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Baghdad, Iraq, 9 April 2020: The World Health Organization (WHO) commends the call by the religious Supreme Seminary in Iraq to postpone religious gatherings and its commitment to ensuring prevention measures recommended by WHO and local health authorities in Iraq.

The exponential spread of the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) around the world and the global rise in the number of infections and associated deaths necessitates limiting all social events and mass gatherings, including religious pilgrimages to holy sites. In this respect, WHO is disseminating clear recommendations to governments and the public to temporarily halt these activities in order to limit transmission of the disease.

The Seminaries, mainly in Najaf, Kerbala, and Kadimiya are in full support of WHO and MOH recommendations. We stress the importance of staying home, avoiding gatherings, and consider social distancing to avoid the unintentional harm caused by transmitting the disease, said Dr. Adham Ismail, WHO Representative in Iraq. WHO thanks the response of the esteemed Seminaries in Iraq and appreciate their support to health authorities efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 in Iraq, he added.

Iraq was expecting millions of pilgrims to head to the holy city of Kerbala on 8 April 2020 in one of the biggest religious ceremonies. Fearing this would widen the range of infection, WHO and Federal Ministry of Health in Baghdad made a series of visits to these areas and met with religious seminaries in Najaf, Kerbala, and Kadhimiya in Baghdad to mobilize support for postponing all religious gatherings and advising people to perform religious rituals from their homes until the COVID 19 outbreak in the country is stabilized.

The Supreme Seminary in Najaf, earlier called upon Iraqis to follow the Ministry of Health's directives and not to underestimate the repercussions of this virus and its dangers. It also obligated people to respect the lockdown and to support national health staff by staying home to limit the spread of infection, ease the burden on health facilities, and minimize morbidity and mortality.

For more information, pls contact:

Ajyal Sultany, WHO Communications Officer, sultanya@who.int, +964 7740 892 878Baraa Shaba, Communications Officer, shabab@who.int, +964 7800 010 244

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WHO commends efforts of Iraq Supreme Seminary and urges citizens to follow health measures to save lives [EN/AR] - Iraq - ReliefWeb

US troops reinforce bases in Iraq

The United States has allegedly deployed new military personnel to theAin al-Asad air base in Iraq, which was targeted by an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) missile attack in early January, Irans official news agency IRNAreported, quoting Iraqi sources.

IRNA quoted Qusay al-Anbari, a high-ranking member of the Iraqi Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary group, as saying thatUS withdrawal from al-Qaim base was only a tactical move to increase the number of American forces in Ain al-Asad base.

Coronavirus: Are US sanctions hurting Iran's response to the pandemic?

Anbari also claimed that the US had increased the number of its troops in Iraq after two rocket attacks on Camp Taji, north of Baghdad, killed two Americanand one British soldiers inearly March.

In another report, IRNA claimed that US forces were secretly preparing to build a new base in theUmm Samij area in Iraqs al-Anbar province.

Irans official news agency also quoted Karim Alawi, a member of the Iraqi parliaments security and defence committee, as saying that the US military has already started to deploy the Patriot missile defence system in Iraq.

Meanwhile, on WednesdayIRNAs Baghdad bureau reported that a number of US forces in Iraq were infected by the coronavirus. IRNA did not provide any further detail about the number of allegedly infected soldiers.

The report also claimed that the officially released numbers indicating that between 5,000 and 6,000 US troops are in Iraq were incorrect, and that there were about 20,000 US forces and military contractors in the country, who, it said, were perceived to be a possible threat to spread the coronavirus among Iraqis.

A new political standoff between Iranian hardliners and members of President Hassan Rouhanis government has ended with the rejection of an offer by health NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to set up a 48-bed field hospital in Irans third-largest city,Isfahan.

On 22 March, the official Twitter account of the Iranian embassy in France announced that the MSF had transferred medication, masks, special gowns and facilities in a charter flight from the French city of Bordeaux for a field hospital in Iran to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus.

Coronavirus in the Middle East: What you need to know so far

Iran is the worst infected countryby the virus in the Middle East, recording 2,234 deaths and 29,406 infected COVID-19 cases as of Thursday.

