Excerpts: Egypt denies Israeli firm securing Suez Canal.Dangers to
Lebanon.Shiite Sunni unrest continues in Iraq.Iran:Nuclear deal not yet in
sight. France calls U.S. re Iran a suckers deal November 22, 2013

+++SOURCE Ahram Online via Egypt Daily News 22 Nov.’13:”Egypt denies Israeli
firm securing Suez Canal”
SUBJECT: Egypt denies Israeli firm securing Suez Canal
Officials deny that an Israeli security company has a permit to secure the
Suez Canal; website of the Israeli company down after media reports claim
the company operates in Red Sea waters

Egypt’s Suez Canal Authority denied Wednesday[20 Nov.] allegations that
Egyptian authorities gave permission to Israeli firm Maritime Seagull
Security to secure ships in the Red Sea.

The Canal Authority insisted seven Egyptian security and military bodies
only are in charge of securing the sea passage.

News that the Israeli company operates in the area based on an "official"
permit using fully-armed personnel on the Egyptian island of Tiran in the
Red Sea went viral on social media, Al-Jazeera reported.

The Al-Jazeera story is based on a report by a UK based NGO, the Arab
Organisation for Human Rights, which was published on Tuesday[19 Nov.].

After the news spread, the company’s website on the Internet was blocked and
its Facebook account became inaccessible to regular users.

However, on the website of a Seagull Security partner, the Nigeria-based
Trinity Services Limited, some information could still be found about the
Israeli company.

According to the Trinity website, Seagull Maritime Security Ltd was founded
in 2008 by Kfir Magen, an Israeli Navy commando veteran, "to address
maritime security threats and to supply high quality professional service
based on the elite Israeli commando force knowhow."

The company is registered in Israel and Cyprus and is a subsidiary of the
Shahaf Security Group, another security company in Israel.

On Linkedin, Seagull specifies that "it offers security and anti-piracy
services for vessels transiting the high risk areas of the Gulf of Aden, the
Indian Ocean and the Red Sea."

+++SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon) 22 Nov.’13:Lebanon Marks Independence Day as
Countrry at Stake overTerrorism, Refugee Burden”, Agence France Presse
Subject:Dangers to Lebanon
QUOTE:”Lebanon . . . growing threat of terrorism, widening gap between
Lebanon’s political parties and the huge burden of Syrian refugees”
FULL TEXT:Lebanon celebrated Independence Day on Friday amid the growing
threat of terrorism, the widening gap between Lebanon's political parties
and the huge burden of the Syrian refugees.

The country marked 70 years of independence with an official ceremony staged
in downtown Beirut.

Streets leading to the area were cordoned off from the early hours of Friday
for the ceremony which was attended by President Michel Suleiman, Speaker
Nabih Berri, Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Miqati, PM-designate Tammam
Salam, diplomats and other dignitaries.

Suleiman, Berri and Miqati later headed to Baabda palace where they received
well-wishers.

This year's independence comes as the country is barely standing 2 ½ years
into Syria's war.

A string of deadly bombings and sectarian gunbattles linked to Syria has
left hundreds of casualties in several areas, mainly Hizbullah strongholds -
Beirut's southern suburbs and the Bekaa - and the northern city of Tripoli.

The latest bombings targeted the Iranian embassy in the Beirut neighborhood
of Bir Hassan, a Hizbullah stronghold, on Tuesday. An al-Qaida-linked group
claimed it carried out the twin suicide bombings, raising fears of
Iraqi-style attacks in the country.

There has been no functioning government since Salam's appointment in April
because of divisions between the March 8 and March 14 alliances over Syria.

The March 14 coalition has conditioned the formation of the cabinet on
Hizbullah's withdrawal from Syria. The party's fighters have been openly
backing Syrian President Bashar Assad against the rebels seeking to topple
him.

Parliament has unilaterally extended its own mandate by 18 months by
skipping the polls. The legislature is also failing to convene over the
boycott of several blocs from the two rival camps.

The security and political crises have been topped with a huge economic
burden caused by the Syrian refugees who are escaping the fighting in the
neighboring country.

The Lebanese authorities have warned that the massive influx of refugees in
the past week could no longer be resolved through humanitarian aid.

They called for a political or security solution to end the crisis.

Lebanon hosts more than 800,000 Syrians.

Lebanese Independence Day commemorates the country's liberation in 1943
after 23 years of governance by French Mandate that succeeded Ottoman rule.

+++SOURCE: Jordan Times 22 Nov.’13:Iraq attacks kill at least 41 as 2013
death toll tops 5,800”, Agence France Presse

SUBJECT: Shiite-Sunni unrest in Iraq continues

QUOTE:”More than 5,800 people have been killed so far this year”

EXCERPTS:BAQOUBA, Iraq — A bombing at a market north of Baghdad was the
deadliest in violence that killed 41 people Thursday [21 Nov.], as the year’s
death toll topped 5,800 amid a surge in unrest.

