of Abraham, Random House) and whose organization operates in over 40 countries, recalls a campaign his organization led in 2009.
The group took out an ad in the New York Times showing imams and rabbis working together. Rabbi Schneier showed the ad to the king who was inspired by the effort.
"In 2009, when the king came to the UN to deliver his interfaith speech he convened 150 religious leaders in the New York Palace hotel for a private meeting. We discussed a host of religious issues and I was honored that the king invited me to speak on behalf of all of those in attendance," he said.
"I never felt that as a Jew I was given any different treatment," the rabbi recalls.
On a personal note, Rabbi Schneier recalled fondly the warm wishes sent by the kingdom on the occasion of his son�s bar mitzvah three years ago.
FFEU is the international address for Muslim Jewish Relations and the national address for Black-Jewish relations. "We are committed to the belief that direct dialogue between ethnic communities is the most effective path towards reconciliation," the foundation said in a statement.

Abdullah Lebanon�s great friend, leaders say
The Daily Star/Jan. 24, 2015
BEIRUT: Lebanon announced Friday three days of mourning for the death of Saudi King Abdullah, with Lebanese leaders describing the late monarch as Lebanon�s great friend and biggest supporter.
Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Tammam Salam will fly to Saudi Arabia Saturday with a delegation of MPs and ministers to pay condolences to King Salman, Crown Prince Muqrin and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef.
The Saudi Embassy in Lebanon announced that it would be receiving condolences over three days Saturday, Sunday and Monday at Mohammad al-Amin Mosque in Downtown Beirut.
Berri offered his condolences through cables to Saudi King Salman, Crown Prince Muqrin and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Nayef.
For his part, Salam said that Lebanon had lost the wisest of Arabs and a great friend of Lebanon.
�It is with great sorrow and grief that we announce to the Lebanese the [death] of the wisest of Arabs and Lebanon�s greatest friend, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, his Majesty King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, after a long life of service to his country and [Arab] nation,� Salam said.
He said with the death of King Abdullah: �Lebanon lost [a figure of] support and backing who always stood by his side in times of crisis, and never hesitated to extend a helping hand.�
Salam praised him for what he said were his numerous initiatives that were aimed at boosting Lebanon�s national unity, peace and security.
Lebanon and other Arab and Muslim countries �lost a unique, courageous leader who had always upheld their causes and concerns.�
Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri called on fellow Lebanese to mourn King Abdullah �who has continually offered support for Lebanon.�
�The Arab and Islamic nation lost a brilliant leader and an exceptional figure, who marked the history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the region with great achievements and initiatives that will remain a benchmark for political interaction, economic progress and social growth for the kingdom and its Arab surrounding,� Hariri said in a statement.
Hariri called on the Lebanese people, �who always had a special place in the heart of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, that rose to the level of a father-son relationship,� to declare a day of mourning in all areas �as an expression of popular loyalty to a man who always supported Lebanon and stood by it in the most difficult times.�
In an interview with Al-Arabiya later in the day, Hariri recalled a phone call he received from Abdullah after jihadi gunmen overran Lebanon�s northeastern border of Arsal last summer.
�He offered a lot to the Lebanese Army, and he believed that he should support the fight against terrorism in Lebanon. He therefore gave Lebanon a $1 billion grant to fight this kind of terrorism and extremists,� he said.
�He called me that day, late at night, and insisted on the announcement of this grant, because he saw the gravity of extremism.�
In a separate interview with Future News TV, Hariri said that ties between Lebanon and Saudi Arabia would not change under King Salman, who he said was a great admirer of Lebanon.
Hariri took part in King Abdullah�s funeral in Riyadh.
MP Walid Jumblatt tweeted: �The great Arab knight departed...�
In a second tweet Jumblatt praised King Abdullah, describing him as the biggest friend of his slain father Kamal Jumblatt, assassinated in 1977.
Kataeb Party leader Amine Gemayel offered his condolences as well to King Salman. �We were bereaved with the passing away of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who was a friend of Lebanon and a brother of all the Lebanese under all circumstances,� Gemayel said in a cable. �When I was a president and even after that, I personally felt how much he cares about Lebanon,� he added.

How politics explains the baffling Iranian response to Paris attack
By REUTERS /01/24/2015/J.Post
BEIRUT - The deadly attack by Islamist gunmen on the offices of French newspaper Charlie Hebdo drew a somewhat unexpected response from Iranian clerics and officials: They condemned it.
Many Westerners had expected an altogether different reaction to the killings two weeks ago at the Paris weekly that had published satirical cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
Still fresh in their memory is the "fatwa" issued in 1989 by Iran's first religious Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, ordering the death of British author Salman Rushdie for allegedly insulting the Prophet in his book "The Satanic Verses".
Some 25 years on, Iran's stance must be viewed in light of the bitter sectarian rivalry in the Middle East between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims, political analysts say.
The Paris attack was claimed by al-Qaida, a leading Sunni militant movement which, along with its offshoot Islamic State, Shi'ite power Iran regards as a serious threat to its allies in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
Iran is also treading a delicate line as it seeks to strike a deal with Western powers - including France - over its nuclear program to put an end to the sanctions that have crippled its economy.
In a Friday prayer speech in Tehran two days after the Jan. 7 Charlie Hebdo attack, which saw gunmen kill 12 people, conservative cleric Ahmad Khatami denounced the violence.
"We strongly condemn the terrorist attack in France and believe Islam does not allow the killing of innocent people, be it in Paris, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan or Afghanistan," said the hardliner - who last year said the fatwa to kill Rushdie was still in place.
But he also used the opportunity to criticize Western countries, which Tehran accuses of supporting some Sunni militants, such as factions of the Syrian opposition.
"US dollars, UK pounds and the European Union's euros are to blame for these killings," said Khatami, according to Press TV. "These terrorists are your creation and have been nurtured by political support from you and your allies."
This was not an isolated message from an individual cleric, but came straight from the top, according to analysts.
"It was a high-level decision of the Islamic Republic. The topics of the Friday prayers are issued from a single source," said Roozbeh Mirebrahimi, an Iran analyst based in New York.
"The Friday prayer imams are sent talking points to tell them what issues to discuss."
And rather than this Iranian reaction representing any reversal, it simply reinforced Tehran's standard line of condemning Sunni "terrorism" and blaming the West for inciting it, said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Iranian foreign ministry could not be immediately reached for comment.
MIXED MESSAGES
The hostility between the two sects of Islam stems from the regional rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose strict brand of Wahhabism has inspired Sunni militant groups like al-Qaida, Islamic State and the Nusra Front.
Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard are fighting Sunni militants in both Iraq and Syria. A senior guard commander was killed in fighting in Iraq in late December and another was killed in an alleged Israeli air strike in Syria at the weekend.
The condemnation of the Paris attack was also linked to Iran's sensitive position in the ongoing nuclear negotiations to end a decade-long stand-off with the West, analysts say, something President Hassan Rouhani has staked a great deal of political capital on.
Tehran may have been unwilling to keep silent in case this was interpreted as tacit approval for the attacks.
"The Islamic Republic's current foreign policy is that they want to advance the nuclear negotiations and reach a result," said Mirebrahimi.
"They don't want to give an excuse to other countries to link them to a particular incident. After the attacks, there was widespread condemnation around the world so they showed solidarity with this."However, inside Iran the government was sending a different message. A group of journalists who tried to hold a rally in support of the Charlie Hebdo victims the day after the attack was swiftly dispersed. And after Charlie Hebdo published a picture of the Prophet on its cover following the attack, the climate changed markedly.
The Mardom-e Emrouz daily was shut down for printing a picture of George Clooney wearing a "Je Suis Charlie" badge on its front page. The reformist newspaper was criticized by religious hardliners for not including a condemnation of the insulting cartoons.
And several hundred Islamist protesters turned out for a demonstration in front of the French embassy earlier this week chanting "Death to France" and demanding the ejection of the French ambassador.
The mixed messages from Iranian officials and clergy could have diplomatic consequences. "The Iranian government prevented journalists from marching in solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre yet it organized flag-burning protests against the French embassy," Sadjadpour said.
"That hasn't ingratiated them to a French nuclear negotiating team that is deeply cynical about the nature of the Iranian regime."

What was behind Israel�s strike in Syria that killed an Iranian general?
By REUTERS/01/24/2015
On Sunday, an Israeli drone strike in southern Syria left six Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel dead � including an Iranian senior general and the son of the late external operations chief for Hezbollah. It also left a host of questions in its wake.
Was the strike a brilliantly executed Israeli disruption of an imminent attack planned by Hezbollah and Iran? Or a routine interdiction of a Hezbollah convoy that inadvertently killed several Iranians and a member of a prominent Hezbollah family?
Both versions, attributed to unnamed security sources within the Israeli defense establishment, were reported as details of the strike became known. While both are plausible, only one can be right. Though we cannot say which that is, we can point out the distinct purposes both narratives serve.
An Israeli narrative designed to downplay the drone strike and emphasize the inadvertent nature of the Iranian deaths would be an attempt to signal to Iran that the attack didn�t represent a deliberate escalation of the ongoing tensions between the two countries.
The high toll on the Iranian side has drawn the televised promise of retaliation against Israel from a senior Iranian commander, who pledged the release of �ruinous thunderbolts.�
Downplaying the attack would offer Tehran a way to avoid a spiral of escalation that neither country needs or wants. If Iran acceded to this logic, Israel would have scored a major � if accidental � hit. And it would be spared a response from Iran, for now.
The other narrative, that the strike deliberately targeted the Iranian contingent and Hezbollah, is governed by an alternative logic.
Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, recently declared that Lebanon and Syria are now one unified and geographically contiguous front against Israel. Before the Syrian civil war, no statement along these lines would have been possible, since the Assad regime prevented agressive actions against Israel on its side of the border. But times have changed.
Amid the anarchy of an ongoing civil war, Assad can no longer exercise the sort of control he once did. This could let Iran play a very dangerous game on Israel�s north-eastern flank.
If Hezbollah launched rockets against Israel from inside Syria, Israel might find itself unsure of who to retaliate against. This would be especially the case if Hezbollah managed to obscure the origin of the rockets and the crews that launched them. Thus, from an Iranian perspective, the Syrian front against Israel would be a tremendous gift.
From the vantage point of Jerusalem, Israel could ill afford to let this happen. The presence of such a senior Iranian officer in a highly strategic location would have been read by Israel as Iran staking out its territorial claim and preparing for a second front, thus requiring a strong response. This could explain Sunday�s strike.
That leaves one last question: why attack the Iranians now?
Perhaps, according to the former commander of Israel�s southern front, Yoav Galant, timing was dictated by the Israeli election cycle. As the number two man in the rising Kulanu party, it might be prudent simply to chalk up this claim to his need to challenge Prime Minister Netanyahu�s motivations.
And perhaps that is all it is. Although Galant has since retracted his accusation, the Israeli newspaper Ha�aretz has examined the record of especially audacious military initiatives in Israel�s history with an eye on the political calendar. What the reporter discovered was that the June 1981 strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak; the 1996 invasion of Lebanon; the 2009 invasion of Gaza; and the 2012 Gaza war were all launched when the incumbent prime minister faced a close election, or there was a political reputation at stake. There�s an organic link between domestic politics and foreign policy in virtually all countries, so this wouldn�t necessarily be a huge surprise.
With less than two months to election day, polls now show a slightly leftward tilt away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether Galant is right about his motives for the attacks can�t be known. But against the historical background, it�s not impossible that Galant�s claim sheds light on the timing of the strike. One way or the other, tensions between Israel and Iran are certain to rise.

American Islamic Forum for Democracy Comments on the Death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
We at AIFD will shed no tears for King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who passed away yesterday, January 22nd.
As the head of a tyrranical, murderous and notoriously repressive government, King Abdullah is responsible for the execution of dissidents, the torture of minorities, and the exportation of the most malignant strain of politicized, radicalized Islam the world has known.
We do not share in the saccharine and morally bankrupt assessment of many in the media. King Abdullah was no "reformer," and we grant him no credit for "nudging" the Kingdom forward. In a country where bloggers are sentenced to potentially fatal lashings, where writers are jailed for tweets , dissidents and "witches" are beheaded, and where the monarchy itself participates in child marriage and the religious establishment calls Jews "apes and pigs." We have to question the integrity of those in the media and ruling classes who are now eulogizing King Abdullah as though he were worthy of admiration. Even Queen Elizabeth has ordered Britain's flags to fly at half-mast today. While we do not revel in death, we also will not celebrate or participate in the fictional retelling of King Abdullah's legacy.
The House of Saud, with the king at the helm, likes to refer to itself as the "Custodian of the two Holy Mosques" - that is, the owners and overseers of the holiest sites in Islam. We at AIFD reject not only this structure, but also the Saudi regime's stranglehold on contemporary Islam. From the megalomania of the House of Saud to the cancer of Wahhabism, we at AIFD recognize that the real reformers of Saudi Arabia are languishing in its jails, dying by its sword, and living suffocated behind its walls; while those in power fuel the radicalization that brought us 9/11, the attack at Fort Hood, and even ISIS. The real human tragedy and loss is that today, the world sends condolences for King Abdullah while heroes like Raif Badawi remain in prison, the marks of severe lashes yet unhealed.
While we will not cry for King Abdullah, we are also not optimistic about his successor, King Salman - said to be even more repressive and problematic than King Abdullah, particularly with regard to women's and minority rights.
In the wake of King Abdullah's passing, we will not just pray for, but also continue to work tirelessly for the day when we Muslims and the world rid ourselves of the evils of theocracy and dictatorship. At a time when the movement to advance individual liberty and autonomy within the "house of Islam" is already challenging, we who stand for freedom and universal human rights must be more diligent than ever. Our hill just became steeper.
American Islamic Forum for Democracy
PO Box 1832
Phoenix, AZ 85001

Bearing the High Cost of Iran�s Multifaceted Ambitions -- An interview with Fouad Hamdan [ShiaWatch alert #34]
Dear Friends,
Iran's Sepah Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) confirmed several days ago that one of its generals was killed�along with several Hezbollah members�when an Israeli helicopter attacked a convoy in the Syrian/Israeli border region of Qunaytira. Yet no one really needed more proof that Iran has embedded itself in Syria, especially since that fait accompli occurred years ago. Ultimately, this incident reinforces the notion that we must, finally, view Iran from a much broader perspective than that of simply being a young and ambitious country�.
To understand the magnitude of Iran's presence in Syria, its multi-layered dimensions, the leverage it exerts here in Lebanon and the calculated effect it is achieving in many other countries, one must first appreciate the true political dimensions of its creeping omniscience. Clearly, Iranian �ambition� is unfolding before our very eyes, and it is already turning large swaths of the Arab world into uncontested elements of its sphere of influence. Iran has indeed invested a great deal in the last several decades to achieve this pivotal status, and its apparently ad hoc reliance on various �friends,��allies,��proxies� and �networks� is now quite obviously a fundamental component of that country's expansionist theme.
In an effort to unveil these comprehensive maneuverings, Naame Shaam has been working diligently to disseminate "reliable, concrete information about Iran�s role in Syria" through direct action supplemented by exhaustive research and documentation efforts. The product of that diligence, a voluminous report titled �Iran in Syria � From an Ally of the Regime to an Occupation Power,� was published last September. It is still making waves today, as evidenced by other activists who are also voicing their dissatisfaction with this new status quo.
During his interview with ShiaWatch, Lebanese Shia Fouad Hamdan was gracious enough to answer several questions about Naame Shaam and its advocacy work, his recent trip to Washington, D.C. to present its report on �Iran in Syria� and his perception of the interplay between Iran�s �nuclear� and �territorial� ambitions.
The ShiaWatch Team

Mechric Asks Church to Remove Jihadist-Linked Nihad Awad of CAIR
by THE EDITORS November 5, 2014
MECHRIC, the largest coalition of Middle East Christian NGOs in the United States and internationally asked the Archbishop to remove Nihad Awad, the director of Islamist group CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) from a coalition said to be aimed at helping Christian minorities in the Middle East. MECHRIC said "Middle East Christian minorities are offended by having Nihad Awad and his Islamist group CAIR claim they are part of a coalition in defense of Christian minorities." MECHRIC argued that Awad and his group are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, a terror organization in Egypt and other Arab countries, linked to Hamas, and part of a bigoted campaign against Middle East Christians in the US and worldwide.
Following is the text of the letter, with copies send to many members of Congress:
Nov 4th 2014
Archbishop Atallah Hanna
Archbishop of Sebastia,
Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem
P.O. Box 14518, Jerusalem 91145
Re: interfaith Coalition to Protect Christians

Dear Bishop Hanna:
We have learned that you have sponsored the formation of an "interfaith coalition to protect Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East." We are troubled by the fact that among the NGOs and activists invited to join the coalition are a number of Islamist and pro-Jihadi groups whose agenda has been and continues to be hostile to the freedom and survival of Christian and other minorities in the Middle East.
Among the activists you have included is Nihad Awad, the President of the Council on Islamic American Relations (CAIR), which is an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Terrorism case and is not the civil rights organization it claims to be. For more than a decade, CAIR members and former members have been indicted, and some are serving jail sentences, for terrorism cases successfully brought against them. The Islamist organization is considered by experts as a front to the Muslim Brotherhood, which has inspired leading members of al Qaeda and ISIS (Daesh) and has been put on terror lists by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain. Several members of Congress, including the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Pete King, and the Chairwoman of the subcommittee on Intelligence, Rep. Sue Myrick, have considered CAIR an extremist Islamist organization. There are bills introduced in the US House of Representatives calling for identifying the Muslim Brotherhood as a Terror organization.
CAIR has attacked Middle East Christian leaders across America, including Copts such as Dr. Shawki Karas, Lebanese Christians, as well as Iraqi and Syrian Christians while also waging smear campaigns against prominent Middle East experts for raising the issue of persecution of minorities in the Middle East. CAIR stood with the oppressive regimes against Christians and other sectors of civil societies and backed the genocidal regime of Sudan headed by the ICC indicted General Omar Bashir. CAIR backs the Muslim Brotherhood, who in Egypt has been responsible for attacks against Christian Copts and in Libya backed the Jihadi forces responsible for violence against civilians. But even more dangerous, CAIR politically backs the Islamists and the Jihadists who in Syria and in Iraq have persecuted Christians. Some of these factions joined the Islamic State known as ISIS, which has perpetrated war crimes and crimes against Humanity in Mosul, the Nineveh Plain, and Sinjar against Christians and Yazidis.
CAIR and its executive director Nihad Awad have been notorious for suppressing educational programs, both in the public and private sectors, aimed at informing the American public about the persecution of Christian minorities in the Greater Middle East. Awad and his acolytes have politically harassed writers and intellectuals, academics who have been raising the issue of persecution of religious minorities and have become the main obstructers of truth about this persecution. In a sense, Awad and CAIR, by being supportive of the Jihadists and the Islamists and by suppressing the voices defending the persecuted Christians, actually bear some moral responsibility for the persecution and violence against Christians in the Middle East.
It would be unthinkable and unbearable for Middle East Christians and Yazidis to see a so-called interfaith Coalition presided by a Church official, partnering with haters of Middle East Christians and bigots against oppressed Middle East minorities
We therefore, as representatives of the Middle East Christian Committee MECHRIC, representing the largest coalition of Americans from Middle East Christian descent, including Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Maronites, Melkites and other groups, as well as Yazidis, ask you to remove Nihad Awad and any Islamist militant from your coalition immediately. Our communities have been offended by the presence of pro-Jihadists in a coalition claiming to help Middle East Christians and other minorities.
Sincerely,
John Hajjar, on behalf of the Middle East Christian Committee MECHRIC
Executive Committee
CC: Members of Congress (Foreign Relations and Homeland Security Committees in House and Senate)
U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Senator Robert Menendez, Chairman,
Senator Bob Corker, Ranking-
Senator Ted Cruz
Senator John McCain
Senator Lindsey Graham
House committee on Foreign Affairs
Rep. Edward R. Royce, Chairman
Rep. Eliot L. Engel, Ranking Member
Sub-committees the Middle East and North Africa
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman
Rep. Theodore E. Deutch , Ranking Member
Sub-Committee on Terrorism
Rep. Ted Poe , Chairman
Rep. Brad Sherman, Ranking Member
Committee on Home land security
Rep. Michael McCaul, Chairman
Sub-committee on counter terrorism and Intelligence
Rep. Peter T. King, Chairman-
Rep. Chris Smith
Rep. Louie Gohmert

Hard Times for Hezbollah,Is Iran�s Lebanese client losing its grip?
By LEE SMITH/he Weekly Standard.
Feb 2, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 20
By LEE SMITH/ The Weekly Standard
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/hard-times-hezbollah_824283.html?nopager=1
Beirut
Last week Hezbollah buried one of its princes, Jihad Mughniyeh, the 22-year-old son of the late Imad Mughniyeh, a legendary Hezbollah commander implicated in such infamous operations as the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. The assassination
of the elder Mughniyeh in Damascus in 2008, typically attributed to Israel, is regarded as one of the organization�s most traumatic blows. However, some in the Shiite community here say that Israel�s January 18 strike on a three-car convoy in the Golan Heights near the Syrian town of Quneitra�which killed the younger Mughniyeh and five other Hezbollah operatives, along with as many as six Iranians�is evidence of a dangerous crisis for Hezbollah.
The throngs attending the younger Mughniyeh�s funeral on January 19 yelled �Death to America� only once. �I counted,� says Lokman Slim, an anti-Hezbollah Shiite activist. �And they said �Death to Israel� only a few times. Then they went to more religious slogans.�
According to Slim, the scaled-down rhetoric and modest size of the funeral are evidence that Hezbollah is caught in a bind. �The [Lebanese Shiites] don�t want another war with Israel,� says Slim, �but they also want to know Hezbollah can protect them like it says.�
Hezbollah�s general secretary Hassan Nasrallah can threaten to open the gates of hell on Israel�s northern border, but if he doesn�t take action he�s only underscoring his weakness and that of the Shiites in general. If he does take action, he risks escalation with a powerful neighbor at a time when Hezbollah is already stretched. Its campaign in Syria to defend Bashar al-Assad is absorbing the bulk of the group�s manpower, Syria and Assad being hugely important assets to their Iranian patrons. Moreover, if Hezbollah�s retaliation brings a crushing Israeli response, Nasrallah will have opened not only a fight with Israel, but a third confrontation as well, inside Lebanon, with the country�s Sunni community. �It would mean the Sunni-Shia conflict has come to Lebanon in earnest,� says Slim.
The political situation in Lebanon is therefore as freighted with danger as the actual war Hezbollah is fighting across the border in Syria. The organization portrays its combat there as a defensive war to prevent the Sunni extremist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS that are battling Assad from entering Lebanon and targeting the Shiites. Suicide bombings in Beirut�s southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold, and the pitched battles between Hezbollah and Sunni fighters on the Syrian border in Lebanon�s Bekaa valley are proof that the threat of Sunni violence is genuine. But the fact that Jihad Mughniyeh and his cohorts were killed in the Golan Heights�where they would pose a threat to Israel and less so to the Sunni extremists whose strongholds are elsewhere in Syria�is an embarrassment for Hezbollah in general and Nasrallah in particular.
In a long interview with a pro-Hezbollah TV station just two days before the Israeli strike, Nasrallah claimed that Hezbollah was not active on the Golan. As it turns out, Mughniyeh and the others, including Iranian Revolutionary Guards Brigadier General Mohamed Ali Allahdadi, a confidant of Iran�s Quds Force commander Qassem Suleimani, were reportedly preparing the groundwork for an Iranian missile base. In other words, Hezbollah�s ostensibly defensive fight in Syria, to protect the Lebanese Shiites, has a significant offensive component as well�to open a second front against Israel, in addition to the group�s South Lebanon stronghold, on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Shiites, says Slim, have come a long way from their self-proclaimed �Divine Victory� over Israel in 2006. By its own telling, Hezbollah proved its bona fides as a resistance movement by standing toe-to-toe with an Israeli enemy that had repeatedly walked over Sunni powers like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. The Shiites wanted to enjoy the spoils of their victory�money, prestige, and perhaps above all peace. But now they�re being dragged back to war, not with a regional superpower like Israel, but rather as an accomplice in a conflict in Syria that contradicts the values of their community.
�The Shia are supposed to side with justice against injustice,� says Slim. �Shia stand with the underdog. And now Hezbollah is fighting alongside a dictatorial regime.� Moreover, Hezbollah has also staked the Shiites to a position against the regional Sunni majority in a war whose best outcome, says Slim, can only be a political settlement. �Hezbollah will have fought this war, and at the end the Shia will ask to what purpose did we sacrifice so much?� The worst outcome, says Slim, is a war that won�t end.
�Maybe trauma,� says Slim, �is the only way back from divinity.� Maybe. We�re on the road heading south to the Shiite heartland to see.
Traffic is thick getting out of Beirut�s southern suburbs. There�s a joint checkpoint ahead, Hezbollah on the right and Lebanese Army on the left. Hezbollah checks license plates in a database, and if you�re okay, he pings the soldier on the left who waves you through. If you�re not, you get waved over to the right, and they check your car for explosives. Slim bristles: �I pay taxes to have Hezbollah give orders to the army.�
Checkpoints, traffic�everything is worse than when I was last here nearly three years ago. There�s less electricity and more blackouts, the water shortages are worse, and so is the sewage. There�s no president, no elections on the horizon to elect a new parliament, the economy is moribund with little investment from the traditional big spenders of the Gulf states, and parents are urging their children to formulate a Plan B�how to get out of Lebanon and start a career and family elsewhere. Europe, Australia, the Gulf, Canada, America . . . all are lands of opportunity. In Lebanon everything is getting worse. Except for one thing, says Slim, the one thing that matters to him as much as anything in the world�Hezbollah is falling and a new chapter is beginning for the Shiites.
�I told you that I saw Hezbollah�s beginnings,� he reminds me. �And I told you I�d see its end as well. We�re getting closer. These things like the Israeli strike in the Golan are simply facts, markers. There�s a larger underlying reality that�s shifting. It�s happening slowly, but it�s detectable.�
Finally we�re waved through the checkpoint and on our way. Hezbollah flags fly from lampposts all the way south. Placards and pictures commemorate the latest crop of martyrs��the cuv�e of Syria,� says Slim.
Outside of Lebanon�s Shiite regions, it is very difficult to get a sense of how profoundly the war in Syria has injured the community. Exactly how many Lebanese Shiites have been killed there is unknown�high-end estimates are more than a thousand in the last two years�or even how many are fighting. Slim says the numbers miss the point. �Let�s say there are 3,000 Hezbollah combatants in Syria, but then take into account all the other things you need, everything from intelligence to logistics, and there are perhaps 20,000 committed to the war. For instance, a father and his two sons have a bulldozer, and Hezbollah needs them and their machine in Syria, so they pay them double to be there.�
Hezbollah is unaccustomed to waging a long war of attrition like this, far from the Lebanese villages where it fought guerrilla wars against Israel. To be sure, its fighters are becoming a battle-hardened expeditionary force, but the nature of the war is reconfiguring Shiite society. �Boys are dropping out of school to join the fight,� says Slim. �They enjoy the benefits of manhood earlier than before, but it�s becoming a community without men, or men who are simply on leave from Syria and waiting to return. The result,� he says smiling, �is that the women will become more powerful.�
Black humor underlines how far Hezbollah has fallen from its divine status. �We have the phenomenon of the widows of the fighters killed in Syria,� says Slim, �beautiful young girls being courted by the organization�s senior officials. �Hey, if you need anything, just text me. And if it�s evening, you can reach me on Whatsapp, too.� �
The fact that Israel presumably weighed Hezbollah�s predicament before striking the Mughniyeh/Allahdadi convoy�how the scope of its deployment in Syria limited its ability to avenge its fallen�is one of several indignities Nasrallah has to swallow. There�s also the ongoing issue of treason. Not long before the strike in the Golan, Hezbollah disclosed that it had found a spy in its ranks, Mohamed Shawarba, a high-ranking official who allegedly worked for the Mossad. If Hezbollah was eager to boast of its ability to root out traitors, Israel�s operation�netting major Hezbollah and Iranian figures�suggests that its counterintelligence wing has plenty of work left to do, because the organization is still riddled with spies.