The Iranian embassy, in appreciation of the MSFs move againstUS sanctions on Iran, wrote: In the worlds current situation, which is inflamed by the coronavirus, it is necessary to strengthen international unity.

However, hardliners in Iran immediately reacted to the news by bringing up the scandal of HIV-contaminated blood products imported from France to Iran in the early 1980s. The products had infected over 900 haemophilia patients in Iran and created the first wave of AIDS in the country.

It is important to remember that France sent contaminated bloodto Iran during the climax of the Iran-Iraq war, and in a time when they [France] provided the most modern weapons of mass destruction to Iraq, Hossein Shariatmadari, the managing editor of ultra-conservative Kayhan daily, toldFars news agency.

During the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war, the US and its Western allies provided military and intelligence assistance to the then-president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

In an interview with Fars, Iranian conservative legislator Abolfazl Aboutorabi voiced his doubts about the true reasons for the presence of an MSF team in Iran, while European countries adhere to US sanctions that have pushed Irans economy into a deadly spiral.

What good does it do to us, a 45-bed field hospital inside the compound of Amin Hospital [in Isfahan]? Aboutorabi toldFars news agency, referring to the MSF field hospital.

Iranian economists have estimated that the annual inflation rate for Irans current fiscal year (started on 20 March) could stand between 35 and 40 percent, as a result of new US sanctions and the economic impacts of the coronavirus outbreak.

The new assessments were released despite an earlier report from the governments Statistical Centre of Iran, which announced that the inflation rate for the first three months of the Iranian year (20 March to 30 June) would be below 30 percent.

Iranian economist Ali Dini Torkamani told Shargh daily that the Statistical Centres numbers were based on the studies which were carried out before the coronavirus outbreak in Iran.

When the coronavirus epidemic ends in the country, we will see the [real] impact of the virus outbreak and the US new sanctions on Irans petrochemical, gas and metals exports, Torkamani told the daily.

According to the economist, Iran will experience an inflation rate of 35 to 40 percent in the current Persian year and the countrys economic might shrink by 1 to 2 percent.

Fellow economist SiamakGhassemi has also predicted the same numbers for economic growth in Iran, and predicted that a new wave of unemployment would hit Iran in coming months.

A report by ILNA news agency has described the dire economic situation of residents of Irans most poorest province, Sistan and Baluchestan, which has been hit hard by the economic impact of the coronavirus.

The southeastern provinceis heavily dependent on domestic tourists visiting during the two-week Nowruz holiday. But this year, the coronavirus and measures to ban non-essential travelhave seriously damaged the tourism industry in the country.

Coronavirus: Activists launch digital protest to end US sanctions on Iran

ILNA has reported that in provincialcapital Zahedan, unofficial petrol vendors have no customer, as well as shops selling second-hand Western clothing brands.

Unemployment is evident at every corner of the city, the news agency wrote. The citym which already had many poor and unemployed residents, is now drowning in unemployment.

According to the ILNA, Sistan and Baluchestan hadIran's highest unemployment rate in 2019 at 15.2 percent. Some 70 percent of its population lives under the poverty line.

While the coronavirus death toll in Sistan and Baluchistan has not been not as high as in other provinces in Iran, provincial officials are worried about the long-term economic impact of the pandemic on lives of the provinces residents.

As of Tuesday, Sistan and Baluchistan had registered 150 Covid-19 cases and nine deaths, according to the Fars news agency.

* Iranianpress review is a digest of reports that are not independently verified as accurate by Middle East Eye

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Iranian press review: US accused of reinforcing military presence in Iraq - Middle East Eye

Political and security crises in Iraq have been escalating, and the coronavirus outbreak has recently been added to the list. Meanwhile, news about thedropping oil prices has added fuel to the fire, andIraqis are all at risk. According to Mazhar Mohammad Saleh, economic affairsadviser to the Iraqi government, 93% of Iraq's budget relies on oil exports.