The flare-up has prompted Baghdad to appeal for international help in
fighting the country’s worst bloodshed since 2008, just months before its
first general election in four years.

Officials have voiced concern over a resurgent Al Qaeda emboldened by the
civil war in neighbouring Syria which has provided the jihadist network’s
front groups with increased room to plan and carry out attacks in Iraq.

Thursday’s violence came a day after a spate of attacks, most of them car
bombs targeting Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad, killed 59 people and
wounded more than 100 in Iraq’s highest death toll of the month.

Shootings and bombings struck in and around Baghdad and in Diyala, a restive
ethnically mixed province north of Baghdad that has seen some of Iraq’s
worst bloodshed in recent months.

. . .

The unrest is part of a surge in bloodshed that has pushed violence to its
highest level since 2008, when Iraq was recovering from the worst of its
Sunni-Shiite sectarian war.

More than 5,800 people have been killed so far this year, according to an
AFP tally based on reports from security and medical officials

+++SOURCE: Jordan Times 22 Nov.’13:”Nuclear deal not yet in sight—Iran”,
Agence France Presse

SUBJECT:Iran: nuclear deal not yet in sight

QUOTE:”Tehran saying deal not yet in sight”

FULL TEXT:GENEVA — Iran and world powers locked horns in intense nuclear
talks Thursday[21 Nov.], with Tehran saying a deal was not yet in sight in
the third round of negotiations since Hassan Rouhani’s election.

Both sides, seeking to end the standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme after
a decade of rising tensions, stressed however that the talks were detailed,
serious and constructive.

Raising the pressure, US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in
Washington lawmakers would move to impose new sanctions on Iran in December
if there is no deal.

The United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — the
so-called P5+1 — want Iran to freeze parts of its nuclear programme for six
months in return for relief from painful sanctions.

This hoped-for “first phase” deal would build trust and ease tensions while
Iran and the six powers hammer out a final accord that ends once and for all
fears that Tehran will get an atomic bomb.

Numerous attempts to resolve the standoff have failed over the last decade,
but the election this year of Rouhani as Iranian president has raised hopes
that this time a deal can be struck.

The proposed accord includes suspending uranium enrichment to 20 per cent
purity — close to weapons-grade — as well as the removal of uranium
stockpiles and tighter UN inspections.

For Israel, which refuses to rule out military action against Iran, the
proposal does not go far enough.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the complete and permanent
dismantling of all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, not just those enriching to
20 per cent.

“Yesterday, Iran’s supreme leader, [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, said ‘death to
America, death to Israel’, he said that Jews are not human beings,”
Netanyahu said in Moscow.

“The Iranians deny our past and speak time afer time of their commitment to
wipe the state of Israel off the map.”

But Daryl Kimball from the Arms Control Association said a complete
dismantling might have been possible in 2005 when Iran had fewer than 300
centrifuges at one site.

“But it is not realistic now that Iran has 19,000 installed and 10,000
operating centrifuges at two sites,” he said.

‘Points of difference’

Iran’s lead negotiator said after a second meeting between Foreign Minister
Mohammad Jarad Zarif and P5+1 counterpart Catherine Ashton in Geneva that a
deal was not yet in view.

But Abbas Araqchi added that the talks had been “serious” and had focused on
remaining “points of difference”.

Ashton’s spokesman said that the talks had been “useful”, with “intensive
work continuing” and negotiations to resume later.

Similar talks two weeks ago came close to succeeding, prompting US Secretary
of State John Kerry and other foreign ministers to jet into Geneva ready to
sign a deal.

Rumours were flying around Geneva on Thursday that Kerry and other top
diplomats were gearing up to return to Switzerland but this has not been
confirmed officially.

Last time they failed to agree after France insisted that a proposed deal
did not go far enough in securing guarantees on Iran’s uranium enrichment.

But French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday that the text being
debated with the Iranians on Thursday was “supported by all six” world
powers.

“This deal will only be possible if it has a firm base,” Fabius told France
2 television.

Frozen oil billions

Western powers say that the relief from painful sanctions that Iran would
get in a deal would be minor, and that the main oil and banking sanctions
would stay during this period.

Estimates on how much this is worth have varied wildly between $6 billion
and $50 billion but the US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power
told CNN Thursday “the lower number is closer to what we’re talking about”.

The relief is likely to come from unblocking some of the $100 billion in
Iranian reserves from oil sales, most of it frozen in bank accounts around
the world.

