Iran continues to house and support Al Qaeda’s “core facilitation pipeline.” @thomasjoscelyn @billroggio @followfdd

A document presumably authored by Osama bin Laden in 2007 refers to Iran as al Qaeda’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication.” That same letter referred to the “hostages” held by Iran, meaning those al Qaeda figures who were held in some form of detention and not allowed to freely operate. Bin Laden was not against attacking Iran in principle; he simply did not think the costs of such action were worth it.

Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda has survived for years, despite numerous disagreements and conflicts between the two. For instance, one file recovered in bin Laden’s Abbottabad lair shows that he was troubled by Iran’s attempt to expand across the Middle East and he conceived of a plan to combat the Shiite jihadists’ growing footprint. Al Qaeda has also kidnapped Iranian diplomats in order force hostage exchanges. Several high-level al Qaeda leaders were reportedly released as part of one such exchange in 2015, although their status beforehand inside Iran was murky.

Most importantly, the two sides are clearly at odds in Syria and Yemen, where they have fought each other and affiliated proxies for several years.

Yet, throughout all of this, Iran has allowed al Qaeda to maintain a key facilitation hub.

In July 2016, for instance, the US Treasury Department sanctioned three senior al Qaeda leaders “located in Iran.” One of them, Faisal Jassim Mohammed Al Amri Al Khalidi (a.k.a. Abu Hamza al Khalidi), has served as al Qaeda’s “Military Commission Chief” — meaning he was one of the most important figures in the group’s international network. Al Khalidi was identified in Osama bin Laden’s files as part of a “new generation” of leadership al Qaeda groomed to replace their fallen comrades. As Treasury’s July 2016 designations made clear, some of al Qaeda’s most important men continued to operate inside Iran. [See FDD’s Long War Journal report, Treasury designates 3 senior al Qaeda members in Iran.]
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http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2017/07/state-department-iran-continues-to-host-al-qaedas-core-facilitation-pipeline.php

Silk Road standoff? The current border dispute between China and India is little more than a sideshow as South Asia’s tectonic plates shift in a direction that makes New Delhi’s resistance to Beijing’s global trade initiatives seem futile, writes Pepe Escobar. China’s trade connections now surround India and as Beijing is New Delhi’s top trade partner, nationalist attempts to block Indian involvement in the New Silk Road look increasingly counter-productive. READ THE STORY HERE

​China-India, border endgame: With Beijing drawing a non-debatable ‘red line’, the month-long military standoff between China and India on the border near Sikkim may be about to enter the home stretch this weekend. M.K. Bhadrakumar writes that the Chinese Defense Ministry has waded into the discourse for the first time, saying the People’s Liberation Army will defend Chinese territory “at all costs” and this means Beijing’s conclusion will be that India must leave “Chinese territory” unconditionally, unilaterally and without further delay. READ THE STORY HERE

• Tom Malinowski: How to take down Kim Jong Un

People’s Republic of China Options Toward North Korea 
By Paul Butchard, Divergent Options: “For the PRC, their relationship with the DPRK is a regional policy issue and a central element of PRC-United States relations.  President Xi Jinping is forging an outgoing, “Striving for Achievement” foreign policy for the PRC.  Simultaneously, the PRC has displayed more public disapproval of Pyongyang’s destabilising behaviour than previous years. The course of action the PRC adopts towards the DPRK will play a major role in the relationship between Beijing and Washington in years to come, influencing events globally."

Trump’s China policy emerging. @michaelauslin @hooverinst @gordongchang

In June, the White House delivered three blows to China. First, it imposed sanctions on a Chinese bank and two individuals for abetting North Korea’s financial transactions. Second, it listed China in the category of worst offenders in human trafficking. Finally, it announced a $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan. The Trump administration also made several lesser-order jabs, among them calling for more freedom in Hong Kong and conducting another freedom-of-navigation operation near the contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. It did all this as Chinese President Xi Jinping tried to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to China from Britain.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-gives-beijing-a-lesson-in-the-art-of-the-deal-1499899021

FPI Board Member Eric Edelman and Charles Wald write: The Trump administration must not abide this untenable and deteriorating situation. The United States now needs what it clearly lacked before: a comprehensive strategy of robust leverage against all of Iran’s destabilizing behaviors. - Politico