On March 14, Saleh said, Iraq has lost half of its financial revenues, with oil prices dropping to $30[per barrel].

According to the 2020 budget draft that the government proposed and awaits voting on in the parliament, the budget is $135 billion, and the deficit amounts to $40 billion. What's worse, the numbers were calculated based on a selling price of $56 per barrel of oil. Butthis price has been almost halved.

Most of the Iraqi budget goes to the salaries of the 7 million employees as operating expenses. The drop in oil prices will directly affect them, and their only income will be government salaries.

Salam Smeisim,former economic adviser to the Ministry of State for Civil Society Affairs,told Al-Monitor, The dropping oil prices are directly affecting the situation of Iraqis because oil accounts for 93% of the Iraqi budget. Besides, Iraq has a rentier and consumption budget rather than a developmental one. All revenues from oil and other resources feed salaries.

She added, The dwindling revenues lead to dropping salariesand this is a new disaster for Iraqis, in addition to the deficit reaching $51 billion. All these are signs that the Iraqi budget does not follow a financial and economic logic. The salaries and privileges of high-ranking employees range between $7 and $8 billion. The government must cancel these privileges and reduce the salaries so that lower-ranking employees do not bear the brunt.

In an attempt to weather the impact of dropping oil prices, the Iraqi parliamentary Economic and Investment Committee proposed March 12 a series of steps, including halting investment spending and curbing operational spending; making agreements with creditors to delay the settlement of Iraqs local and foreign debt until the financial situation improves; and collecting state debt from the cellphone and telecommunication companies.

The government also proposed halting payment of money to investors in the electricity sector; working on boosting government revenues; supporting the Treasury with the value of the regions exports of crude oil and border outlets;and reviewing exchange rates of the Iraqi Central Bank to secure prices that do not affect citizens and that ensure the salaries of state employees.

Issam al-Jalabi, oil expert and minister of oil in1987-1990,said in press statements March 9, Iraq will lose billions of dollars because of its loss of huge oil revenues, which will impact the provision of services, medication and food, while the country needs all available funds to face the COVID-19 outbreak.

Outgoing Prime MinisterAdel Abdul Mahdi called for measures that can alleviate the impact of dropping oil prices on Iraq. However, his government did not announce these measures or their mechanisms, as it has its hands full with the coronavirus crisis, which has not been allocated an emergency budget. Iraq has been facing an economic crisis since the first day oil prices dropped.

Abdul Mahdi has been trying to reassure Iraqis regarding the dropping oil prices, saying, This is just a bump in the road,and it does not mean our economy is collapsing or that the state is going bankrupt. Buthis reassurances do not match the warnings ofeconomic experts.

News about dropping oil prices shocked many Iraqis mostly state employees whose salaries depend on oil revenues whovoiced their concerns on traditional and social media.

State employees and experts in Iraq expect the 2020 financial budget to suffer hugely, and they expressed their concerns about the governments inability to pay salaries in the coming months. This in itself constitutes a new challenge for the Iraqi government, in addition to the political, security and social crises, especially those related to the US-Iranian conflict, the coronavirus outbreak and the ongoing protests in southern Iraq.

The financial revenues that entered Iraq in February amounted to $5 billion, when the selling price of oil was$51 per barrel. Butthis figure will not enter the Iraqi state budget for March, because of the collapse of theOPEC-Russia agreement to reduce supply.

Iraqis might be in the eye of the storm in the coming months, unless oil prices rise again and the current or transitional government meant to be formed finds solutions forthe crisis.

See original here:
Iraq Is another economic crisis looming in Iraq, with dropping oil prices? - Al-Monitor

Key point:Unwilling to directly retaliate against Israel, Saddam instead hammered Irans own nuclear nuclear research facility in Bushehr.

At dawn on September 30, 1980 four American-made F-4E Phantom jets screamed low over central Iraq, each laden with air-to-air missiles and three thousand pounds of bombs.

Prior to entering Iraqi airspace they had rendezvoused for aerial refueling with a Boeing 707 tanker escorted by two more advanced F-14 Tomcat fightersthe type immortalized six years later in the film Top Gun. And to complete the eighties action-movie vibe, they were embarked on a mission codenamed Operation Scorched Sword.