If Rouhani, meanwhile, fails to secure quick and substantial relief from the
sanctions, he risks losing the support of arch-conservatives and the supreme
leader, experts say.

Another sticking point is Iran’s insistence that its “right” to enrich
uranium is recognised by the P5+1, even though this is not explicitly set
out in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

+++SOURCE:The Washington Post 22 Nov.’13:”Sucker’s deal’, by Charles
Krauthammer

Opinion Writer

SUBJECT: France calls U.S. re Iran a ‘sucker’s deal’

QUOTE:”President Obama is offering relief in a deal that is absurdly
asymmetric . . . it is a rescue package for the mullahs”

A president desperate to change the subject and a secretary of state
desperate to make a name for himself are reportedly on the verge of an
“interim” nuclear agreement with Iran. France called it a “sucker’s deal.”
France was being charitable.

The only reason Iran has come to the table after a decade of contemptuous
stonewalling is that economic sanctions have cut so deeply — its currency
has collapsed, inflation is rampant — that the regime fears a threat to its
very survival.

Nothing else could move it to negotiate. Regime survival is the only thing
the mullahs value above nuclear weapons. And yet precisely at the point of
maximum leverage, President Obama is offering relief in a deal that is
absurdly asymmetric: The West would weaken sanctions in exchange for
cosmetic changes that do absolutely nothing to weaken Iran’s nuclear
infrastructure.

Don’t worry, we are assured. This is only an interim six-month agreement to
“build confidence” until we reach a final one. But this makes no sense. If
at this point of maximum economic pressure we can’t get Iran to accept a
final deal that shuts down its nuclear program, how in God’s name do we
expect to get such a deal when we have radically reduced that pressure?

A bizarre negotiating tactic. And the content of the deal is even worse. It’s
a rescue package for the mullahs.

It widens permissible trade in oil, gold and auto parts. It releases frozen
Iranian assets, increasing Iran’s foreign-exchange reserves by 25 percent
while doubling its fully accessible foreign-exchange reserves. Such a
massive infusion of cash would be a godsend for its staggering economy,
lowering inflation, reducing shortages and halting the country’s growing
demoralization. The prospective deal is already changing economic
expectations. Foreign oil and other interests are reportedly preparing to
reopen negotiations for a resumption of trade in anticipation of the full
lifting of sanctions.

And for what? You’d offer such relief in return for Iran giving up its
pursuit of nuclear weapons. Isn’t that what the entire exercise is about?

And yet this deal does nothing of the sort. Nothing. It leaves Iran’s
nuclear infrastructure intact. Iran keeps every one of its 19,000
centrifuges — yes, 19,000 — including 3,000 second-generation machines that
produce enriched uranium at five times the rate of the older ones.

Not a single centrifuge is dismantled. Not a single facility that
manufactures centrifuges is touched. In Syria, the first thing the weapons
inspectors did was to destroy the machines that make the chemical weapons.
Then they went after the stockpiles. It has to be that way. Otherwise, the
whole operation is an exercise in futility. Take away just the chemical
agents, and the weapons-making facilities can replace them at will.

Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing with Iran. It would deactivate its 20
percent enriched uranium, which besides being chemically reversible, is
quickly replaceable because Iran retains its 3.5 percent enriched uranium,
which can be enriched to 20 percent in less than a month.

Result: Sanctions relief that leaves Iran’s nuclear infrastructure
untouched, including — and this is where the French gagged — the plutonium
facility at Arak, a defiant alternate path to a nuclear weapon.

The point is blindingly simple. Unless you dismantle the centrifuges and
prevent the manufacture of new ones, Iran will be perpetually just a few
months away from going nuclear. This agreement, which is now reportedly
being drafted to allow Iran to interpret it as granting the “right” to
enrich uranium, constitutes the West legitimizing Iran’s status as a
threshold nuclear state.

Don’t worry, we are assured. The sanctions relief is reversible. Nonsense.
It was extraordinarily difficult to cobble together the current sanctions.
It took endless years of overcoming Russian, Chinese and Indian
recalcitrance, together with foot-dragging from Europeans making a pretty
penny from Iran.

Once the relaxation begins, how do you reverse it? How do you reapply
sanctions? There is absolutely no appetite for this among our allies. And
adding back old sanctions will be denounced as a provocation that would
drive Iran to a nuclear breakout — exactly as Obama is today denouncing
congressional moves to increase sanctions as a deal-breaking provocation
that might lead Iran to break off talks.

The mullahs are eager for this interim agreement with its immediate yield of
political and economic relief. Once they get it, we will have removed their
one incentive to conclude the only agreement that is worth anything to us —
a verifiable giving up of their nuclear program.

Brilliant

=========
Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA