Once again, our national media is leaving us totally in the dark when it comes to world affairs.
All we have heard about this week is a new strain of Covid and a focus on Russia and Vladimir Putin.
Do you remember a few weeks back when we talked about Hamas firing thousands of rockets at Israel?
Do you remember that Iran was supplying those rockets to Hamas?
What if I told you that a huge change in that area took place last week with virtually no news coverage?
Well, here it is. Iran just appointed a new president and Israel just appointed a new Prime Minister.
Do you think anyone would have been interested back in WWII if Hitler and Churchill had been replaced in the middle of the conflict?
Well, let’s look at what just happened.
There are two key players here.
Ebrahim Raisi (Ebra Him Rye See) the new President of Iran and Naftali Bennett the new Prime minister of Israel.
Let’s start with Iran’s new President.
The most powerful figure in Iran is the Ayatollah. There have only been two since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (the founder of the republic) and his successor, the incumbent Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khomeini created the role at the top of Iran’s political structure after the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was overthrown.
The Supreme Leader is the commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces and controls the security services. He also appoints the head of the judiciary, half of the influential Guardian Council’s members, Friday prayer leaders, and the heads of state television and radio networks.
The Supreme Leader’s multi-billion-dollar charitable foundations also control large swaths of the Iranian economy.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei became Supreme Leader upon Ruhollah Khomeini’s death in 1989. He has maintained a firm grip on power and suppressed challenges to the ruling system.
The President of Iran is elected for four years and can serve no more than two consecutive terms.
The constitution describes him as the second-highest ranking official in the country. He is head of the executive branch of power and is responsible for ensuring the constitution is implemented.
The president has significant influence over domestic policy and foreign affairs. But it is the Supreme Leader who has the final say on all state matters.
Ebrahim Raisi, the new President, stated Monday that he would not meet with US President Joe Biden under any circumstances, including if Washington met all of Tehran’s demands in the ongoing Vienna talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.
Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric and close ally of Iran’s supreme leader, was speaking at his first press conference since winning Friday’s presidential election. He will take over from President Hassan Rouhani in early August.
Asked if he would be willing to meet with Biden to resolve the disputes between the US and Iran if Washington lifted sanctions on Tehran and met Iran’s demands first, Raisi answered with a resounding “no.”
The US and Iran have engaged in indirect talks in Vienna since April to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, which Washington withdrew from under former President Donald Trump in 2018.
Raisi urged Washington to return to the deal and lift all sanctions on Iran. “All sanctions imposed on Iran must be lifted and verified by Tehran,” he said.
Raisi reiterated Iran’s position that its ballistic missile program and support of regional militias are “non-negotiable.”
Asked about his role in Iran’s mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, Raisi described himself as a “defender of human rights.”
“If a prosecutor defends the rights of the people and the security of society, he should be commended and encouraged. I am proud to have defended security wherever I was as a prosecutor,” Raisi, who was Tehran’s deputy prosecutor in 1988, said.
Rights groups say Raisi was a leading member of what came to be known as the “death committee,” a group of Iranian judiciary and intelligence officials put together by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to oversee the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
Rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed.
Raisi was sanctioned by the US in 2019 for human rights abuses, including the 1988 executions.
Rights group Amnesty International said on Saturday Raisi must be investigated for crimes against humanity.
Israel condemned on Sunday the election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iranian president, saying his would be a “regime of brutal hangmen” with which world powers should not negotiate a new nuclear deal.
The new Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, convening his first televised cabinet session since taking office last week, described Raisi’s ascent as enabled by Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rather than by a free and popular vote.
“Raisi’s election is, I would say, the last chance for world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear agreement, and understand who they are doing business with”.
“A regime of brutal hangmen must never be allowed to have weapons of mass-destruction,” he said. “Israel’s position will not change on this.”
Raisi has never publicly addressed allegations around his role in what Washington and rights groups have called the extrajudicial executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
The former US administration of Donald Trump agreed with Israel and quit the Iran Nuclear Deal.
Current President Joe Biden wants a US return to the deal. Iran denies seeking nuclear weaponry.
So who is this new Iranian President?
Yaghoub Fazeli, Al Arabiya News website
Published: 20 June ,2021:
Ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi won Iran’s presidential election with 61.95 percent of the votes in an election that saw the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic.
The interior ministry announced the result on Saturday, saying voter turnout was at 48.8 percent, the lowest turnout for a presidential election in the history of the Islamic Republic.
The senior judge will leave his current post as head of the judiciary in early August to replace President Hassan Rouhani.
With all serious rivals barred from running by the Guardian Council – an unelected body that answers to the supreme leader only – his victory came as no surprise.
“For Iranians, the contest was yet another indicator of the irreconcilable gap that exists between the state and society in their country. Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran expert and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Al Arabiya English.
Raisi was born in 1960 in the northeastern city of Mashhad into a religious family.
He received a doctorate degree in law and jurisprudence from Mottahari University in Tehran, according to his campaign website.
Raisi has been a key figure in Iran’s judiciary since the early 1980s.
In 1985, Raisi moved to the capital Tehran, where he served as deputy prosecutor.
Other senior positions Raisi served in include deputy chief justice from 2004 until 2014, and attorney-general from 2014 until 2016.
Raisi’s name is tied to Iran’s mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, when he was allegedly a leading member of what came to be known as the “death committee,” a group of Iranian judiciary and intelligence officials put together by then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to oversee the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners at the time.
Most of the victims were leftist activists and members of dissident groups. Rights groups estimate that as many as 5,000 people were executed, while some put the number at 30,000 without offering evidence to support their claim.
Iran has never fully acknowledged the executions, and Raisi himself has never publicly addressed the allegations against him.
In 2019, the United States sanctioned Raisi for human rights abuses, including the 1980s executions.
Rights group Amnesty International said on Saturday Raisi must be investigated for crimes against humanity.
“That Ebrahim Raisi has risen to the presidency instead of being investigated for the crimes against humanity of murder, enforced disappearance and torture, is a grim reminder that impunity reigns supreme in Iran,” Amnesty Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in a statement.
Raisi owes his prominence today to a campaign – seemingly being driven by the highest centers of power in Iran – that has aimed over the past six or so years to portray him as a humble, anti-corruption, and no-nonsense figure.
In 2016, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Raisi as the custodian of a multi-billion dollar religious conglomerate encompassing businesses and endowments that oversees the holy Shia shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, the home city of both Khamenei and Raisi.
Raisi then ran for president in 2017, losing to Rouhani. But his rise within Iran’s ruling establishment went on uninterrupted. In 2019, Khamenei appointed him head of the judiciary, one of the most senior positions within the Islamic Republic.
What to expect
Iran’s foreign policy is set by the supreme leader, not the president, and is therefore unlikely to undergo major change with Raisi as president.
“Abroad, Raisi is poised to implement Khamenei’s vision. Raisi himself is no visionary, nor does the Iranian president have the power to deviate from a pre-ordained path,” Ben Taleblu said.
The Islamic Republic’s core policies “will largely remain the same” with Raisi in office, Jason Brodsky, a senior Middle East analyst at Iran International TV, told Al Arabiya English.
The United States and Iran have engaged in indirect talks in Vienna for months to revive the 2015 nuclear deal that Washington withdrew from under former President Donald Trump in 2018.
Raisi said during a televised presidential debate earlier this month that he is not opposed to the nuclear deal, and Iran’s top nuclear negotiator said Thursday the presidential election would have no impact on the ongoing negotiations in Vienna.
However, “An Islamic Republic with Raisi at the helm means the mask has come off. Moreover, it means that Iran has less of a compunction about hiding its spots,” Ben Taleblu said.
Now let’s turn to Israel and the new Prime Minister.
— Isabel Kershner New York Times
Who is Naftali Bennett?
Mr. Bennett, 49 years old, is a former Israeli military commando who later co-founded an antifraud software company and made millions of dollars when it was sold.
He is also a former defense and education minister as well as a former aide to former Prime Minister Netanyahu. Born in Haifa to American parents, he is a fluent English speaker, like his former mentor. Mr. Bennett was a commander in an elite Israeli special forces unit, which Mr. Netanyahu also served in at an earlier time.
Mr. Bennett entered the Israeli Parliament, in 2013 as the leader of the Jewish Home party, a religious Zionist party.
He formed Yamina (Ya Mee Nah) in 2018, splitting off from more conservatively religious and even more hawkish Israeli politicians—though he remained in a formal alliance with them until earlier this year. He opposes a Palestinian state and supports annexing parts of the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s Parliament, approved a new coalition government by a single-vote margin on Sunday. The vote, 60 to 59 with one abstention, officially ended the longtime reign of Benjamin Netanyahu, the dominant Israeli politician of the past generation, as the country’s Parliament gave its vote of confidence to a precarious coalition government stitched together by widely different anti-Netanyahu forces.
Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset (kuh nes sit), approved the new government by just a single vote — 60 to 59, with one abstention.
After his supporters cheered the announcement of his election, Naftali Bennett then exchanged a brief handshake with Mr. Netanyahu before walking to the lecturn at the front of the parliamentary chamber and taking the oath of office as prime minister.
Yair Lapid, a centrist leader, is set to take Mr. Bennett’s place after two years, if their government can hold together that long.
They lead an eight-party alliance ranging from left to right, from secular to religious, that agrees on little but a desire to oust Mr. Netanyahu, the longest-serving leader in the country’s history, and to end Israel’s lengthy political gridlock.
In a speech made before the confidence vote, Mr. Bennett hailed his unlikely coalition as an essential antidote to an intractable stalemate.
“We stopped the train before the abyss,” Mr. Bennett said. “The time has come for different leaders, from all parts of the people, to stop, to stop this madness.”
Before and after the fragile new government was announced, Mr. Netanyahu and his right-wing allies labored hard to break it before it could take office.
They applied intense pressure on right-wing opposition lawmakers, urging them to peel away from their leaders and refuse to support a coalition that includes centrists, leftists and even a small Arab Islamist party.
It was a watershed moment for politics in Israel, where Mr. Netanyahu, 71, had served as prime minister for a total of 15 years, including the last 12 years uninterrupted.
But given Mr. Netanyahu’s record as a shrewd political operator who has defied many previous predictions of his political demise, few Israelis are writing off his career.
Even out of government and standing trial on corruption charges, he remains a formidable force who will likely try to drive wedges between the coalition parties. He remains the leader of the parliamentary opposition and a cagey tactician, with a sizable following and powerful allies.
Israel has held four inconclusive elections in two years and has gone much of that time without a state budget, fueling disgust among voters with the nation’s politics. Sound familiar folks?
No one was able to cobble together a Knesset majority after the first two contests, and the third produced an unwieldy right-center coalition that collapsed after months in recriminations.
The new coalition proposes to set aside some of the toughest issues and focus on rebuilding the economy. But it remains to be seen whether the new government will avoid another gridlock or crumble under its own contradictions.
Some of its factions hope to see movement away from the social policies that favored the ultra-Orthodox minority, whose parties were allied with Mr. Netanyahu. But Mr. Bennett’s party, which has a partly religious base, is wary of alienating the Haredim (Har ay deem), as the ultra-Orthodox are known in Hebrew.
Supporters also hope for a return to a long tradition of Israel cultivating bipartisan support in the United States.
Mr. Netanyahu had grown more aligned with Republicans and was embraced by Donald J. Trump, the former president. It was uncertain where relations would go under President Biden.
Naftali Bennett, as Israel’s new prime minister, has insisted that there must never be a full-fledged Palestinian state and that Israel should annex much of the occupied West Bank.
He leads a precarious coalition that spans Israel’s fractious political spectrum from left to right and includes a small Arab party — much of which opposes his ideas on settlement and annexation. That coalition proposes to paper over its differences on Israeli-Palestinian relations by focusing on domestic matters.
Mr. Bennett has explained his motives for teaming up with such ideological opposites as an act of last resort to end the political impasse that has paralyzed Israel.
“The political crisis in Israel is unprecedented on a global level,” he said in a televised speech on Sunday. “We could end up with fifth, sixth, even 10th elections, dismantling the walls of the country, brick by brick, until our house falls in on us. Or we can stop the madness and take responsibility.”
So there you have it folks.
On one side you have the Iranians solidifying their complete control of the country and being led by tyrants who will kill anyone who opposes them.
On the flip side you have Israel who ousted a powerful leader and replaced him with a shaky coalition of opposing political parties.
I think I know where this is headed. What do you think?