The skimming Phantoms climbed briefly to higher altitude so as to appear on Iraqi radars, before ducking back down to hit the deck. But while two decoy Phantoms maintained their trajectory towards Baghdad, the other two veered southwards towards the real target: Iraqs Osirak light-water nuclear reactor.

The jets were undertaking the first air-strike against a nuclear reactor, and the first preemptive air-strike attempting to prevent a country from developing nuclear weapons capability. In fact, the only preceding attack on nuclear facilities occurred during World War II when British commandoes successfully sabotaged Nazi heavy water research facilities in Norway.

Now, the famous Israeli Operation Opera that destroyed the Osirak reactor was still nine months away. The Phantoms soaring towards the reactor in 1980 belonged to the Iranian Air Force.

This obscure but portentous raid, and the context in which it occurred, was documented in-depth by Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop in a fascinating article for Air Enthusiast magazine in 2004.

Iran and Israel had been allies prior to the Iranian Revolution, and Tel Aviv continued to funnel vital arms and other forms of security assistance to Tehran during the 1980s despite the Ayatollahs increasingly anti-Israeli rhetoric. This was in large part due to their shared concern with the military buildup in Saddam Husseins Iraq.

In 1975, Iraq successfully negotiated a $300 million deal ($1.3 billion in 2019 dollars) with France to build an Osiris-type 40-megawatt light water research reactor in Iraq, accorded the portmanteau Osirak. This involved two reactors named Tammuz 1 and 2 to be constructed at the al-Tawaitha Nuclear Center south of Baghdad.

The Osiris reactor was designed for civilian purposes, but it had the potential to serve as a springboard for nuclear-weapons capabilitythough experts to this day disagree on just how imminent the leap to nuclear arms really was. Hussein successfully pressured the French into delivering dozens of kilograms of weapons-grade 93% enriched nuclear fuels, while kilos of uranium were acquired from South America and other sources.

Thus the reactor alarmed both Israelwhich remains today the only Middle Eastern state to possess nuclear-weaponsand Iran, which had repelled an abortive Iraqi tank invasion in 1975. Seeking to forestall the program, Israeli agents bombed a finished nuclear core near Toulon, and France stabbed one of the nuclear programs chiefs, Egyptian scientist Yahya el Mashad, to death in a Parisian hotel in June 14, 1980. These measure delayed but did not halt construction of the Osirak in an exposed dome facility rather than a hardened subterranean complex.

On September 22, 1980 Saddam launched Iraq into full-scale invasion of southwestern Iran, hoping to capitalize on the chaos prevailing in the newly-formed Islamic Republic. The resulting war would drag on for eight exceptionally bloody years.

It was in this context that the Iranian Air Force began planning a strike on Osirak earlier that Junereportedly at the request of the Israeli Chief of Army Intelligence. Israel was one of the few countries willing to furnish Iran with weapons and intelligence to fight the Iraqis, and so the raid was seen as a mutually-beneficial favor.

Irans large fleet of advanced American F-4 and F-14 jet fighters proved a formidable asset against Iraqi forces during the early years of the Iran-Iraq war. The Phantoms deployed by Iranon the raid came from the 33rd Fighter Squadron based near Hamedan, Iran.

Hefting unguided Mark 82,500-pound bombs, the Iranian pilots would have to swoop down into the teeth of formidable Iraqi air defensesat least, formidable in theory. Al-Tuwaitha was defended by several dozen rapid-firing 23- and 57-millimeter flak guns, and one Soviet-built SA-6 and three French Roland 2 short-range radar-guided surface-to-air missile systems.

However, the Iraqi defenses were apparently caught napping. The decoy Phantoms dropped their bombs on an Iraqi power station, knocking out electricity in Baghdad for two days according to Cooper. Meanwhile, the main element dove down on al-Tawaitha and released all twelve bombs in a matter of seconds before rocketing back home. There are no reports of Iraqi defensive fire.

Some witnesses reported seeing two Iranian bombs bounce off the reactor dome. The attack did trigger a voluminous blaze (as seen in this French photo), and damaged the piping, cooling pumps, and lab facilities. And hundreds of French and Italian technicians withdrew from the facility after the raid, though some subsequently returned.

Nonetheless, a CIA intelligence report noted that a redacted source had confirmed only secondary buildings were hit. It was also widely (but wrongly) assessed in the West that the raid had been flown by Israeli pilots in Iranian jets.

On November 30 an Iranian RF-4 reconnaissance Phantom swooped back over the facility at supersonic speeds, snapping photos to evaluate the effects of the strike. According to Cooper and Bishop, the photo-intelligence was then transferred in a metal case to Israel via a 707 airliner being used to deliver Israeli arms to Tehran.

This intelligence, bolstered by photo-recon missions performed by Israeli Phantom jets, helped the IDF devise a full-scale replica of the facility used to plan and practice for their own strike, which finally took place on June 7, 1981. Eight Israeli F-16 Fighting Falcons, escorted by six F-15 Eagles, flew through Saudi airspace, exploiting a gap in Iraqi radar coverage. In less than a minute, the Falcons destroyed the Osirak reactor with huge 2,000-pound Mark 84 bombs, killing nine Iraqis and a French engineer.

Unwilling to directly retaliate against Israel, Saddam instead hammered Irans own nuclear nuclear research facility in Bushehr. Between 1984 and 1987, Iraqi Super Etendard and Su-22M4K jets bombed the complex five times, substantially damaging to the facility, which was not actually seeing much use due to financial constraints imposed by the war.

While the Osirak strike is usually cited as the ur-text in arguments favoring preemptive anti-nuclear strikes, the raids success is somewhatunambiguous. While setting back Iraqi efforts to acquire nuclear arms by a decade, some experts claim the reactor wasnt highly adaptable to such purposes. In the aftermath of the raid, Saddam began a larger-scale nuclear program more directly seeking to produce weapons in hardened underground facilities. Had he not entered into a military confrontation with the U.S. by invading Kuwait in 1990, the Iraqi dictator might have acquired a more robust nuclear arms capability in the long run.

Saddams defeat in 1991, coupled with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, brought an end to the clandestine Israel-Iran alliance. Tehran increasingly leaned on its support for anti-Israeli groups to win influence and alliances in the Arab world, while Israel now understood Iran to be the most likely hostile state in the region to acquire nuclear weapons.

Ironically, having pioneered the preemptive strike targeting another states nuclear research facilities with Israel, today Irans extensive nuclear research program is threatened with preventative air attacks from Israel and the United States. However, Iran learned from the Osirak strikes: its own nuclear research program is dispersed in numerous underground facilities, not concentrated in a single above-ground facility that would prove susceptible to attack.

Sbastien Roblin holds a masters degree in conflict resolution from Georgetown University and served as a university instructor for the Peace Corps in China. He has also worked in education, editing and refugee resettlement in France and the United States. He currently writes on security and military history for War Is Boring.

Image: Wikipedia.

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Israel and Iran Are Enemies, But They Joined Forces To Stop Iraq's Nuclear Ambitions - The National Interest

Seventeen years ago almost to the day US-led coalition forces were advancing from the south towards Baghdad. They took the city on April 9, 2003.

That date marked the beginning of a new era for the region. It was a virtual earthquake whose aftershocks are still being felt on more than one level, especially in Iraq, the Gulf and the region of the Fertile Crescent that extends from Iraq to the Palestinian territories, via Syria and Lebanon.

The world stood witness to the changes occurring since 2003 and became convinced that Iran was the United States real partner in its war on Iraq. In fact, Iran was the real victor of that war, a war that had cost the United States thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

What is confusing is why and how the Americans decided to invade Iraq after al-Qaedas holy attacks on September 11, 2001, on the Pentagon and New York, commissioned by Osama bin Laden.

Besieged by severe international sanctions for its foolish invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq had no relationship with al-Qaeda or bin Laden, who was hiding in Afghanistan.

