Agrégateur de flux

A week ago, Washington was abuzz with talk about the negotiations between President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to normalize Israeli-Saudi ties in return for a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty.

The conventional wisdom at that time was that a mega-deal could be concluded early next year and would constitute a major diplomatic coup and geostrategic game changer.

Indeed, a peace agreement between a leading Islamic power, joined by other Arab countries, and the Jewish State, that would also involve a security agreement between Washington and Riyadh could have helped contain Iran and reinforce the American alliances with Saudi Arabia and Israel.

It would have created a pro-American Middle Eastern military and economic bloc powered by the energy resources of the Persian Gulf and Israel’s high-tech industries and scientific centers. That would have been the most effective way to respond to the threat posed by Iran and its regional satellites.

But in the aftermath of Saturday’s surprise attack by Hamas fighters on Israel, it is hard to imagine Saudi-Israeli peace talks progressing. This suggests that Hamas launched the assault to disrupt the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. From a geopolitical perspective, if there had been a Saudi-Israeli agreement, the power balance between Iran and Saudi Arabia would have shifted significantly in favor of the U.S.-aligned Saudi Arabia and Israel.

In addition to a formal security treaty with the United States, the Saudis would have had access to U.S. nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment, making it possible for them to close in on Iran’s nuclear threshold advantage.

Under present conditions of all-out war by Israel on Hamas and the prospect of a bloody incursion into Gaza by the Israeli Defense Force, the conventional wisdom is now that it is unthinkable for Saudi Arabia to proceed with normalization of relations with Israel. This could be a severe blow to the Biden administration’s foreign policy.

Cui Bono? Iran. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian security officials helped the Hamas attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday. Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land, and sea incursions, reported the Journal on Sunday.

Hamas and the IRGC worked out the operational details during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon.

Iran has an obvious interest in hurling a torpedo at the American strategy of creating a chain of American allies linking three key choke points of global trade—the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab El Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea.

In a way, what is emerging now in the Middle East is a new and very fragile balance of power under which the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia face an Iran-led bloc that includes Hamas and Hezbollah.

The concern is that if Israel, as expected, launches a ground attack into the Gaza Strip, Iran could order its Hezbollah proxies to open a new front in the war with Israel in the north, eventually igniting a regional war involving Israel and Iran.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Sunday that he had ordered American military ships, including an aircraft carrier and additional aircraft, to move closer to the eastern Mediterranean, sending a clear warning to Iran not to take steps that could lead to a multi-front war with Israel, and perhaps to direct U.S. military intervention in support of the Israelis, creating the conditions for an all-out war in the Middle East.

The Iranians may assume that, distracted by the war in Ukraine and China’s military challenge in East Asia, the Americans would lack the resources and the political will for a new military intervention in the Middle East.

The Iranians may test this assumption and order their Hezbollah proxy to attack Israel just as it is trying to destroy Hamas’ infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. This would place Israel under enormous pressure, especially if the Lebanese-Shia para-military decided to attack civilian centers inside Israel, including Tel Aviv.

Under these conditions, Israel may directly strike the Islamic Republic itself and—depending on the Iranian response—threaten the use of its nuclear weapons.

To avert this dangerous scenario, the United States and its European allies should clarify that they would not allow Iran to intervene in the war in the Levant and demand that it tame its Hezbollah allies. 

At the same time, the Americans should discuss with the Israelis ways to deliver a military blow to Hamas, including a possible ground incursion into the Gaza Strip to wipe out the Hamas command structure with the fewest possible Palestinian civilian casualties.

Moreover, a full-blown Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip would benefit Iran by drawing the Israelis into a deadly military quagmire, with the Iranians directing Palestinian operations against the Israeli occupier.

If anything, the defeat of Hamas could provide an opportunity for a regime change in Gaza under which the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) takes control of the area. Financial support from the Saudis and other Arab oil states could help reconstruct the Gaza Strip and a multinational Arab force led by Egypt and possibly establish order there.

That could open the road to the renewal of the American-sponsored talks to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and shift the balance of power again from the Iranian-led bloc to America and its regional allies.

Dr. Leon Hadar is a contributing editor with The National Interest, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) in Philadelphia, and a former research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He has taught at American University in Washington, DC, and the University of Maryland, College Park. A columnist and blogger with Haaretz (Israel) and Washington correspondent for the Business Times of Singapore, he is a former United Nations bureau chief for the Jerusalem Post.

Image: Shutterstock.

The October 7 attack by the terrorist group Hamas is unprecedented in Israeli history, leaving over 900 dead and hundreds of civilians kidnapped. Missiles from the Gaza Strip reached as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The total death toll now is headed toward 2,000. Reportedly, eleven U.S. citizens have been killed. The aggression has been described as Israel’s 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rightly declared that Israel is in a state of war to end Hamas’ capacity to fight. The Israeli Air Force has begun targeting Hamas sites in Gaza. Yet, alongside this resolve to defeat its enemy, Israel will have to grapple with its own military and intelligence failures that allowed this tragedy to occur. Lessons will be drawn for policy and politics in the ongoing Palestinian conflict.

It is also time for the United States to draw its own lessons that go far beyond Israel and the Palestinians. The Hamas attack took place at the behest of and with the material support of Iran, a sworn enemy of the United States. In other words, one of America’s closest allies was attacked by one of our most vicious opponents, acting through one of its puppet proxies. The White House must hold Iran responsible. President Biden chose to declare the crown prince of Saudi Arabia a “pariah” because of the murder of one journalist. What will be his response to the murder of 900 Israelis, plus the hundreds captive and the thousand wounded? The fiction of Iranian innocence has become obscene.

Recognizing the regime in Iran as the enemy that it is (the Islamic Republic has never pretended otherwise since the Islamic Revolution of 1979) is only the first step Washington must take to craft a realist foreign policy adequate to the historical moment. The United States faces an axis of adversaries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. No matter how these regimes differ among themselves and despite divergent regional ambitions, all pursue the goal of reducing the power of the United States and its allies. Beijing wants to push Washington out of the western Pacific, while Moscow plans to reassert its hegemony in Central Europe and the Black Sea. Tehran wants to dominate the Middle East and the Muslim world, and Pyongyang’s target is northeast Asia, including South Korea and Japan. Together, they want to drive the United States back to the Western Hemisphere. In the wake of America’s embarrassing exit from Afghanistan, Russia took the next step with the invasion of Ukraine. Iran has followed by way of the Hamas attack on Israel. It isn’t crazy to think that such unanswered aggressions will embolden China to make a move against Taiwan next.

Against those adversaries, the United States must construct a new effective security alliance. It will include democracies and non-democracies because the security interest necessarily overrides our commitment to the value of democracy. If we lose security, all our values cease to be relevant. South Korea, Japan, and Australia, our democratic partners, can be linked to Vietnam as a bulwark against China and North Korea. India will play a vital role despite criticisms of its Hindu nationalism. Israeli democracy and the Saudi monarchy are crucial partners, as will NATO ally Turkey if we can mend our fences. The countries on the eastern front of the European Union understand the threat from Russia and will join eagerly. Whether the free riders in Western Europe participate remains to be seen.

The principle grounding this alliance will be a realist commitment to security against the revisionist powers, not the vacuous idealism of the “democracy summits” of the current administration. Instead of haranguing the Saudis about liberal reforms to meet our taste, we should offer a security guarantee contingent on their refraining from partnering with Russia in the oil market and eschewing future entanglements with China. Similarly, we should stop badgering the Israelis to make pointless concessions to Hamas—pointless because no concession ever will be enough. The Hamas attack and hostage seizure show that their real goal is the ethnic cleansing of all Israelis. Our goal with Israel instead should be that it hermetically seals China out of its advanced technology sector. Mutatis mutandis across the alliance: security trumps values in this time of war.

Our enemies are tag teaming us, dealing us blow after blow: Afghanistan, Ukraine, Israel. They are playing great power competition while Washington dithers. The October 7 attack was a rupture for Israel, but it is now the ultimate test for the Biden administration. Will President Biden go down in history as the weak old man who embraced the Afghanistan defeat, failed to provide Ukraine with weaponry quickly enough, and decided to shower the Iranian regime with $6 billion while it suppresses its own people and spreads chaos throughout the region? Or will Biden dare to become the President who finally holds the regime in Tehran accountable for its crimes? That means responding to the attack on America’s ally by punishing Iran. This may be the last moment before it becomes a nuclear power, a potential North Korea looming over the Middle East and Central Asia. It is also a regime that has lost legitimacy in the eyes of its own population.

However, the key reason for America to act against Iran now is to make it clear to our adversaries that their acts of aggression—whether via proxies or not—come at a cost. In this great power competition, we should play to win.

Russell A. Berman is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Professor of Humanities at Stanford. 

Kiron Skinner is the Taube Professor of International Relations and Politics at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and the W. Glenn Campbell Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She served as director of the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning from 2018–2019.  She tweets at @kironskinner.

Image: Shutterstock.

Each time we hop in the grey SUV in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, the French battle cry “La Marseillaise” blasts from the radio.

Michael Sushko, an advisor to the Zaporizhzhia governor and my driver, grins and winks as he tears down the city’s main drag. Zaporizhzhia, a sleepy industrial city, sits one hour from the front and serves as a jumping-off point for Ukraine’s soldiers. 

There are signs of war everywhere. At least three military supply stores dot the main street, and there’s visible damage to hotels, residential buildings, and factories. 

Russia occupies almost seventy percent of the Zaporizhzhia region, but as I discovered during a recent visit, the locals remain defiant and utterly determined to retake their land. Fierce battles continue to rage across the Zaporizhzhia region as Ukraine attempts to seize its lands in a counteroffensive that began in June.

My Visit to Ukraine

To gain a better understanding of the Ukraine war, I traveled to the front together with Andrey Liscovich. Liscovich was described in early October in Wired as “a Victorian with an iPhone” and an integral part of a new “military-retail complex” that seeks to supply Ukraine with consumer-grade tech. I was fortunate to have this savvy entrepreneur as my guide. We traveled to the region on an overnight train from Kyiv. Upon arriving at the station, where local police methodically checked passports, we got caught up in a large crowd. 

Despite his status as an informal advisor to Ukraine’s General Staff, Liscovich was concerned about being searched. The local police asked him if he was married. He shook his head, changed the subject, and pointed to my US passport, which seemed to help. There are countless videos of men being mobilized at train stations in provincial cities while life in Kyiv continues unchanged. 

When the war started in February 2022, Liscovich, 38, was living in San Francisco and close to launching a new startup. On February 26, the former tech CEO boarded a flight, walked across the Polish-Ukrainian border, and took a series of buses, trains, and even hitchhiking to travel to his boyhood home. His parents were evacuating, moving west, while he was moving east but they were unaware of his movements. 

After arriving in Zaporizhzhia, Liscovich tried to enlist, but he was rejected. With his Harvard PhD, he was deemed too valuable to send into combat. Instead, he was tasked with solving the region’s serious supply chain shortages. The guys who were volunteering wore track pants and athletic shoes and were not ready for war. So the bulky businessman of Ukrainian Jewish heritage did what he does best: organize and build a team. 

At its height, the Ukraine Defense Fund, Liscovich’s NGO, had thirty volunteers coordinating logistics and raising money. Liscovich was the only one in Ukraine. “I have never worked harder,” he recalled. Indeed, Liscovich went into overdrive, sleeping 2-3 hours every night during March 2022.

Altogether, he has brought in more than $100 million in non-lethal assistance to “speed up the kill chain,” a phrase Liscovich never tires of repeating. Non-lethal aid is everything that doesn’t go boom, and it increases the lethality and efficacy of Ukraine’s armed forces. 

Mykola Vinnichenko, head of the Orikhiv military administration, inspects the city well that provides 1,200 remaining civilians with fresh drinking water. Two people were recently killed at the well. Image Credit: Author.

The office of Ukraine Defense Fund, or “the campus,” as Liscovich calls it with its corrugated metal siding, looks more like my storage facility in suburban DC than the headquarters of one of the most important NGOs in Ukraine. From the bare room, one can see the Ukrainian flag flying over the local regional headquarters and pollution billowing from Zaporizhzhia’s metallurgical plants. It would be difficult to find a less inspiring view or one more dissimilar from his digs in San Francisco.

When Zaporizhzhia came under heavy missile fire, Liscovich decamped to a small village and slept on a couch in a wine cellar, giving interviews and coordinating the delivery of supplies. Mice kept him company.

Russia destroyed the bus station in Orikhiv, Ukraine—image taken October 7th by author. 

Liscovich embodies the low-key tenacious spirit of this otherwise utterly forgettable city in eastern Ukraine. I saw this attitude again and again. When I asked Ruslan Movchan, deputy head of the Zaporizhzhia region, what plans and programs he had in mind to keep people’s spirits up during another long winter, he looked at me like I was barking mad. “We don’t need that stuff,” he said. What they need are large tents as well as bomb shelters for schools. 

In the Zaporizhzhia region, schools remain closed, and children are taught online. Movchan hopes to reopen schools in a hybrid format in January if security conditions allow and the regional government can build sufficient bomb shelters. He estimates that the region needs no fewer than 100. Worst case scenario, Movchan is preparing for 2-3 weeks of blackouts this winter. He worries less about the Russians hitting the city’s dam or a mistake at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant than about the slow pace of the counteroffensive. He expects the Ukrainian side to liberate three more settlements in the coming weeks.

A residential apartment building in Orikhiv, Ukraine, from Oct 7th. Image Credit: Author.

At Palyanycia, an NGO started in 2022, I visited a warehouse where women are transforming old police Kevlar from the United States into new body armor. Led by Olena, a clothes designer before the war, the team worked in three shifts at the height of the war. The pace has slowed; Lena explained that they are all exhausted. She laughed as she showed me the dog body armor her team had fashioned, not to mention body armor for a baby. They recently received bolts of fabric from Europe that help to conceal body temperature so that Russian soldiers cannot detect Ukrainian soldiers with thermal scopes.

As the war continues, so too has the nature of the conflict. Now it’s all about drones. Ukraine plans to spend more than $1 billion on drones in 2023 alone. At another Palatnisya location, I watched Ukrainian soldiers maneuver drones around trees both on and off screens. It takes at least three weeks to train a pilot. Flying a drone on the front in Ukraine requires a pilot’s steely demeanor and then some. Pilots must get close to the frontlines. They are often detected by the enemy and have to flee immediately. 

After a quick dinner, I contemplate my sleeping choices and start to get anxious. I can sleep in Zaporizhzhia, where hotels have been hit or a nearby village. We headed for the Villa de Vino, a winery and ecolodge that was recently built to give all Ukrainians a brief respite from the war. Ukraine gives its troops thirty days of leave per year, although those days can’t be taken all at once. The long journey from eastern to Western Ukraine means that many soldiers have only a few days to reconnect with their families before they head back to the front. Divorce afflicts many families with no end to the war in sight and the WHO expects more than half of Ukrainians to have PTSD by the war’s end. 

Ruslan Lopatko, a winemaker, spotted an opportunity. Now soldiers can drive an hour from the front and relax for their full leave. “There are many ways to serve. This is how I serve,” he said. 

Lopatko, who previously worked in construction and has captained yachts around the world, built a series of small, comfortable cottages outfitted with a queen bed, colorful rugs, immaculate bathrooms and blackout curtains. Bald and over six feet, Ruslan grabbed my bag and handed me a glass of mulled wine while he showed off his petting zoo--outfitted with llamas and a donkey. In a week or so, Ruslan plans to open a fusion restaurant at the villa serving Pad Thai and old Ukrainian staples. 

Getting Closer to the Frontlines 

I can hardly believe that I’m less than an hour from the front. Ruslan and his girlfriend invited us into their home, which looks like a replica of Ukrainian bard Taras Shevchenko’s. Ruslan fired up delicious halloumi cheese while his pet raccoon (not native to Ukraine) taunted his chinchilla. Ruslan settled in with another glass of mulled wine and explained the radical thinking behind the villa.

“In spite of the war we will be happy. We will build. We believe in Ukraine’s victory.”

Early the next morning, Mykola Vinnichenko, head of the Orikhiv military administration, picked us up and we headed to the frontline. 

Heavy fighting has raged in Orikhiv for months. We turned off the WiFi on our phones as we sped closer and closer to Orikhiv, a town with 13,000 inhabitants before the war. Only 1,200 civilians remain behind. 

We pull over and Mykola asked for my coffee order as we put our body armor on.

“Where’s yours?” Liscovich asked. 

“He who is destined to drown will not be hanged,” Mykola said. 

Liscovich laughed. I can’t help but pray. Dark humor abounds in eastern Ukraine.

A few minutes later, we pulled into Orikhiv. We couldn’t find a single building that had not been heavily shelled. Russia destroyed the school— one of the top 100 in Ukraine — the hospital and the church. Mykola took us to his house. He went to work one hour before it was destroyed. An enamel pot with strawberries still sits at the ready on the stove. 

Mykola Vinnichenko, head of the Orikhiv military administration, knows the names and stories of all remaining residents. Here, he stops to check on a pensioner. Image Credit: Author.

Three stores remain open. The best-sellers are all stimulants: chocolate, coffee and cigarettes. A small market still functions, and soldiers joked with the elderly ladies selling piroshki. The herbs were fresh. Next we circled a large apartment building that looked empty. It’s not. We hear the rumble of a generator, and Mykola says that some Ukrainian soldiers are living in the basement. 

An elderly man riding a bicycle approached Mykola. He had been going to the well to fill his jug. Mykola teased him and asked if he needed anything. He knows the name and story of everyone who remains behind. Some are too old to move, while others worry that their homes will be pillaged. Some may want the Russians to move in. 

After he stubbed out his cigarette, we visited a dank, windowless basement shelter that houses about twenty senior citizens. There was no toilet or running water. Each resident has transformed a storage space into a bedroom fit with a padlock. One woman proudly showed me her bedroom, outfitted with a fuzzy pink blanket and an electric kettle. She and her husband live there on twin mattresses. She said that everyone gets along well in spite of the cramped quarters. People go home to bathe, do laundry, and use the toilet.

Mykola’s office, once an attractive tangerine-colored building across the street from the police station, serves as the invincibility center, a community center where people can warm up, see a doctor, get medicine, pick up their mail, and queue for the bus to neighboring Zaporizhzhia. 

That day the power was not working as residents started to arrive at 8 am to power their phones.

Mykola fiddled with power banks and then went outside to turn on the generator. A few moments later, the basement shelter was lit. 

It was time to go. The Russians are too lazy to shell the city early on Saturday morning, but it’s nearing 8:30 am, and they will soon begin their relentless attacks. 

Mykola dropped us off at the hotel in Zaporizhzhia and I began to chuckle. Yesterday I had been too scared to sleep there. Now, Zaporizhzhia felt like a bunker.

Liscovich resumed his duties as tour guide, unfazed by what we saw. Not me. I couldn’t follow anything he said. It was impossible to make sense of the degradation of Orikhiv and the relative calm of Zaporizhzhia.

Over lunch, a Ukrainian medic put my feelings into words: “We are living two lives.” 

Melinda Haring is a Senior Advisor at Razom for Ukraine and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. She tweets @melindaharing.Haring is also a Contributing Editor to this publication. 

All images are original and taken by author in her travels through Ukraine. 

On Sunday, September 10, Tropical Storm Daniel triggered Libya’s deadliest flooding in over a century. According to a UN report, at least 11,300 people have died, with over 10,000 still missing. 

In the first days after the tragedy that struck cities in the eastern province of Libya, with the city of Derna suffering the greatest damage, we emphasized the importance of saving as many lives as possible while honoring the dead with proper burials.

These were the immediate priorities given the exceptional circumstances that Libya faced. We knew, however, that these priorities would be made even more challenging due to the currently dire condition of much of Libya’s physical infrastructure. So, despite the heroism, self-sacrifice, and courage of the Libyan rescue and emergency teams, they found themselves predictably entangled in the chaos and confusion resulting from systemic corruption and the complete collapse of state institutions throughout Libya.

This systemic corruption and collapse, which we have warned about for several years, is now fully and tragically evident to the Libyan people and the world. It is the result of politicians, at every level of the state, administering the country’s affairs for their personal financial interests rather than the wellbeing of ordinary Libyans. That there was not even the most basic emergency planning in place to deal with the immediate consequences of the flooding displays the systemic breakdown in administrative capability and planning throughout the country. 

Libyans are filled with a profound sense of loss and the painful realization that a national tragedy could have been avoided if Libya had been better governed. Appropriately, they are pointing the finger of accusation at the agents of corruption who continue to hold the destiny and the livelihoods of Libyans in their hands. They have dominated the political scene in Libya for many years, exploiting their position only for personal gain, becoming now the main suspects in this national catastrophe for which thousands of innocent victims paid the ultimate price.

There have been several attempts in the past few years of political “reshuffling” to catalyze a successful political process in Libya. But these attempts have produced nothing. We can expect more such attempts in the coming months, none of which we believe will be able to resolve Libya’s fundamental problems.  

Whatever deal is struck between the political incumbents, under the watch of the international community and led by certain powers whose ambition is to strengthen their foothold in Libya, we fear will only perpetuate the Libyan state’s demise. This will further intensify the political “empty space” or vacuum in Libya that is being filled by aggressive actors that risk the security and wellbeing of not just our country but Europe, Africa, and ultimately, the rest of the world. Due to its location and significant natural resources, Libya matters. Why else would so many competing interests vie for influence and control over it?

In this context, to protect Derna and the rest of the affected cities and villages in the Green Mountain region from further exploitation, Libyans understandably called for an international investigation, as well as independent international supervision, in partnership with the Libyan people, for managing the continuing rescue and reconstruction efforts. However, it must be remembered that international political efforts to date have been less than satisfactory. 

The best solution in Libya will not come from the formation of an international supervisory committee to reconstruct and revive a specific city. Every city in Libya is another Derna waiting to happen. Due to the collapse of institutions and the absence of transparent governance, all regions of Libya are at risk of becoming disaster areas at any moment.

The root of the problem since the first Libyan civil war in 2011 is the imposition of political structures that lack situational context. Libya is a factional nation with competing affiliations to tribe, city, region, and ideology. Ill-conceived political structures of the past twelve years have simply reflected and deepened these divisions within society rather than create the necessary binding glue for a sufficient united political culture to emerge. These deepening divisions resulted in a multilateral second civil war in Libya between 2014–2020 and continue today to fuel deadly factional conflicts and the pervasive political and institutional dysfunction that breed corruption and national demise.

The rescue that my country needs today is not the continuation of the political experiments and failures of the past years but the return of a legitimate and constitutional state as represented by Libya’s own constitutional monarchy. Our constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary democracy established on December 24, 1951, via a written constitution drafted by the Libyan National Assembly with the support of the United Nations, is grounded in Libyan history and national identity, with well-functioning institutions governed by law. 

It emerged from the ravages of World War II and provided a stable, popular, and effective accommodation between rival parties in Libya. It united competing factions, split in ways similar to Libya today, and led to a period referred to by Libyans as our country’s “golden years” in terms of social, economic, and political progress. This solution is again rising in popularity among ordinary Libyans. It needs more consideration, especially by outside international players, who remain cynically wedded to their corrupt and ineffective affiliations, despite clear evidence that this strategy has resulted only in abject failure for over a decade.

While Libya and its people will, of course, need all possible international support, we will only rebuild our country and protect our people’s wellbeing by restoring transparency and integrity to our political system. Shaping a brighter future for our nation, which includes bringing to justice all those who have neglected or manipulated Libya’s destiny, begins with restoring Libya’s democratic and constitutional monarchy, the only one with the necessary historic legitimacy to bring our people together once again.

His Royal Highness Mohammed el-Senussi is the crown prince of Libya.

Image: Shutterstock. 

On the sidelines of the G20 summit meeting in New Delhi on September 8–9, the United States, India, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Italy, France, Germany, and the EU together clinched a significant strategic connectivity agreement, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).

IMEC, a multimodal connectivity project comprising rail and sea components, includes an eastern corridor connecting India with West Asia by sea, followed by a northern corridor connecting West Asia with Europe. According to the White House fact sheet, this ambitious economic corridor aims to connect commercial hubs, lay undersea cables, facilitate the development and export of clean energy, expand telecommunication lines and energy grids, promote clean energy technology, and enhance Internet access for local communities. With its cost-effective cross-border ship-to-rail transit, this corridor is expected to complement the existing sea and road routes with rail routes and set up high-speed data cables and energy pipelines.

India’s former envoy to many West Asian countries, Ambassador Anil Trigunayat, suggested in an interview that IMEC has immense potential to build robust infrastructure and trade networks, generate jobs, boost manufacturing, ensure food and energy security, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Though many details are still in the works, IMEC will connect Haifa (Israel) and Piraeus (Greece) with the Middle Eastern ports of Fujairah, Jebel Ali, and Abu Dhabi (all in the UAE), and Dammam and Ras Al Khair (both in Saudi Arabia). These ports will, in turn, connect with the Mundra, Kandla, and Jawaharlal Nehru Ports in India. 

The current traffic from India to Europe goes through the sea route, primarily through the Suez Canal corridor. IMEC can serve as an alternative and complementary economic corridor, which, according to the European Commission’s statistics, is likely to reduce travel time by 40 percent and costs by 30 percent. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi called the project “a testament to human endeavor and unity across continents,” and U.S. President Joe Biden hailed it as a “real big deal.” The United States and Europe, with their robust economies, and the Gulf states, with their massive sovereign wealth funds, are expected to contribute generously to the project’s finances. However, the most critical aspects of this project are not economic but geopolitical. IMEC could counter China’s landmark Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and, by extension, the PRC’s strategic footprint in the Middle East.

The Geopolitics of IMEC

Beijing’s burgeoning ties with the Middle East have not pleased Washington. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, and Qatar are already members of BRI. Though Israel is formally not a BRI member, China operates the port terminal in Haifa and has made major investments in infrastructure, construction, and technology in Israel. Chinese companies are bidding for a railway line contract in the country’s center. Americans have objected to Chinese presence at Haifa port as the U.S. Navy’s Sixth fleet regularly docks there, making them highly vulnerable to Chinese bugging and surveillance. Besides, the United States has uneasy relations with Turkey and Qatar owing to their sympathies with Islamist actors; China’s warming up to them goes a step ahead in denting U.S. influence in the Middle East. Israel initially welcomed Chinese investments but is alarmed by China’s strengthening ties with Iran. Notably, in March 2021, China signed a twenty-five-year-long strategic cooperation accord with Iran to boost its investments in Iranian energy, infrastructure, and defense sectors. In addition, IMEC offers Israel an additional reason for strengthening its relations with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

For India, IMEC is paramount for its energy and expatriate security, as New Delhi imports 53 percent of its oil and 41 percent of its gas from West Asia. The region is also home to 8.5 million Indian migrant workers. In 2018, out of India’s total remittances of $78.6 billion, $48.6 billion flowed from six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The UAE is India’s third largest trading partner, and the Saudis are its fourth. With its rapidly growing economy and strong credit enabling it to borrow from global financial institutions, it can also contribute to IMEC significantly on its own. With Israel, India has a strong economic and strategic partnership. These ties have the advantage of being historical, civilizational, and organic.

With IMEC’s European stakeholders and the United States, New Delhi enjoys robust ties and a firm consensus to counter China’s revisionist designs, debt-trap diplomacy, strategic acquisitions, and influence operations, which often come under the garb of the BRI. India has opposed BRI since its inception because it passes through Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), which falls under the territorial jurisdiction of India. Further, New Delhi understands how China accomplished its strategic objectives through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in PoK and Baluchistan’s Gwadar. To offset them, New Delhi has already invested in strategic connectivity projects like Chahbahar Port (to counter China’s Gwadar) and the International North-South Transport Corridor (INST).

In any case, China’s BRI is becoming unpopular throughout the region due to its dubious clauses and debt traps, resulting in some partner countries facing economic downturns, crises, and the eventual surrender of strategic assets. China’s domestic financial woes are also hurting its economic credibility. IMEC offers an alternative that is transparent, participatory, and respectful of territorial sovereignty and integrity. Notably, it is largely led by democratic nations believing in financial responsibility, economic viability, and standards confirming environmental and ecological safeguards.

New “Spice Corridor” or Regional Pipedream?

However, despite the encouraging geopolitics, IMEC is less feasible than it appears on paper. On a closer examination of the project, several potential bottlenecks emerge, which could prevent its realization and success. Most importantly, IMEC members like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Italy are members of BRI, and Israel has strong economic ties with China. Saudi-Israeli friction could dampen its prospects. Jordan has a highly unstable security environment and economy due to more than three million Syrian refugees living there. In Israel, IMEC’s proximity to the West Bank makes it vulnerable to terrorist attacks. 

A project like IMEC requires stakeholders to agree on technical details, finance, logistics, and other aspects of the proposed infrastructure projects. The experience of economic and trade corridors like INST (International North-South Transport Corridor), Iraq Development Corridor, North-South Corridor, Europe-Caucasus-Asia Corridor, Trans Caspian Corridor, and Northern Sea Route shows that economic corridors involving multiple decision-making stakeholders are difficult to operationalize. None of the above corridors are yet fully operational.

India presents its own set of problems. It has only a few international standard ports, like Mundra and Nhava Sheva—both built by the Emiratis. India possesses a huge population but lacks a skilled workforce, technological and manufacturing base, and business-friendly bureaucracy. 

The financing behind IMEC is also unclear. Although member countries have already announced $20 billion for IMEC, the response from the European stakeholders is not necessarily encouraging. In fact, countries like Italy, Germany, and France find it very challenging to decouple from China. Estimates suggest that roughly $3 to $8 billion will be needed to develop each IMEC component. However, no concrete decisions have been made about the allocation.

Also, it can be argued that most of the route in IMEC is through sea, so what is the rationale behind operationalizing rail and road networks? India already has a flourishing sea trade with West Asia. What is the need to have rail and road networks? The costs of loading and unloading and then again loading and unloading will be high and very time-consuming vis-à-vis a direct sea route from India to Europe. Further, compared to China, which constitutes 16.2 percent of the EU’s total trade in goods, India’s European trade pales at 2 percent.

However, one must note that strategic connectivity is crucial to trade and economic progress. Hence, it needs to be diversified. Sole reliance on sea routes increases vulnerability in the event of sanctions, naval blockades, and piracy.  Moreover, the Middle East’s vast distances are knit together by only a few rail routes. As mentioned earlier, the IMEC is expected to reduce travel time by 40 percent and costs by 30 percent. This is likely to come from the shortening of distances by constructing rail routes. Also, the rail connectivity between Saudi Arabia and Israel could encourage a future normalization deal and economic partnership.

Hence, despite the considerable obstacles, IMEC is an idea worth exploring. An increasingly volatile world needs alternate strategic routes and supply chains. After the Abraham Accords, countries like the UAE and Israel, with huge investment potential, plan to invest in joint chip manufacturing, Electronic Vehicles (EVs), and EV batteries. The Arabian Peninsula and Jordan have a vast solar energy potential. With its fifth-largest economy, huge population, domestic market, and stable security conditions, India offers excellent investment and consumption opportunities. Hence, the project is worth investing time, energy, and financial resources. It is also pertinent in countering BRI, just as it wanes in popularity. A financially powerful and technologically capable multilateral initiative like IMEC could work if it receives enough attention, energy, and resources from its backers.

Dr. Abhinav Pandya is the founder and CEO of Usanas Foundation, an India-based geopolitical and security affairs think-tank, and the author of Radicalization in India: An Exploration. His second book, Terror Financing in Kashmir, will be released soon. He has a Ph.D. from OP Jindal University and an MPA from Cornell University. He tweets at @abhinavpandya.

Image: Shutterstock. 

As Palestinian rockets rain down on Israel this week, killing indiscriminately and terrorizing the population, there are reports worldwide of demonstrations celebrating the slaughter of Israel’s citizens. Perhaps none more so than in Iran, where the government has endorsed the “anti-Zionist resistance” and praised the attack on Israel as a “proud operation” and a “victory.”

Tehran is one of the most significant backers of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas—the perpetrator of the latest assault on Israel that has so far taken more than 900 lives, injured thousands, and resulted in more than 100 taken hostage. While Iran has denied active involvement in helping Hamas perpetrate the assault, and Israel and the United States have yet to definitively determine and acknowledge Iran’s hand in this devastating terrorist invasion of Israel’s sovereign territory, there are literally smoking guns all over the country, and Iran’s fingerprints are clearly on the murder weapons.

Shortly after the first rockets were launched on Saturday, October 7, senior leaders of Hamas and the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah confirmed that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) helped plan the operation and had been meeting with them since August in Lebanon, with the IRGC giving the final go-ahead for the assault last Monday, October 2, in Beirut. Iran has a long history of support for ideologically aligned terrorist groups and violent non-state actors, and the relationship between the IRGC, Hamas, and Hezbollah spans many decades. Therefore, it would be no surprise that Iran has facilitated the latest onslaught against Israel.

The IRGC was established in the aftermath of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a core branch of the Iranian Armed Forces, charged with preserving Islamic ideology and values by operating extraterritorially and extrajudicially. To advance the Revolution’s new theocratic agenda, the IRGC began to deploy agents outside of Iran and to sponsor Islamist militants and terror groups such as Hezbollah—formed in 1982 whose name means the “Party of God” and is considered Iran’s terror proxy in southern Lebanon.

After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei became Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic in 1989, the IRGC began to more formally support other violent non-state actors such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, whose 1988 charter outlines the destruction of Israel as necessary for the establishment of an Islamic state in Palestine. For more than 30 years, Tehran has bolstered Hamas by providing it with a significant portion of its funding and offering military-type training in Iran.

Although Iran has denied orchestrating the latest plot against Israel, claiming that the actions taken by Hamas were “fiercely autonomous,” Hamas and Hezbollah would likely not undertake an initiative of this magnitude without extensive preparation and the involvement and express authorization of Tehran. Furthermore, the claims of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership that the IRGC helped plan the operation out of Lebanon to the north of Israel and Gaza in the south are also consistent with Iran’s often-stated objective to surround and strangle Israel from all sides.

While the search continues for “concrete evidence” of Iran’s involvement in the violent attack on Israel, Tehran’s financing and decades-long support for Hamas should not make it too difficult to find. The United States designated Hamas and Hezbollah as Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 1997, a designation which prohibits providing those groups with material support or resources, knowing that such support would be used to commit a terrorist offense as listed in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. In addition, the United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act of 2000 lists the criteria for proscribing or “outlawing” terrorist organizations and indicates that supporting terrorist groups, including funding, is unlawful.

The criminalization of terror financing underscores that simply supporting terrorism is deemed tantamount to committing the terrorist act itself. For Iran and the IRGC to be culpable, we don’t need to see them pull the trigger—financially supporting and assisting Hamas is sufficient to determine their guilt in the savage murder and maiming of thousands of Israelis. 

In legal parlance, they would be accessories to murder. And that’s what just occurred—Hamas terrorists murdered, kidnapped, and brutalized innocent Israeli civilians. The terror organization is motivated by an Islamist ideology shared by Iran and funded by its regime to advance their common territorial agenda to destroy Israel and establish an Islamic state in her place.

In addition to military retaliation against Hamas and Iran, criminally prosecuting Iranian and IRGC officials under US or UK law for the Hamas attack on Israel and her citizens must be on the table when the time is right, and there is ample international precedent for bringing legal action against supporters of terrorism.

As Israel now plans to hold accountable all actors who are perpetrating this vicious onslaught against her land and people, to root out all enemies, they must look beyond the immediate aggressors of Hamas and cast a wider net. As financiers and supporters, Iran is equally as culpable as Hamas. It must not be allowed to hide behind its proxies and proclaim its innocence of the crimes it has enabled Hamas to commit.

Elizabeth Samson is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and a former Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Dans une déclaration publique signée ce lundi 9 octobre, les agents de l'Office des voies de desserte agricole (OVDA) du Kasaï dénoncent la mauvaise gestion de leur établissement par le directeur provincial.

 Ces agents l'accusent de détournement des fonds, notamment l'argent généré par le bac sur la rivière Lovua et du matériel livré par les partenaires.

Les gouvernements allemand et français se retrouvent, lundi 9 et mardi 10 octobre, à Hambourg pour des rencontres informelles. Objectif : des conversations à bâtons rompus pour tenter de surmonter des divergences entre les deux pays. Visite sur le site d'Airbus, tour en bateau et promenade, mais aussi réunions de travail figurent au menu de ces deux jours. Mais l'ordre du jour a été bouleversé par les attaques du Hamas contre Israël.

Gaza is under siege with an interruption of electricity, gas, water and food supplies, as Israel declares state of war for the first time since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Here’s a mega-recap about the [...]

The post Recap: The First Two Days Of The Israel-Hamas War appeared first on The Aviationist.

Le tribunal militaire de garnison de Goma a condamné soixante-trois prévenus à de lourdes peines ce lundi 9 octobre, dans le cadre du procès relatif à la répression sanglante de Goma enregistrée le 30 août dernier. Huit personnes ont été condamnées à la peine de mort.

En revanche, 52 personnes ont été acquittées.

L’Union européenne annonce pour ce mardi 10 octobre une réunion extraordinaire des 27 ministres des Affaires étrangères afin de faire le point sur la situation en Israël et en Palestine et pour évaluer l’impact de l’offensive du Hamas sur l’implication de l’UE au Proche-Orient. Entretemps, la condamnation unanime des Européens débouche déjà sur une première conséquence tangible : alors que l’UE se targue d’être « le principal bailleur de fonds des Palestiniens », la Commission annonce la suspension, le gel des paiements, pour les aides au développement dont devaient bénéficier les Palestiniens.

« Depuis le début de l'année, neuf personnes en moyenne ont été tuées par jour en République démocratique du Congo par les membres de groupes armés », a déclaré ce lundi 9 octobre la cheffe de la MONUSCO, Bintou Keita, au Conseil des droits de l'homme de l'ONU.

Lors de son intervention au Dialogue interactif renforcé sur la situation des droits de l’homme en République démocratique du Congo, Bintou Keita, a affirmé:

Les nouvelles règles garantiront aux victimes une indemnisation équitable lorsque des produits défectueux leur causent des dommages physiques et psychologiques.
Commission du marché intérieur et de la protection des consommateurs
Commission des affaires juridiques

Source : © Union européenne, 2023 - PE

  

Deux tiers de l’étendue du secteur de Bapere, dans le territoire de Lubero (Nord-Kivu), ne sont pas couverts par le réseau téléphonique. Cette situation présente de nombreuses et graves conséquences, notamment sécuritaire, a indiqué Samuel Kakule Kagheni, président de la société civile de Bapere. 

La "Plateforme de Technologies Stratégiques pour l'Europe" va stimuler les technologies numériques, "zéro net" et biotechnologiques pour faciliter les transitions numérique et climatique.
Commission des budgets
Commission de l'industrie, de la recherche et de l'énergie

Source : © Union européenne, 2023 - PE

Deux des élèves bénéficiaires de ce don, n’ont pas caché leur sentiment de joie et exprimé leur reconnaissance.

Alors que les combats continuent entre l’armée israélienne et le Hamas, au Royaume-Uni, le conflit s’est invité, ce lundi 9 octobre, à la conférence des travaillistes à Liverpool. Et il a réveillé une ancienne querelle.

C’est une petite révolution sur la scène judiciaire, et dans l’Histoire espagnole avec un grand H. Pour la première fois, un homme victime de tortures durant la dictature franquiste a déposé plainte. Et ce, en vertu d’une nouvelle loi sur la mémoire historique qui vient questionner l’amnistie générale qui tenait lieu de règle depuis la mort du général Franco en 1975.