Iran will not impede IAEA access, head of its atomic organization says
Iran will not impede IAEA access, head of its atomic organization says/node/2583037/middle-east
Iran will not impede IAEA access, head of its atomic organization says
Update
This handout picture provided by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran on November 15 2024 shows the organisation's spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi (L) and Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharib Abadi (R), posing for a picture with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Gross (AFP)
Iran will not impede IAEA access, head of its atomic organization says
IAEA reported that Iran had multiplied the pace of its enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the 90 percent of weapons-grade
Updated 20 sec ago
Reuters
TEHRAN: Iran will not impede UN nuclear watchdog’s access and inspection of its sites, the head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization said on Saturday.
According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier this week, Iran has agreed to tougher monitoring by the agency at its Fordow site after it greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to weapons grade there.
Last week, the IAEA reported that Iran had multiplied the pace of its enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the 90 percent of weapons-grade, at Fordow.
“We have not created and will not create any obstacles for the agency’s inspections and access,” Atomic Energy Organization head Mohammad Eslami was quoted as saying by Iranian media.
“We operate within the framework of safeguards, and the agency also acts according to regulations— no more, no less,” he added.
Blinken says US has made ‘direct contact’ with Syria’s victorious HTS
Updated 25 sec ago
“We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken told reporters after talks on Syria in the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba He did not give details on how the contact took place but when asked if the United States reached out directly, he said: “Direct contact — yes“
AQABA, Jordan: The United States has made “direct contact” with Syria’s victorious Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham rebels despite designating the group as terrorists, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday, as he sought international unity on a peaceful transition. “We’ve been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken told reporters after talks on Syria in the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba. He did not give details on how the contact took place but when asked if the United States reached out directly, he said: “Direct contact — yes.” Blinken said that the contact was partly related to the search for Austin Tice, the US journalist kidnapped in 2012 near the start of the brutal civil war. “We have pressed upon everyone we’ve been in contact with the importance of helping find Austin Tice and bringing him home,” Blinken said. He said that in the dialogue with HTS the United States also “shared the principles” on Syria that he has publicly laid out. Blinken indicated the United States was open eventually to easing sanctions on Syria but not yet. Referring to HTS statements since their victory, Blinken said: “We appreciate some of the positive words we heard in recent days, but what matters is action — and sustained action. “This can’t be a decision on the events of one day,” he said. If a transition moves forward, “we in turn will look at various sanctions and other measures that we have taken and respond in kind.” Blinken was closing a regional tour in which he has sought common ground after HTS overthrew Bashar Assad, whose family ruled brutally for half a century. In Aqaba, Blinken took part in talks that brought together top Arab and European diplomats as well as Turkiye, the main supporter of rebel groups in Syria. In a joint statement, the participants called for a Syrian-led transition to “produce an inclusive, non-sectarian and representative government formed through a transparent process.” The statement also stressed “respect for human rights,” the importance of combating “terrorism and extremism” and demanded “all parties” cease hostilities in Syria. “Syria finally has the chance to end decades of isolation,” the group said. UN Syria envoy Geir Pedersen earlier told Blinken: “We need to make sure that state institutions do not collapse, and that we get in humanitarian assistance as quickly as possible.” The United States and other Western governments classify HTS as a terrorist group due to its roots in Al-Qaeda’s Syria branch. The designation severely impedes activities of businesses and aid workers who risk falling foul of US law enforcement if they are seen as directly supporting a terrorist group. Since seizing power last weekend, rebel leader Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani has spoken in conciliatory terms about making peace with the broad spectrum of Syrian society. Some analysts note that HTS has not focused on US or other Western targets. Few expect a quick move by the United States to lift the terrorist designation, especially with a political transition set next month following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election. In Britain, a senior minister said that the government would decide quickly whether to remove the terrorist designation but Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it was still “far too early” to do so. Blinken said that he found hope in the street celebrations in Syrian cities in recent days. “No one has any illusions about how challenging this time will be, but there’s also something incredibly powerful — the Syrian people determined to break with the past and shape a better future,” he said. He also hailed the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces for raising the new “independence” flag of the rebels, after for years flying their own flag as they achieved limited self-rule. Blinken said it was for Syrians to decide how to incorporate Kurds in the country but he hailed SDF fighters — who are bitterly opposed by Turkiye — for their role in fighting the Daesh group.