Among the 19 terrorists who executed the attacks was a Lebanese citizen named Ziad Jarrah belonging to the Fatah Revolutionary Council group headed by Sabri al-Banna, aka Abu Nidal. Banna was a defector from Fatah and had suspected links to various terrorist organisations, including al-Qaeda.

Banna was living in Baghdad. To preclude any misinterpretations, the Iraqi regime of the time disposed of the man. It was said he committed suicide at his home in Baghdad.

Despite these preventive moves, there were some people in Washington who insisted on finding a link, no matter how thin, between the Iraqi regime headed by Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, knowing that evidence corroborating the existence of a relationship between al-Qaeda and groups affiliated with the Iranian regime, not Iraq, was overwhelming.

Since September 11, 2001, officials in the George W. Bush administration volunteered Iraq as partially responsible for the attacks. During the first high-level meeting following the attacks, US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz demanded that a response take place in Iraq.

That meeting was at Camp David. Colin Powell, then-Secretary of State, silenced Wolfowitz, assuring him that the US administration had no information linking Saddam to al-Qaeda but Wolfowitz refused to back off.

Wolfowitz, a neoconservative, was later asked why he had focused on Iraq, while everybody knew al-Qaedas leadership was protected by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. He answered: The seeds have been planted.

In other words, he laid the foundation for the military invasion of Iraq. This information was published in Vanity Fair and the decisions taken at that stage that changed the face of the world, including travel procedures inside and outside the United States.

Still, the mystery remains: Why invade Iraq? The answer at that time was to bring freedom and democracy to the oppressed Iraqi people.

There is no question that the Saddam regime was dictatorial but why it and not the Syrian regime, for example, which was equally oppressive? More important, what was the difference between it and the government in Iran, especially the Khomeini regime that had American blood on its hands? It ordered the bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, followed by the bombing of the US Marine Corps headquarters near Beirut airport in October the same year.

It is still a mystery why the United States started a war on Iraq under the pretext of going after al-Qaeda while its troops were all over Afghanistan searching for al-Qaeda and bin Laden.

To this day, the United States has been suffering from its war in Afghanistan. It couldnt end it, such that, in 2020, it had no choice by to sign an agreement with the Taliban, an accord with a taste of defeat. It was the Taliban regime and Afghanistan that gave shelter and protection to bin Laden and enabled him to plan and execute the September 11 attacks and yet US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo found himself compelled to go to Kabul to save what he could of the agreement with the Taliban.

The invasion of Iraq is a bewildering American decision but the conclusion that can be drawn after all those years is that the announced US goal of establishing a democratic regime in Iraq turned out to be an impossible task and that the real target then was Iraq, not the regime.

How else can we explain that a mighty country such as the United States, which was the only superpower in the world, could embark on the adventure of invading and occupying a country without preparing itself for the post-occupation phase? Even a child could guess that occupying Iraq in the way it happened meant offering it to Iran on a silver platter and creating a lasting regional imbalance at every level.

What was birthed in Iraq by the US occupation was a non-viable, unsustainable regime, especially after the intentional marginalisation of the Sunni Arabs of Iraq and of offering the Kurds inapplicable promises.

With the passage of time, that is, 17 years since the fall of the statue of Saddam in Baghdad, events confirm that the intention was to finish off Iraq. The old regime and its alleged weapons of mass destruction were nothing more than flimsy arguments for achieving the specific goal of destroying Iraq.

In 2020, the United States rediscovered its need for Iraq. This is the Iraq that is resisting Iranian hegemony on the grounds that Arab nationalism still binds together most Iraqis, including Shias.

Does Washington have a clearer vision of what it must do in Iraq to avoid the continuation of the Iranian expansionist project, a project motivated by fighting American belligerence in the first place?

Most important, is it possible to restructure Iraq after all these years of efforts to disintegrate it, unravel its social fabric and send it back to the Middle Ages?

We know what happened in Iraq and what was the goal of occupying it, but why?

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17 years ago, the US target was Iraq not its regime - The Arab Weekly