Our first visit in the south is with a dissident Shiite cleric who paid heavily�imprisonment and torture�for his stance against Hezbollah. The sheikh is a well-built man in his mid-50s wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and sweatpants and chain-smoking. He is watched closely by Hezbollah and sometimes, suspecting his apartment may be bugged, leans in to whisper. At other times his emotions take over and he throws caution to the wind, no matter how sensitive the subject. His gestures are expansive, and he moves like an actor or story-teller, like a man accustomed to being in front of a congregation of the faithful, to make his case about the mercy of God�or against the depredations of Hezbollah. He drops a dozen notebooks filled with his writings in my lap. �These are all anti-Hezbollah,� he says, beaming with pride.
The sheikh�s political and theological mission is taking on wilayet al-faqih, the theological concept developed by the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that gives supreme political power to the supreme religious figure. �It�s different from the theory of European kingship that saw the monarch as God�s regent on earth,� says the sheikh. �The church was a mediating authority. But with wilayet al-faqih, the supreme leader is effectively able to bypass Muhammad the prophet as well as the Koran. There�s no mediation, just the supreme leader and God.�
If it�s such an obviously bad, and un-Islamic, idea, I ask the sheikh, why did the Iranian people buy it? �Ignorance,� he says. �Also, Khomeini was charismatic.� I ask if the Lebanese Shiites understand the errors of wilayet al-faqih. �Ignorance is a problem with many of the Lebanese, too. And there�s also the fact that Hezbollah takes care of people. If a sheikh goes to Hezbollah and asks for $100, they�ll give him $500. And then there are the ideologues, a small but powerful minority. For them, fighting for Iran isn�t fighting for just another country, it�s God�s country.�
And yet according to the sheikh, the majority of the Shiite community is anything but ideological. �Sure, when a Hezbollah fighter is killed in Syria, we go to the funeral and fill the streets. That�s a social obligation. We do the same when someone is killed in a car accident. Just because we attend a fighter�s funeral doesn�t mean we are behind the cause.�
That�s true even of some senior Hezbollah officials, says the sheikh. He recounts speaking recently with a senior military commander who told him that for the first time in his life he questioned Hezbollah�s mission. �He said,� the sheikh recalled, � �Are we fighting to defend the shrine of Sayyida Zeinab [a Shiite holy site in Damascus] or the palace of Asma al-Assad [the dictator�s wife]?� �
Hezbollah�s war in Syria is a good thing, as the sheikh sees it, because it will destroy the organization and turn the Shiites against it. And yet it will cost so many more martyrs.
Slim and I are on the road again, and all the roads in the south are festooned with the pictures of dead kids, largely Hezbollah�s second generation, like Jihad Mughniyeh. The initial news reports about the Israeli strike suggested that Mughniyeh was a major figure in the organization, nearly filling his father�s very large shoes. However, the Beirut rumor mill contends that he was more like a playboy, hanging out in trendy nightlife areas, picking up girls, and drinking too much, until Hezbollah shipped its prodigal son off to Iran, where the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards, took him under their wing and eventually sent him to his death on the Golan.
Much of Hezbollah�s young cadre comes from the tech schools the organization has opened throughout the south, says Slim. �They�re able to identify the best kids who they then recruit into the organization. Also, education is a good business investment for Hezbollah, and they�ve made lots of good investments.�
Slim cautions against believing Western media reports that Hezbollah is going broke. �In addition to their own investments, they have money from the Lebanese state,� says Slim. �They also still get what they need from Iran, and they�re also still making money from criminal enterprises.�
Indeed, even as we pass through dusty villages, the signs of economic success are everywhere. We drive by dozens of enormous, gaudy mansions built by Shiites largely living abroad, typically in Africa. �They might come here for only one week a year,� says Slim. �But they want a bigger house than their cousin�s across the road. You think these people want another war with Israel? They want to enjoy what they have, luxury, comfort, well being. Think of mansions as the counterpoint to martyrs.�
The highway to the south ends some 6 to 10 miles before it hits the Israeli border. �All they need to do is pave it,� says Slim. He�s certain it will happen someday. The way he sees it, the future of Lebanon�s Shiite community has to do with Israel, partly because the community in the south had decent relations with Israel before Hezbollah, and partly just because the Jewish state is the immediate neighbor. With the Syrian border closed for the foreseeable future, Israel and the Mediterranean are the only two avenues through which the Shiites can engage the rest of the world. In time, says Slim, the Shiites should at the very least forge a cold peace with Israel. �The Shia got stronger in Lebanon because they fought Israel,� he explains. �And now to stay strong, they have to avoid war with Israel.�
For now, though, the Shiite community�s foreign policy is largely made in Tehran. There�s skepticism throughout Lebanon that an agreement between the Obama administration and Iran will compel Tehran to put a leash on its Lebanese client. Further, Israel�s strike on the convoy in the Golan is evidence that Jerusalem is highly doubtful about the White House�s arrangements with Iran. In effect, the message last week was that the Obama administration may want a condominium with Iran, may want to work with the IRGC to stop ISIS in Iraq, and may turn a blind eye to Qassem Suleimani�s machinations in Syria and Lebanon; Israel, on the other hand, will continue to kill IRGC commanders operating on its borders.
Slim and I are about as close to the Israeli border as we�re going to get, visiting an old friend of his at a large family compound containing two mansions high in the mountains. It�s the first time I�ve been in this part of Lebanon, and its extraordinary beauty and peacefulness surprise me. In the late afternoon light, we can see far into the valley below, with the Israeli border only a few miles away.
�In 2006,� Slim says, �Hezbollah put a rocket launcher right here on the roof.� When the Israelis returned fire, says his friend with a broad smile, �they hit a spot in front and behind, but not here.�
We discuss whether Nasrallah will retaliate for last week�s attack and, if so, when and how. Will there be rocket fire from Lebanon, terrorist operations abroad, an IED on the border targeting Israeli troops, or an operation from the Golan? The last, which would come from Syrian territory, seems safest to most of the Lebanese I�ve spoken with. However, it�s worth considering that Israel may have struck not because of an urgent threat near Quneitra, but rather to prevent Iran and Hezbollah from opening another front from which to attack Israel. The Israelis have been watching the Syrian border with concern. Given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu�s reputation for being risk averse, it�s notable that he chose to risk the possibility of war with elections only two months away. Clearly, the Israeli government will not allow Iran to use the Golan as a launching pad, and firing on Israel from there in retaliation would effectively make it a second front. Accordingly, chances are that an Israeli response, in any escalation, would target Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the south again bearing the brunt of the conflict, likely including, according to Israeli strategists, a large ground operation.
Slim�s friend ushers us inside his stone mansion. A big man with a warm smile, he�s a poet and also a sayyid, a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. On the left side of his large bookcase is his extensive collection of Arabic poetry, and on the right books about religion, including a multivolume set on the history of the Shiites written by a relative. Slim asks him to show me his own collection of verse and he reads a poem that begins, �Lokman was also drunk.�
There�s whiskey, wine, arak, and an enormous lunch on his living room table consisting largely of local produce�tomatoes, avocados, watercress. As the sun sets, the poet takes some meat from the refrigerator and puts it on the grill. He asks, �Do you think those guys on the other side of the border imagine that we live like this�art, poetry, food, drink?� I�m sure of it, I say, hopeful we are all seeing the beginning of the end of Hezbollah.
**Lee Smith is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.

Game Not Over: Israel's Quneitra Attack in Context
by Jonathan Spyer/The Jerusalem Post
January 22, 2015
http://www.meforum.org/4991/game-not-over-the-quneitra-attack-in-context
Originally published under the title, "A Move in an Unfinished Game."
Thousands of Iranians gather in Tehran for the funeral of Revolutionary Guard Commander General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi.
In analyzing the significance of, and likely fallout from ,the Israeli killing of a number of senior Hizballah and IRGC personnel close to the Golan border this week, a number of things should be borne in mind:
Firstly, the killings were a response to a clear attempt by the Iranians/Hizballah to violate the very fragile status quo that pertains between these elements and Israel in Lebanon and Syria. in his interview to the al-Mayadeen network three days before the attack, Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah explicitly claimed that his organization was not engaged in 'resistance work' on the Golan. The Israeli strike showed that this statement was a lie.
The killings were a response to a clear attempt by the Iranians and Hizballah to violate the fragile status quo in the Golan.
Some analysis of the strike has suggested that the men killed in the attack were engaged in preparation for the placing of sophisticated Iranian missile systems on the Syrian part of the Golan. Other accounts suggested that their mission was part of preparing this area for the launch of ground attacks across the border against Israeli targets, perhaps using proxies. In either case, the mission was a clear attempt to change the arrangement of forces in the north, in such a way that could be expected to ensure an Israeli response.
Secondly, in the past, Hizballah has reacted differently to Israeli strikes on it or its Syrian allies within Syria, compared to strikes on Lebanese soil. The difference again relates to the unstated but clear 'rules of the game' between the organization and the Jewish state. Israeli strikes on materiel making its way to the organization from Syrian soil have elicited no response from the movement.
By contrast, an Israeli attack on a weapons convoy just across the border on Lebanese soil near the village of Janta on February 24, 2014 provoked a Hizballah response . On March 18th, an IED was exploded just south of the border fence in the Majdal Shams area on the Golan Heights, wounding four IDF soldiers.
The rules of the game in question do not indicate a lessening of warlike intentions or a growing affection on the part of Hizballah toward Israel. Rather, they reflect the acute need that this organization and its Iranian masters currently have to not be drawn into conflict with Israel unless this becomes unavoidable.
Hizballah is overstretched at the moment. It has between 5000-10,000 men engaged in Syria. It is engaged in a determined and fraying attempt to prevent Sunni jihadi incursions across the border into Lebanon from Syria, and bomb attacks by the Sunni groups further into Lebanon.
Hizballah is also an integral part of the Iranian outreach effort in Iraq, where members of the organization are engaged in training Shia fighters.
The last thing that the IRGC and Hizballah need is to be drawn into a premature conflagration with Israel.
Even as far afield as Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi militia is engaged in a push for power, the movement's fingerprints have been found.
All this reflects Hizballah's nature as Iran's primary agent in the Arab world. Given all this activity, the last thing that the IRGC and Hizballah need is to be drawn into a premature conflagration with Israel.
This need to avoid a collision with the Jewish state is compounded by a shortage of Iranian cash, deriving from the collapse of oil prices.
The Iran/Hizballah/Assad side has long threatened to develop the Golan as a front for possible 'jihad duties' against Israel. Both Syrian President Bashar Assad and Nasrallah made unambiguous public statements in 2014 threatening the opening of military activity against Israel in this area. Israel, in turn, has made clear that such a move would constitute a violation of the status quo . The strike on Sunday constituted a very kinetic further Israeli message intended to drive home this point.
Thus, despite the death of a senior IRGC commander in the Israeli strike, the action by Israel should not be seen as a general casting aside of the rules of engagement by Jerusalem on the northern border, but rather as an insistence on maintaining these rules, and a warning of the consequences to the other side of continued violation of them.
The action by Israel should not be seen as casting aside the rules of engagement on the northern border, but rather as an insistence on maintaining these rules.
The thing which might be held to differentiate this action from previous events is of course the death of IRGC General Mohammed Allahdadi.
Allahdadi may not be the first senior IRGC figure to lose his life in Syria at Israeli hands in the last three years of war in that country. That distinction arguably belongs to Brigadier-General Hassan Shateri, assassinated on February 13, 2013, either by the Syrian rebels or by persons working for Israel, depending on which version you choose to believe.
But certainly the high visibility of Allahdadi's demise, taking place unambiguously at Israeli hands, represents something new. From this point of view, the quoting by Reuters of an Israeli 'security source' to the effect that Israel did not know who was in the car at the time that it was destroyed may be seen as an attempt to re-locate the action within the realms of the recognized rules of engagement.
Responses by Lebanese political leaders and media to the event have been characterized by a sort of nervous, veiled request to Hizballah not to bring down Israel's wrath on Lebanon. The Daily Star captured this tone in an editorial entitled 'Don't take the Bait.' After a series of unflattering remarks about Israel, the paper's editors noted that 'While some naturally feel a desire for retaliation against Israel, Hezbollah must be vigilant against designs for it to be drawn into a larger confrontation. Lebanon has enough concerns of its own without falling prey to a plot against it."'
Of course, Iran and Hizballah are strong enough to ignore such voices. but given the tense internal situation in Lebanon at present, it is likely that the lack of enthusiasm of non-Shia Lebanese for Hizballah's war in Syria, and in particular their lack of willingness to pay any price accruing from it, will factor into the Shia Islamist movement's and its master's decisionmaking. Hizballah needs a quiet and quiescent Lebanese political scene, so that it may conduct its war against Sunni jihadis coming in from Syria under the guise of unified Lebanese action, rather than sectarian account-settling.
Lastly, as has been noted in previous analyses, Iran has armed and trained Hizballah so that it may be used to deter an Israeli response against Iranian nuclear facilities, or be activated as part of a response to such a strike. It is unlikely to wish to place this investment prematurely at risk.
So the strike on Sunday was a re-stating by Israel of previously clarified ground rules relating to what will be permitted in Syria, and what will not. A response of some kind in the weeks, months or years ahead is likely. But the Israeli action was not a disregarding by Israel of previously existing 'rules of engagement' in the north. It is unlikely therefore to result in a similar upturning of the tables at the present moment by Iran and Hizballah.
**Jonathan Spyer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Erdoğan's Grand Ambitions
Dateline
Burak Bekdil
Middle East Quarterly/ Winter 2015
http://www.meforum.org/4910/erdogan-akp-ambitions
By June 2015, the Turks will have gone to the ballot box three times in a span of fifteen months: local polls in March 2014, the presidential race in August 2014, and parliamentary elections next June 2015. Turkey's ruling Islamists, under the roof of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), are probably heading for their ninth electoral victory in thirteen years. But in the longer term, a simple win may not suffice to keep afloat this coalition of Islamists, conservatives, Sunni supremacists, business cronies, and liberals. AKP's ambitions go beyond winning elections, and although it remains the most powerful political grouping in Turkey, with its votes now possibly at a saturation point, the party may be vulnerable to potential externalities. For now, Turks seem to have ignored the worst corruption scandal in their political history,[1] but there are no guarantees that they will keep the stunning events of last December out of their memories forever.[2]
A Family Feud
Something "Nordic," i.e., political transparency and lack of tolerance for nepotism and corruption, appeared briefly in the notoriously corrupt Crescent and Star in December 2013. Along with nearly fifty other high-profile suspects, police arrested the sons of three cabinet ministers, including that of the interior minister, on charges of corruption.[3] But a few hours later, everything was back to normal: Five police chiefs in charge of the operation, along with dozens of other officers whom government bigwigs thought may have been their accomplices, had been removed from duty.[4]
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his nomenklatura rarely disappoint. After the first shock, they announced their verdict on the affair: The arrested were innocent before trial. They had not even examined any of the prosecution's evidence which, by law, must be secret until court proceedings open. But they were certain that the investigation was the work of the clandestine network operated by the powerful Muslim cleric Fethullah G�len and his men in the police force and judiciary.[5] Once the best of allies, G�len, in self-exile in rural Pennsylvania, and Erdoğan had openly clashed earlier in 2013 over what looked like a power-sharing matter.[6] G�len, whose Hizmet movement runs hundreds of charter schools in the United States and more than eighty other countries, had his men systematically running up the ladders of Turkey's bureaucracy under Erdoğan's nod. Ideological differences and the G�len network's "dangerous rise to power" had already begun to unnerve Erdoğan in 2011. Last year, AKP passed legislation to close down all private tutorial schools in Turkey. A quarter of those schools belonged to Hizmet.[7]
Female supporters of the ruling Turkish AK Party wear masks of Prime Minister Erdoğan during an election rally in Konya, March 31, 2014. Erdoğan's government faced a sweeping corruption scandal in December 2013 when police arrested the sons of three cabinet ministers along with nearly fifty other high-profile suspects on charges of corruption. Instead of a cold reception at the peak of the corruption scandal, Erdoğan was given a hero's welcome by party loyalists across Turkey.
The police officers involved in the affair were removed from duty one by one, but that was not the end of Erdoğan's troubles. Unknown sources began to upload recordings of telephone conversations to various social media platforms�conversations that in any decent country could cause a public uproar and bring the collapse of any government. The recordings detailed how Erdoğan controlled the media; how his business cronies donated vast amounts of money to his son's foundation; how the son, despite orders from Erdoğan, was unable to get rid of stacks of cash he kept at his home; and how Erdoğan ordered businessmen to buy newspapers or to sack journalists.[8] Erdoğan denied any wrongdoing and claimed that all the audio material on the Internet was a "montage."[9] Thousands of pages of evidence the police had produced after several months of technical and physical surveillance were all declared bogus and the work of dark forces.
By March 2014, Erdoğan was clearly nervous as his former and powerful friend had now become a powerful foe. G�len's men were knocking on every door in the Anatolian heartland, a traditional Erdoğan stronghold, to convince voters not to vote for a corrupt man.[10] About ten days before the elections, senior Hizmet figures privately claimed that Erdoğan's vote would drop to around 35 percent, from nearly 50 percent in 2011. They were underestimating Turkish pragmatism and overestimating ethics in Turkish society.
The average Justice and Development Party (AKP) politician is the mirror image of the average Turkish voter: devoutly Muslim but pragmatist, anti-Western in genes but pro-European Union in anticipation of economic/political benefits, collectivist in theory but individualist in practice, and moralist when "the other" goes corrupt but tolerant [to corruption] when "we" do. Hence, the unusually large margin of tolerance for corruption and malgovernance in Turkey.
All that, however, does not change the typology of the average Turkish voter, the one who is willing to tolerate corruption as long as things go smoothly for him, his family, friends, and their families and friends.[11]
Instead of a cold reception at the peak of the corruption scandal, Erdoğan was given a hero's welcome by party loyalists across Turkey, including a bizarre-looking group who greeted the prime minister after having wrapped themselves in white clothes, which symbolize death in Islamic tradition. The message was clear: "We're with you to the death!"[12]
Meanwhile, the list of usual suspects Erdoğan claimed were trying to topple his government by means of a coup was getting bigger and richer in humor. Shortly before the March polls, the list included "intergalactic conspirators, dark forces, most of the Western hemisphere's prominent news outlets, Jewish diaspora, Germany's national carrier, Germany, the U.S. ambassador to Ankara, the United States, the interest rate lobby, financiers, traders, and the robotic lobby, and the preacher lobby [the G�len movement]."[13]
In reality, in 2014, Turkey's sociopolitical demography became an even more fertile ground for the AKP than it was before. It was not for nothing that Erdoğan has prescribed that every Turkish family should have at least three and "even four or five" children each. Erdoğan knew that every new, jobless young man would either end up at a religious order or turn up at the ballot box as a pious but poor Muslim voting for the AKP, or both. The Turkish population is estimated to be five-to six times larger than the Kurdish. So, mathematically speaking, greater Kurdish birth rates do not mean greater Kurdish preeminence. Also, more importantly, it is a fact that Erdoğan traditionally wins half of the Kurdish votes, too. So, he would not mind if his prescription is also followed by Kurds.
Turkey by the Numbers
Turkey was not in good shape by any internationally-accepted criteria, except for a steadily growing economy. There are only three Turkish universities in the world's top 500.[14] The infant mortality rate in Turkey is a grim 17 per 1,000 live births[15] while 24 percent of children aged 10 to 14 are in the labor market in Turkey.[16] Per capita health spending is one-tenth of Italy's. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report, Turkey ranks 120 in a list of 136 countries.[17] Press freedom in Turkey, according to Freedom House's world map, falls into the red zone of "not free."[18] And the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders puts Turkey's world ranking at 154.[19]
But there is one globally credible index that sums it all up. The United Nations Development Program's Human Development Report, a comparative measure of life expectancy, education, standards of living, and quality of life, reveals whether a country is developed, developing, or underdeveloped. On that index, Turkey ranks 69, with about a $10,000 per capita income.[20]
The Winner Wins Again
On March 30, 2014, Erdoğan's AKP emerged as the winner, garnering 43.3 percent of the national vote, based on votes cast for city councils in which voters choose "a party" not a municipal candidate. But it was a slightly bitter victory. Erdoğan had managed to defeat his rivals despite a slew of embarrassing scandals but was given a polite warning. His votes had dropped to 43.3 percent from 49.8 percent in 2011 as two million fewer Turks voted for him.
This was important because Erdoğan's longer-term game plan is to amend the constitution to launch an executive presidency instead of the present largely symbolic powers the president has now. To take any constitutional amendment to referendum, a party would need at least 330 seats in parliament. If March 30 were a parliamentary election instead of municipal, with 43.3 percent of the vote, Erdoğan would only have won around 290 parliamentary seats.
All the same, 43.3 percent was good enough to convince him that he should run for the presidency on August 10. In order to defeat Erdoğan, two main opposition parties, the social democrat Republican People's Party (CHP) and the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), agreed on a joint candidate, conservative professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu, who had run the Saudi-sponsored Organization of the Islamic Conference. The opposition strategists had calculated that a conservative candidate could snatch votes from Erdoğan's grassroots supporters. Maybe he did, but it appears he lost more from CHP's left-wing and social democratic grassroots.
Erdoğan won 51.8 percent of the vote while Ihsanoğlu finished at 38 percent. Erdoğan had succeeded in becoming Turkey's twelfth president. During his presidential campaign, Erdoğan already signaled that he would be an unconventional "running and sweating" president, an explicit reference to his intention to force the limits of the constitution through executive powers. All he needed was a new prime minister to succeed him, someone to whom he could entrust the executive branch and whose strings he could pull from the presidential palace. That man was Ahmet Davutoğlu, his foreign minister. Davutoğlu happily took the job and pledged absolute loyalty to Erdoğan.[21]
Behind the Numbers
The March 30 and August 10 elections require more detailed analysis to understand what really lies behind what looks like a simple victory for AKP. The following table helps explain where AKP's popularity stands today in comparison to when it first emerged on the political scene in 2002.
The table at right shows that AKP's votes doubled in number between 2002 and 2014 from nearly eleven million to more than twenty-one million. But caution is required. Despite this sharp increase, votes cast for Erdoğan in presidential elections do not reflect votes for the party. First, some Turks outside the AKP base (especially from among the nationalists and non-AKP Islamists) voted for Erdoğan due to ideology and his personal charisma. Second, some fiercely anti-Erdoğan Turks also voted for him, calculating that he would pose less danger to Turkey if he took up the largely symbolic post of presidency and gave up his executive powers as prime minister. Third, the voter turnout in August was exceptionally low (74 percent, compared to nearly 90 percent in March), which resulted in a slender 51.8 percent for Erdoğan. Many opposition voters did not show up, expecting that Erdoğan would win.
Another careful analysis is required to understand how Erdoğan's popularity changed since 2011 when it peaked. In 2011, AKP won 21.4 million votes, or 49.8 percent when the total number of voters was 50.2 million. Between 2011 and 2014, some 2.5 million new voters were registered, bringing the total number of voters to 52.7 million. If in the March 30 elections AKP (or Erdoğan) had maintained the same level of support as in 2011, the party would have garnered 26.2 million votes. Instead, its votes stood at 19.4 million�a loss of 6.8 million. This assumption excludes invalid votes but does not change the fact that AKP lost a significant number of votes despite what it portrays as an overwhelming election victory. There has been widespread speculation about election fraud, but none has been officially or independently proven. A report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed "a certain level of confidence in the electoral process."[22]
"Champion of Turkey's Greatness"
In the days when the world's foreign policy intelligentsia had the habit of mentioning Davutoğlu's name with euphemisms such as "Turkey's Kissinger," "champion of Turkey's greatness," and "always the hero of his own narrative," this author referred to him as "Dr. Strangelove," "The Man Who Made Tomorrow," or "The Man Who Rides the Thunder." Turkey's foreign policy under Davutoğlu was "a not-so-funny Turkish opera buffa with the main characters resembling those of [Miguel de] Cervantes's famous book."[23]
Davutoğlu is otherwise known to be a fine gentleman: an honest, modest, hard-working man who wants the best for his nation�though not always in the most realistic way. His tolerance for dissenting opinion is considerably more Western compared to Erdoğan's. Davutoğlu is also Turkey's first prime minister�after the late B�lent Ecevit�who is entirely free of any corruption allegations. In other words, Davutoğlu is Mr. Clean.
Unfortunately, the fundamentals of Davutoğlu's foreign policy will not miraculously metamorphose from blind ideology into reason. Previously, Turkey essentially had two foreign ministers, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu; now it will have three with the appointment of EU minister, Mevl�t �avuşoğlu, as foreign minister.
It is out of the question that the third man will devise his own foreign policy independent of Erdoğan and Davutoğlu: It will be old wine in a new bottle. So from now on, three gentlemen, instead of two, will be fighting coup makers in the Middle East if they oppose the Muslim Brotherhood, hoping to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque in the "Palestinian capital Jerusalem," working to depose Syria's Bashar Assad, maintaining a game of pretension between the neo-Ottomans and the Iranian regime, aggressively seeking Iranian regional hegemony, and working day and night for the advancement of Turkish Sunni Islamism in former Ottoman lands.
But Davutoğlu could be Erdoğan's unwilling gift to Turkey, especially if Davutoğlu, with his intellectual honesty, reviewed the applicability of twenty-first-century Turkish Sunni supremacy in former Ottoman lands. Or if he stopped viewing Ankara's foreign relations with the former Ottoman lands as domestic Turkish affairs. Or if he stopped believing that he has a holy mission to correct the "incorrect" flow of history.[24]
Everything May Not Be Coming up Roses
Ostensibly, everything in the house of AKP proceeds perfectly. The party is heading for its ninth election victory within thirteen years, a first time in Turkish political history. Erdoğan remains unchallenged: The opposition is weak, to put it mildly. Turks continue to admire the president despite embarrassing graft scandals. He won the presidential election in the first round as he promised. He has a loyal man as prime minister in Davutoğlu, who is not likely to object to his leader's de facto executive presidency and one-man show. Davutoğlu is known to every Turk, and to nearly half of them, he is the champion of a foreign policy that promises the revival of their collapsed imperial power. He is pro-Hamas and anti-Israeli, a perfect recipe for popularity at the ballot box. And luckily, on September 20, 2014, Davutoğlu made a heroic start when the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) released forty-six Turkish hostages and the three Iraqi consulate employees it had held since it attacked the Turkish consulate in Mosul on June 11.[25] No doubt, Davutoğlu was the darling of all Turks when he smiled and posed for the cameras together with the cheerful hostages, which included the consul general, disembarking the plane that took them to safety and the embrace of their loved ones.[26] "Only Davutoğlu could snatch them from the jihadists unharmed," one taxi driver told this author after their release. As he kept driving, he added: "Don't misunderstand, sir. I have never voted for AKP. I dislike Erdoğan. I am a nationalist. But I think I will vote for Davutoğlu next year." What more could a fresh contender hope for?
But this is only a partial narrative. As noted, election results suggest that the AKP's votes may now have saturated at around twenty million, and there is no meaningful sociopolitical data explaining why AKP's vote should significantly rise under Davutoğlu. With an increasing number of Turks qualifying to vote next June, AKP's nationwide vote may be pressured down between what it won in March (43.3 percent) and the critical 40 percent threshold.
Davutoğlu may appeal to some Turks, but others will be loyal only to Erdoğan and not even to his choice of the prime minister. "I will never vote for anyone other than Erdoğan," a waiter at a fancy Ankara restaurant told me. "Davutoğlu can only be his second-in-command, and I don't want to vote for a second-in-command. I will abstain and wait for the next presidential elections [2019] to vote for Erdoğan again."
Not only that. To get Davutoğlu elected as prime minister at a party convention, Erdoğan had to exact an important sacrifice: that of Abdullah G�l, his predecessor at the presidential palace, the second most powerful AKP figure, and Erdoğan's closest political comrade since the late 1990s. G�l, along with Erdoğan, was the co-founder of AKP. He is always a calm voice. But apparently his wife is not. In an unusual protest, Hayr�nnisa G�l spoke to journalists, shortly before the couple vacated the presidential palace, and angrily complained that "our devout comrades have betrayed us; they made us sorry, and I'll never forgive them for that."[27] She revealed a potentially major crack.

Report: Islamic State executes Japanese hostage
Ynetnews, News Agencies/Latest Update: 01.24.15
According to intelligence group, radical jihadists force one of two hostages to report his countryman's execution.
Twitter accounts linked to the Islamic State group shared a video on Saturday showing Kenji Goto Jogo � one of two Japanese nationals taken hostage by the Islamist radicals � announcing that his fellow countryman was executed, according to the intelligence group SITE.
The footage was released after a 72-hour deadline imposed by the jihadists passed, with Japan refusing to pay the $200 million ransom for the hostages.
SITE reported that the message was sent to Jogo's family and the Japanese government. In the video, Jogo relays the Islamic State group's latest demand.
The video contains a still image of Jogo holding what appears to be a picture of the beheaded hostage, Haruna Yukawa. According to Reuters, the Japanese government is currently authenticating the footage.
In the footage, Jogo tells the Japanese government they must secure the release of Sajida al-Rishawi, a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist, from Jordan in order to save his life.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the apparent execution was "outrageous" and "unacceptable" and demanded the release of Kenji Goto.
According to the report, al-Rishawi participated in the 2005 bombing of an Amman hotel that left 38 dead, and has been sentenced to death by hanging after her capture by Jordanian authorities.
One militant on an ISIS-affiliated website warned that Saturday's new message was fake, while another said that the message was intended only to go to the Japanese journalist's family. A third militant on the website noted that the video was not issued by al-Furqan, which is one of the media arms of ISIS and has issued past videos involving hostages and beheadings. Saturday's message did not bear al-Furqan's logo.
The militants on the website post comments using pseudonyms, so their identities could not be independently confirmed by the AP. However, their confusion over the video matched that of Japanese officials and outside observers.
IS released a video on Tuesday demanding $200 million for the release of the hostages and calling on Japan to stop its "foolish" support for the US-led coalition waging a military campaign against Islamic State.
The release of that video coincided with a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Jerusalem, where he said said the ultimatum "is unforgivable and I feel strong resentment."
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

US-Saudi summit in Riyadh to deal with pivotal issues of oil prices, Iran and Yemen
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report January 24, 2015
President Barack Obama, having decided to cut short the third day of his India visit, will arrive in Riyadh Tuesday, Jan. 27 with the First Lady, to offer US condolences on the death of King Abdullah and hold critical talks with his successor, King Salman Bin Abdulaziz.
He will want to clear the air most urgently on three controversial items of burning interest to both leaders: Riyadh�s flat opposition to the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran and skepticism in the face of Obama�s conviction that a comprehensive accord will curtail the Islamic Republic�s drive for a nuclear weapon.
Next, the US leader will try and persuade the new Saudi ruler to slow down oil production in order to put the brakes on plunging prices, an example which other OPEC members are sure to follow.
Finally, Obama and Salman must decide how to handle the fall of Yemen into the hands of Shiite Houthi rebels, who have seized the capital Sanaa with Iranian support and brought down the US-Saudi-sponsored president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Two secondary issues will be the struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the oil kingdom�s back yard, in which the US and Saudi Arabia are coalition partners; and the situation in the Syrian conflict.
Since this is an outsize agenda for one meeting, DEBKAfile�s sources in Washington and the Gulf expect Obama to focus in his initial encounter with Salman on the broad lines of the nuclear Iran dispute and oil prices. Detailed discussions on these and other issues will be set aside for US and Saudi officials of lower rank to hammer out in the coming weeks, as the new king begins to take hold of the reins of government.
A number of Middle East leaders will be following the outcome of this Riyadh summit with bated breath. Many are worried that Obama may persuade the new monarch to play ball with his Middle East policies, so effecting a radical reversal of the late Abdullah�s stance of flat opposition to Obama�s tactics in the region, aside from isolated cases.
A decision by Salman to accept America�s lead on the Iranian nuclear question and oil prices would be a serious blow for the anti-US Arab front, spearheaded hitherto by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and some of the Gulf emirates. It would also be a setback for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu�s fight against Obama�s nuclear diplomacy for Iran. This policy was underpinned by the Saudi-Egyptian political and military partnership that aimed at stalling the deal crafted by Washington, which purported to lay to rest the nuclear controversy with Iran.
Read earlier DEBKAfile Analysis on Saudi Arabia after Abdullah�s death.

Former US peace envoy Dennis Ross takes president Obama to task for 'not being tough enough' with Iran
By JPOST.COM STAFF /01/24/2015
Writing for the online Politico newsmagazine, Ross argues that American allies in the region are growing more apprehensive over what they see as growing Iranian influence in the region.
Dennis Ross, the veteran Mideast hand and former peace envoy, criticized his former boss, US President Barack Obama, for �not being tough enough� with Iran in light of the stalled nuclear talks and the recent coup in Yemen.
Writing for the online Politico newsmagazine, Ross argues that American allies in the region are growing more apprehensive over what they see as growing Iranian influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, while Washington is perceived to be on the retreat.
�These two simultaneous developments - the deadlock in nuclear talks and Iran�s aggressive moves in the region - are not coincidental,� wrote Ross, who co-authored the piece with foreign policy analysts Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh. �They are intimately linked, and that should be a lesson for President Obama: The nuclear deadlock cannot be broken unless Washington reengages in the myriad of conflicts and civil wars plaguing the region, particularly now that Yemen is vulnerable and the Saudi royal family is in a state of turmoil following the death of King Abdullah on Thursday.�
Ross took Obama and his European allies to task for granting the Iranians �a generous catalogue of concessions� during the course of the nuclear talks that have lasted well over a year. The former peace envoy says that the Western powers have �conceded to Iranian enrichment [of uranium], agreed that Tehran need not scale back the number of its centrifuges significantly or dismantle any facilities and could have an industrial-size program after passage of a period of time.�
�The Iranians have, during the course of the ten years of negotiations, grown accustomed to having their interlocutors return to the table with concessions meant to meet their mandates while offering only limited compromises of their own,� Ross and his colleagues wrote.
Ross notes that �Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei continues to signal that Iran can live without an agreement,� thus emboldening his negotiators to �press for more concessions while not offering any of their own.�
What the Obama administration needs to do in the face of Iranian hubris is to engage in �political warfare� by drumming up public opinion against Tehran�s human rights record and its efforts to prop up Syrian President Bashar Assad, Ross argues.
�Historically, the Islamic Republic has adjusted its behavior only when its leaders saw high costs in not doing so,� he wrote. �Iran needs to see that we are not so concerned about reaching a deal on the nuclear issue that we are indifferent to its behavior in the region.�
Ross says that American negotiators should �not be afraid to walk away from the table� if the Iranians continue to play hardball.
Instead of more concessions, the West ought to make �Iran�s leaders see they have more to lose than gain by not concluding� an agreement, according to Ross.

Betrayal, Obama style
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Hisham Melhem /Al Arabiya
At a time when Russia and Iran, the biggest supporters of the Assad dictatorship in Damascus, are on the ropes economically because of steep declining oil prices, the Obama administration, mostly by inaction but also by design, is practically propping up the Assad regime.
One could see the contours of a hellish Faustian deal in the making. To put it bluntly, the Obama administration today, almost four years after the Syrian people began their peaceful uprising against the depredation of an entrenched despotic rule, is desperately relying on Russian �diplomacy� and Iranian �muscle� to extricate it from its disastrous policy in Syria.
Iran now for all intents and purposes, as one astute Iraqi Kurd told me, is �leading from behind� the ground war against the forces of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq, while the U.S. is leading the air campaign. In this new strange, but not brave Middle East, the hapless Iraqi government is more than happy to play the role of the useful mailman/middleman, delivering and receiving messages among the three frenemies.
While Russia and Iran have been adamantly consistent in their support of the Assad regime, even after its outrageous use of chemical weapons against its own civilians, and after its systematic use of siege and starvation as tools of war against civilian areas under the control of the opposition, the Obama administration kept muddling through from one concession to the next compromise to another retreat and now to outright betrayal of its early promises to the Syrian people, not to mention its own solemn red lines and commitments to punish the Assad regimes for its war crimes.
The state of the American Union and Syrian dis-union
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night President Obama made some fleeting, vacuous references to the outside world that once again exposed a foreign policy, high on rhetoric and moral platitudes, but bereft of strategic vision or substance, from South Asia, to the Middle East, to the Ukraine. The passing reference to Syria however, confirmed explicitly the extent to which the Obama administration has gone in its retreat from its early declared goals in Syria; the removal of Assad and those around him who have been tormenting Syrians for decades, at the end of a political transition that would lead to an inclusive political order representing all Syrians.
After spinning his leadership and claiming that military power has stopped ISIS�s advance � an assertion disputed by reports that ISIS is receiving more foreign fighters than those being killed by allied raids � he framed the modest American assistance to the moderate Syrian opposition as an integral part of the U.S campaign against ISIS.
It is as if the American president was talking about the Syrian moderate opposition which was formed to remove Assad from power, as an American auxiliary force, in an American-led campaign. There was not even the pro-forma reference to the Assad regime and its atrocities, or the need eventually to remove him from Syria�s political future. It is astounding that this insular President is not moved or does not seem to be morally troubled by the �worst humanitarian disaster in a generation� as his own ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power described it; where more than 12 million Syrians �currently need humanitarian aid to survive. Five million of those are children�. Syria, is literally and physically disintegrating, and the culprits are numerous; Syrians, and from the neighborhood and beyond, some are active, others watch passively, and the bleeding continues.
Obama as the �immovable object�
What makes Obama�s position as the �immovable object� in this tragedy morally depraved, is the simple fact that he was, in part, responsible for allowing the early horrors of Syria to multiply exponentially, when he would not or could not deliver on his promises or threats.
Obama is oblivious to the slow, agonizing death of modern day Syria, which was erected on an ancient land, where once the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks, Jews, Christians and Muslims left their imprints, engaged in the creation of knowledge, science, of building great cities, and learned from each other, even when they were fighting each other.
One of the oldest Jewish synagogues in the world was in the suburbs of Damascus. In the nearby towns of Saidnaya and Maaloula, Aramaic, the language of Jesus is still spoken. The first organized Church was established in Antioch, a Syrian city for most of its history until the twentieth century. The great Umayyads, who established the first Muslim dynasty in Damascus, built fabulous monuments. The cumulative interactions of these cultures gave us the once glorious cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch, Homs, and Palmyra. When great cities are sacked, or die slowly, regardless if they are called, Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Athens, or Rome, something in all of us dies, as civilized people. Maybe in a decade or two, the Syrian children who are now roaming in the rubble of those cities, barefooted and hungry, will pay us multiple visits with unspeakable wrath.
Pleading with Assad
Gone are the days when Secretary of State John Kerry, would stress the need to help the Syrian opposition politically and materially so that they will force Bashar Assad to change his �calculus� and seeks to negotiate an outcome that will free Syria from his tyranny.
�Obama would have been in a much better position, morally, had he not betrayed his own commitments and promises to the Syrian people�
Gone are the days, when the �Geneva process� despite its ambiguity, was touted by U.S. diplomats as the track that would lead to a political solution. Now the Obama administration has decided to support a Russian �initiative� to hold peace talks in Moscow in few days between the Syrian regime and supposedly some �moderate� opposition groups. Recently, Secretary Kerry expressed hope that the talks �could be helpful�. It was surreal, to see Kerry, appealing, pleading and beseeching Assad to act responsibly, �It is time for President Assad, the Assad regime, to put their people first and to think about the consequences of their actions, which are attracting more and more terrorists to Syria, basically because of their efforts to remove Assad�. Kerry must have forgotten that some of his diplomats used to talk about the �symbiotic relationship� between the Assad regime and terrorist groups, mainly ISIS. Of course, when you plead with someone, it is unbecoming to call for their removal.
It is inevitable that the Russian planned talks will go nowhere, since credible moderate opposition figures (Russia on behest of Assad�s regime invited individuals and not groups) will not attend, because most of them suspect that Moscow will be pushing for some vague form of �power sharing� with Assad that will lead to further divisions among the opposition groups. But the fact that Washington is almost desperate for any appearance of movement is stunning. State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Harf, after she was asked if the U.S. did encourage the opposition to go to Moscow, summed up the administration�s predicament when she said �we believe anything that get us towards real progress is good�. Anything?
The Obama administration is supporting another United Nations proposal to have local cease fires, or a �freeze� in the fighting on sensitive fronts beginning with the complex and tragic siege of Aleppo. The U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura has been pushing this approach trying to make Aleppo a model for future cease fires, that could pave the way to a broad cease fire and political settlement, �I will continue, I can tell you, pushing for Aleppo, because Aleppo has become an iconic example of where things could start sending the best signal�. It is worth noting here, that most such cease fire arrangements in the past were temporary, and/or abused by the Assad regime and led to the fall of besieged neighborhoods. Still, Secretary Kerry welcomed this approach also. The assumption of the United Nations, the U.S. and the Russians is that the Syrians are exhausted, and horrified by the savagery of ISIS and widening foreign interventions in their country, that they would sue for a negotiated solution that would keep Assad in power.
Russian diplomacy and Iranian muscle
The Obama administration is using the stunning rise of ISIS last summer and its invasion and occupation of Western Iraq, and its expansion in Syria as the main reason for its clear albeit quiet and implicit change in attitude towards Assad remaining in power. For the Obama administration, removing Assad from power is no longer a priority. And judging by the statements of Assad�s henchmen, they have seen the shift and they have convinced themselves that they will prevail.
Much has been made recently of Washington�s decision to invest in a new program to train and equip 5000 Syrian fighters in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar beginning this spring. However, the U.S. will not be training them and equipping them to fight the Assad regime (except in self-defense) but to fight ISIS. While the moderate opposition see ISIS as a mortal threat, they are more convinced that ISIS will not be defeated if Assad (their biggest recruiter) remains in power. For the moderate opposition fighters to accept U.S. training and arms, solely to fight ISIS and not fight the Assad regime would expose them to criticism and accusations of betrayal.
The U.S. is increasingly relying on Russian �diplomacy� to contain the conflict in Syria, so that Assad�s forces with considerable Iranian �muscle�, in the form of advisors, special Revolutionary Guards forces and the storm troopers of the Lebanese Hezbollah to do battle against ISIS and other radical Sunni groups. There is a diabolical unstated arrangement whereby, the Syrian air force will continue to terrorize the civilians with its barrel bombs, and at the same time sharing Syria�s air space with American and other allied air forces conducting raids against ISIS forces and positions. This arrangement benefits the Syrian regime first and foremost. In Iraq, sometimes the Iranian air force shares Iraqi airspace with allied air forces in bombing ISIS positions and personnel. On the ground, the real �deciders� in Iraq are Iranian advisors under the supervision of General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force, who acts as Iran�s actual Viceroy in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
Betrayal, Obama style
President Obama is very defensive when he is asked whether his retreat from his threats to punish the Assad regime has contributed to Syria�s agony. And every time he addresses this issue, he engages in exaggerating, dissembling and spinning.
He always insinuates that his critics wanted him to �invade� Syria, when in fact no serious observer of Syria has asked for such a thing. Last week, Obama was at it again during a joint press conference with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Obama was asked whether his decision not to intervene in Syria has attracted foreign fighters, he answered that this �mischaracterizes our position. We haven�t been standing on the sidelines. It�s true we did not invade Syria�� as if an invasion was ever a serious option. These fake protestations don�t hide the fact that the Obama administration sees Iran now as a valuable if unofficial ally in the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
The cause of helping the Syrian people free themselves from the tyranny of the Assad regime is no longer urgent or a priority. President Obama would have been in a much better position, morally, had he not betrayed his own commitments and promises to the Syrian people. Obama will try to cover his betrayal by claiming that he is still helping the Syrian people. He may be immune to any moral anguish, because of his betrayal and because of his actions or inactions in Syria. But he cannot escape Syria�s sorrows being part of his legacy.

What was behind Israel�s strike in Syria that killed an Iranian general?
By REUTERS/01/24/2015
Downplaying the attack would offer Tehran a way to avoid a spiral of escalation that neither country needs or wants.
On Sunday, an Israeli drone strike in southern Syria left six Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel dead � including an Iranian senior general and the son of the late external operations chief for Hezbollah. It also left a host of questions in its wake.
Was the strike a brilliantly executed Israeli disruption of an imminent attack planned by Hezbollah and Iran? Or a routine interdiction of a Hezbollah convoy that inadvertently killed several Iranians and a member of a prominent Hezbollah family?
Both versions, attributed to unnamed security sources within the Israeli defense establishment, were reported as details of the strike became known. While both are plausible, only one can be right. Though we cannot say which that is, we can point out the distinct purposes both narratives serve.
An Israeli narrative designed to downplay the drone strike and emphasize the inadvertent nature of the Iranian deaths would be an attempt to signal to Iran that the attack didn�t represent a deliberate escalation of the ongoing tensions between the two countries.
The high toll on the Iranian side has drawn the televised promise of retaliation against Israel from a senior Iranian commander, who pledged the release of �ruinous thunderbolts.�
Downplaying the attack would offer Tehran a way to avoid a spiral of escalation that neither country needs or wants. If Iran acceded to this logic, Israel would have scored a major � if accidental � hit. And it would be spared a response from Iran, for now.
The other narrative, that the strike deliberately targeted the Iranian contingent and Hezbollah, is governed by an alternative logic.
Hasan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, recently declared that Lebanon and Syria are now one unified and geographically contiguous front against Israel. Before the Syrian civil war, no statement along these lines would have been possible, since the Assad regime prevented agressive actions against Israel on its side of the border. But times have changed.
Amid the anarchy of an ongoing civil war, Assad can no longer exercise the sort of control he once did. This could let Iran play a very dangerous game on Israel�s north-eastern flank.
If Hezbollah launched rockets against Israel from inside Syria, Israel might find itself unsure of who to retaliate against. This would be especially the case if Hezbollah managed to obscure the origin of the rockets and the crews that launched them. Thus, from an Iranian perspective, the Syrian front against Israel would be a tremendous gift. From the vantage point of Jerusalem, Israel could ill afford to let this happen. The presence of such a senior Iranian officer in a highly strategic location would have been read by Israel as Iran staking out its territorial claim and preparing for a second front, thus requiring a strong response. This could explain Sunday�s strike.
That leaves one last question: why attack the Iranians now?
Perhaps, according to the former commander of Israel�s southern front, Yoav Galant, timing was dictated by the Israeli election cycle. As the number two man in the rising Kulanu party, it might be prudent simply to chalk up this claim to his need to challenge Prime Minister Netanyahu�s motivations.
And perhaps that is all it is. Although Galant has since retracted his accusation, the Israeli newspaper Ha�aretz has examined the record of especially audacious military initiatives in Israel�s history with an eye on the political calendar. What the reporter discovered was that the June 1981 strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak; the 1996 invasion of Lebanon; the 2009 invasion of Gaza; and the 2012 Gaza war were all launched when the incumbent prime minister faced a close election, or there was a political reputation at stake. There�s an organic link between domestic politics and foreign policy in virtually all countries, so this wouldn�t necessarily be a huge surprise. With less than two months to election day, polls now show a slightly leftward tilt away from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether Galant is right about his motives for the attacks can�t be known. But against the historical background, it�s not impossible that Galant�s claim sheds light on the timing of the strike. One way or the other, tensions between Israel and Iran are certain to rise.