Mikati questions Israeli commitment to ceasefire deal
Driver killed in drone strike in southern Lebanon as truce violations continue
University says it is investigating claims of weapons cache in warehouse building
Updated 17 min 16 sec ago
NAJIA HOUSSARI
BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Saturday questioned Israel’s commitment to the ceasefire deal brokered by the US and France following a deadly drone strike in the south of the country — the latest attack in what appears to be an increasingly shaky truce.
Speaking during a meeting in Rome with a group of Arab diplomats, Mikati highlighted the challenges facing Lebanon and accused Israel of repeatedly violating the truce.
The drone strike that killed a motorist in southern Lebanon on Saturday added to fears that the ceasefire deal struck between Israel and Hezbollah two weeks ago is under growing strain.
The attack targeted a car on the Khardali road, which links the two sides of the Litani river, and connects Nabatieh to Marjayoun in southern Lebanon.
The drone strike set the vehicle on fire, killing the driver, who was later identified as Mohsen Charafeddine from Kfartebnit.
Israeli reconnaissance planes have continued to hover over southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs around the clock.
Mikati told the Arab ambassadors accredited to Italy that “the main challenge facing Lebanon is to oblige the committee tasked with following up on this file, Israel, to stop its violations and withdraw its forces from Lebanese territory.”
He added: “We are waiting for these measures to be implemented with an American-French guarantee, but we do not see an Israeli commitment to that.”
The prime minister said the Lebanese army has begun expanding its deployment in the south, and morale is high.
“It is working to impose the authority of Lebanese legitimacy, ensuring no weapons outside the framework of legitimate arms.
“We rely on the continued support of our brothers and friends to enable the army to carry out its role fully,” said Mikati.
Also on Saturday, Israeli forces carried out mopping-up operations in the border villages of Mays Al-Jabal and Kfarkila.
After a shepherd named Abdo Abdel Aal went missing in the Majidieh area, security authorities said it was likely that Israeli troops had crossed the barbed-wire border toward the Al-Majidieh valley and taken him for questioning.
The Israeli army detained two shepherds last week. Both were freed after interrogation.
Commander of the Works Regiment in the Lebanese army, Brig. Gen. Youssef Haidar, and the Head of the Third Operations Division in the Seventh Brigade, Brig. Gen. Joseph Mazraani, visited the southern Lebanese town of Khiam on Saturday to inspect recovery work there and the clearing of roads in preparation for the return of residents.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces conducted their first withdrawal from Khiam — and were replaced by Lebanese troops.
Lebanese army bulldozers continued clearing roads around the Khiam detention center and the Matal Al-Jabal area.
Videos shared on social media revealed the extent of damage caused by Israeli forces in Khiam, including the demolition of residential buildings and commercial establishments, and the destruction of roads.
The army is coordinating with the Lebanese Red Cross to begin recovering the bodies of Hezbollah members killed during the conflict in the rugged Wadi Al-Asafir area, south of Khiam.
The Lebanese army continued surveying and inspecting southern areas damaged by Israeli attacks.
An army engineering team detonated unexploded rockets and cluster bombs in the towns of Qleileh, Al-Mansouri, Al-Haniya, and Al-Amriyah in the western sector.
A 15-year-old boy was badly injured earlier in the week in Shabriha in the Tyre district after a cluster bomb he picked up exploded.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese University administration issued a statement on Saturday in response to information circulating on social media regarding the alleged discovery of weapons in one of its buildings.
The administration requested “refraining from circulating such news and exaggerating it in public, pending the results of the investigation being conducted by the security agencies.”
It also said that “during an inspection of the university buildings and centers to assess the damage caused by Israeli attacks in the vicinity of its facilities, a change in the locks of one of the rented warehouses designated for storing consumable materials and equipment was discovered.”
The warehouse is located in the Al-Janah area on the outskirts of southern Beirut.
The administration said an inspection of the warehouse found contents including “military clothing, travel bags, and sealed boxes.”
What Assad’s overthrow revealed about Syrian regime’s Captagon empire
Scale of illicit trade revealed as victorious rebels and journalists gain access to manufacturing and storage sites
Expert says there were signs of decentralization of Captagon production even before the Assad regime’s overthrow
Updated 14 December 2024
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: For more than a decade, the illegal drug Captagon has been mass produced in Syria, in laboratories either run by or with the blessing of a regime hard hit by Western sanctions and desperate to generate revenue.
The scale of the trade, targeted mainly at young people in the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, was revealed last year in an Arab News expose produced in collaboration with the New Lines Institute.
A cheaply made form of amphetamine, Captagon has been flooding into countries of the Middle East for more than a decade, causing social harm on an unprecedented scale.
Embossed with its distinctive twin half moons logo, which gives the drug its Arabic street name, “Abu Hilalain,” or Father of the Two Crescents, the pills are easy to make, readily available, and relatively cheap to buy.
On Dec. 4, the New Lines Institute in Washington launched a unique interactive online tool designed to help researchers and global law enforcement agencies research, track, and understand the scale and complexities of the trade.
Just days after the launch of the project, the Syrian regime, which had been locked in a grinding civil war with armed opposition groups for almost 14 years, suddenly collapsed.
In the early hours of Sunday, Dec. 8, President Bashar Assad and his family fled to Moscow, where their Russian allies granted them asylum.
The ousted president, HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani said, had caused the country to become “a major Captagon factory in the world, and today Syria is being cleansed of it.” (AFP)
Since then, multiple Captagon laboratories have been overrun in areas formerly controlled by the Syrian government, with raw materials, machinery, packaging and countless thousands of pills found abandoned in haste.
But no one should think for one moment that the collapse of the Assad regime means the end of the curse of Captagon, according to Caroline Rose, director of the Strategic Blind Spots Portfolio at the New Lines Institute.
“We are going to see a shift in the trade now that Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham and a lot of communities in Syria have started to disassemble Captagon production sites and incinerate Captagon pills,” she told Arab News.
In his victory speech at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on Monday, HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani made a specific point of condemning the drug and Assad’s part in its production.
The ousted president, he said, had caused the country to become “a major Captagon factory in the world, and today Syria is being cleansed of it.”
It is “very clear that if you are a Captagon manufacturer who did not flee with the regime, you are now in trouble, Rose said.
“But I think what we’re going to see now is overspill, what people often call the ‘balloon effect.’ Production is being squeezed inside Syria, but we are going to see the emergence of larger-scale Captagon production facilities in a few countries where alarm bells have already been ringing.”
Authorities across the region have frequently reported seizures of the pills, intercepted at ports, airports, and border crossings, in an ongoing battle of wits with smugglers resorting to increasingly ingenious methods.
The New Lines Institute’s Captagon Trade Project, the product of years of research, is the first time that information about all reported global seizures of the drug, showing the sheer scale of the trade, can be accessed in one place.
And clues to the changing profile of the Captagon trade in the months leading up the regime’s collapse can be found in the project’s data, which reveal that production facilities have been popping up in countries including Iraq, Lebanon and Turkiye.
In Lebanon, the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, under intense pressure from Israel, “has an incentive to build up its own financial reserves, and Captagon is an easy way to do that,” Rose said.
A couple of Captagon labs were found earlier this year in Turkiye, a country where “we had not seen labs in a very long time.” Production facilities have even been found as far away as Europe, in Germany and the Netherlands.
In all these cases, it was certain that governments were not involved in the trade, according to Rose. “Syria was a very interesting and rare case where we did see the involvement of so many high-level officials in the regime, implicated in Captagon production and trafficking,” she said.
While Assad himself carefully distanced himself from the trade, his brother Maher was heavily implicated with production and smuggling efforts in his role as commander of the Fourth Armored Division, a military unit whose primary mission was to protect the Syrian regime from internal and external threats.
Authorities across the region have frequently reported seizures of the pills, intercepted at ports, airports. (AFP)
Quite where he is now remains uncertain.
“I have heard that Maher and his Fourth Division commanders made their way through Iraq to Iran and are now in Tehran,” Rose said.
“However, other reports say HTS has found and detained him. That’s not confirmed yet. But if Maher is still there, it’s likely that a lot of members of the regime’s Captagon organization are also still in Syria.”
Either way, there is now “an assumption that this is the end of Captagon, but it’s not. We need to keep in mind that over the past two years Captagon production had already started to trickle outside of Syria.
“For the longest time, regime-held Syria was the hub of Captagon production. Then we started to see labs being seized in southern and northern Iraq and even in Kuwait, which is interesting and makes sense. They were starting to build this bridge through Iraq to get closer to destination markets in the Gulf.”
At the same time, there were signs that the regime was cracking down on the Captagon trade — or, rather, pretending to — as revealed by the comprehensive seizure data in New Lines Institute’s online mapping tool.
“We saw the regime’s incentive to normalize relations with the Gulf states, and recognition that it needed to be seen to be cracking down on this trade, while quietly still reaping the economic benefits,” Rose said.
“For that reason, we think, in the past year we have seen the supply of Captagon — or, at least, what was seized — decrease dramatically, especially in Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which were the two targets for normalization discussions for the regime.
“We have cause to believe that the flow of Captagon was actually halted by the regime. They were stepping on the hose to create the appearance that they had stopped Captagon production, in the hope that it would bring the Gulf states to the table.
While Assad himself carefully distanced himself from the trade, his brother Maher was heavily implicated. (AFP)
“In fact, as we’ve seen with the finds in Syria over the past few days, they seem to have been stockpiling the drug. Most likely later on they would have flooded the market.”
Sandwiched between Syria and Saudi Arabia, Jordan has long borne the brunt of smuggling attempts orchestrated by the Syrian military and Iran-backed militias operating in the south of Syria. It has, for many years, been a key battleground in the fight to stem the tide of the drug.
Over the past few months, however, there have been telltale signs of changes in the nature of attempts to smuggle Captagon through Jordan to Saudi Arabia and beyond. “Unusually, we’ve not seen any seizures in Jordan since early November,” Rose said.
“Typically, around this time of the year we would see an uptick in Captagon there, not only in smuggling incidents, but also in clashes along the border, because that’s when the wintry conditions start to set in, creating conditions that make it perfect for a smuggler to bypass surveillance systems.”
In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, the most recent recorded seizure was on Dec. 7 at the Al-Wadiah border crossing with Yemen. The two before that were both on Nov. 30, at the checkpoint on the King Fahd Causeway to Bahrain and on the other side of the country at the Port of Duba on the Red Sea.
“One was about 200,000 pills, the other one 280,000, so nothing major,” Rose said. “What we’ve noticed is that the number of seizures is increasing, but the sizes of the consignments are dwindling.”
In other words, smugglers are making more frequent runs, but with smaller batches of pills, which implies smaller players smuggling overland, rather than major, connected players shipping in bulk via sea.
There is now “an assumption that this is the end of Captagon, but it’s not,” said Caroline Rose. (AFP)
Whatever HTS chief Al-Golani might say, or even intend, Syria is not yet free of Captagon, according to Rose. “I am positive that there are actors who are picking up a few thousand pills and peddling them on the street,” she said.
“This is still a very lucrative trade. Syria is not out of the woods economically, and there will be many people who will want to try to make a profit.”
Made for about $1 and typically sold for 15 times as much, Captagon is an exceptionally profitable product, which is estimated to have earned the Syrian regime more than $2 billion per year.
“And at the end of the day, old habits die hard,” Rose said.
“For a lot of these individuals, not necessarily high-level regime officials, this has been their way of life for years, and so it’s going to be very difficult for any new government in Syria to convince these criminal actors to give up this source of revenue.”
A palace in shock: Bashar Assad’s final moments in Syria
“His brother Maher,” who commanded the Syrian army’s feared Fourth Brigade, “heard about it by chance while he was with his soldiers defending Damascus
He decided to take a helicopter and leave, apparently to Baghdad,” added the former aide
Updated 14 December 2024
AFP
DAMASCUS: Hours before militant forces seized Damascus and toppled his government on Sunday, Syrian president Bashar Assad was already out of the country, telling hardly anyone, five former officials told AFP.
The night before, Assad had even asked his close adviser Buthaina Shaaban to prepare a speech — which the ousted leader never gave — before flying from Damascus airport to Russia’s Hmeimim air base in Syria, and from there out of the country.
Assad left even “without telling... his close confidants in advance,” a former aide told AFP, requesting anonymity for security reasons.
“From the Russian base, a plane took him to Moscow.”
“His brother Maher,” who commanded the Syrian army’s feared Fourth Brigade, “heard about it by chance while he was with his soldiers defending Damascus. He decided to take a helicopter and leave, apparently to Baghdad,” added the former aide.
Other top officials in Assad’s government and sources told AFP what happened in the final hours of the iron-fisted leader’s 24-year rule.
All spoke on condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
When Islamist-led militant forces launched their offensive in Syria’s north on November 27, Assad was in Moscow, where his wife Asma has been treated for cancer.
Two days later, when their son Hafez was defending his doctoral thesis at a Moscow university, the whole family were there, but not Bashar, according to a presidential palace official.
On November 30, when Assad returned from Moscow, Syria’s second city of Aleppo was no longer under his government’s control.
The following week, the militants took Hama and Homs in quick succession, before eventually reaching the capital.
Another palace official said he did not see Assad the day before Damascus fell last Sunday.
“On Saturday Assad didn’t meet with us. We knew he was there, but did not have a meeting with him,” said the top official.
“We were at the palace, there was no explanation, and it caused great confusion at the senior levels and on the ground,” he said.
“Actually, we had not seen him since the fall of Aleppo, which was very strange.”
During that fateful week, Assad called a meeting of the heads of Syria’s intelligence services to reassure them.
But the longtime leader did not show up, and “Aleppo’s fall shocked us,” said the same top palace official.
Hama was next to fall into militant hands.
“On Thursday, I spoke at 11:30 am with troops in Hama who assured me the city was under lockdown and not even a mouse could make it in,” an army colonel told AFP.
“Two hours later they received the order not to fight, and to redeploy in Homs to the south,” added the officer of the next strategic city sought by the militants on their way to Damascus.
“The soldiers were helpless, changing clothes, throwing away their weapons and trying to head home. Who gave the order? We don’t know.”
The governor of Homs told a journalist that he had asked the army to resist. But no government forces defended the city.
On Saturday morning, someone in the halls of power in Damascus brought up the idea of Assad making a speech.
“We started to set up the equipment. Everything was ready,” said the first palace official.
“Later on we were surprised to learn that the speech had been postponed, maybe to Sunday morning.”
According to him, top officials and aides were unaware that while this was happening, the Syrian army had already begun destroying its archives by setting them on fire.
Still on Saturday, at around 9:00 p.m. (1800 GMT), “the president calls his political adviser Buthaina Shaaban to ask her to prepare a speech for him, and to present it to the political committee which is meant to meet on Sunday morning,” said a senior official close to Assad.
“At 10:00 p.m. she calls him back, but he no longer picks up the phone.”
That evening, Assad’s media director Kamel Sakr told journalists: “The president is going to deliver a statement very soon.”
But then Sakr, too, stopped answering his phone, as did interior minister Mohammed Al-Rahmoun.
The palace official said he stayed in his office until 2:30 am on Sunday. Within less than four hours, the militants were to announce that Assad was gone.
“We were ready to receive a statement or a message from Assad at any moment,” said the top palace official.
“We could have never imagined such a scenario. We didn’t even know whether the president was still at the palace.”
At around midnight, the palace official had been told that Assad needed a cameraman for Sunday morning.
“That reassured us that he was in fact still there,” he said.
But just before 2:00 am, an intelligence officer called to say all government officials and forces had left their offices and positions.
“I was shocked. It was just the two of us in the office. The palace was almost empty, and we were totally confused,” said the official.
At 2:30 am he left the palace.
In the city center, “arriving at Umayyad Square, there were plenty of soldiers fleeing, looking for transportation,” he said.
“There were thousands of them, coming from the security compound, the defense ministry and other security branches. We found out that their superiors had ordered them to flee.”
The official said it was a “frightening” scene.
“Tens of thousands of cars leaving Damascus, and even more people marching on the road on foot. It was that moment I realized everything was lost and that Damascus had fallen.”
“An Israeli enemy drone strike... killed one person” in Marjayoun, the ministry said
Updated 14 December 2024
AFP
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s health ministry said an Israeli drone strike in the south killed one person on Saturday, the latest deadly raid despite a more than two-week ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.
“An Israeli enemy drone strike... killed one person” in Marjayoun district, the health ministry said in a statement. The official National News Agency reported a car was targeted.