RUSSIA: Russia's New Sukhoi Su-30SM1 Fighter 
By Dave Majumdar, The National Interest: “Designated as the Su-30SM1, the aircraft leverages the operational lessons that Russia has learned during its operations over Syria, according to a report in the Russian-language newspaper Izvestia.”
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Sanctions? What sanctions? North Korea’s economy grew at its fastest pace in 17 years in 2016, despite the isolated country facing international sanctions aimed at curbing its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Christine Kim reports that Pyongyang does not publish economic data but South Korea’s central bank figures say gross domestic product in the North last year rose 3.9% from the previous year and this expansion, driven by mining and energy, marked the biggest rise since 1999. READ THE STORY HERE

How to Respond to Russia’s INF Treaty Violation
By Gary Schmitt & James Cunningham, RealClearDefense: “When The New York Times reported that Russia had likely deployed a nuclear-armed cruise missile in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, declared the treaty “in tatters” and the deployment a lesson “about the price of not confronting aggression.”” ​

Liu Xiaobo, the renegade Chinese intellectual who kept vigil at Tiananmen Square in 1989 to protect protesters from encroaching soldiers, promoted a pro-democracy charter that brought him a lengthy prison sentence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while locked away, died under guard in a hospital on Thursday. He was 61. – New York Times
 
The loss of the country’s most prominent dissident, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, who died of cancer under police guard at a Shenyang hospital on Thursday, leaves China’s fractured activist community at its weakest in a generation – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
 
The death on Thursday of China’s most prominent political prisoner, Liu Xiaobo, set off a frenzied effort by government censors to block discussion of his legacy online. – New York Times
 
China’s economic might is catching up to the United States — or is seen to be catching up. That’s according to a new report from the Pew Research Center, which released results of a 38-nation survey Thursday afternoon. While the majority of those polled still correctly believe the United States is the world’s biggest economy, 12 nations — including Canada, Russia, and most of western Europe — believe China has the largest economy in the world. – Foreign Policy’s The Cable
 
Friends of China's Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident Liu Xiaobo, who died of liver cancer in custody, said on Friday they were unable to contact his widow, Liu Xia, and that ensuring her freedom was now a top priority. - Reuters
 
Analysis: Mr. Liu’s fate reflects how human rights issues have receded in Western diplomacy with China. And it shows how Chinese Communist Party leaders, running a strong state bristling with security powers, can disdain foreign pleas, even for a man near death. – New York Times
 
Editorial: Shortly before Mr. Liu died, the man ultimately responsible for this and so many other abuses in China, President Xi Jinping, was basking in the glamour and glory of international politics at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg. Yet throughout Mr. Xi’s rule, the true locus of honor in China has been any place of confinement occupied by Liu Xiaobo. – Washington Post
 
Editorial: Without political reform, China will continue to use its growing economic and military clout to spread its authoritarian model. Pressuring Beijing to free the imprisoned human-rights lawyers who have taken up Liu’s freedom fight would serve the interest of China’s people, as well as the rules-based international order that its undemocratic government seeks to subvert. – Wall Street Journal (subscription required)
 
Editorial: Liu Xiaobo was, in a sense, the leader of China. He was the country’s foremost proponent of freedom, democracy, and human rights. He thought that Communism was a gross imposition on China and that it could not last indefinitely, if enough Chinese stood up against it. – The Weekly Standard
 
FPI Senior Fellow Ellen Bork writes: Today, we are discovering that America’s posture of uncritical engagement has far-reaching consequences. China is not only crushing democracy at home but challenging the universal rights and liberal democratic norms and universal abroad. A response to this will not come from the White House. Just hours after Liu died, President Trump praised Xi Jinping as a “terrific guy” at a press conference in Paris. Liu cannot comment on Xi’s ascendancy, and the attendant U.S. retreat. But we still have his writings to guide us. “Tyranny is not terrifying,” he wrote in 1996, “what is really scary is submission, silence, and even praise for tyranny.” – The Weekly Standard
 
Xiaorong Li writes: Liu Xiaobo never harbored the illusion that nonviolent action would not be returned by violence. Chinese lawyers who used the courts to challenge the state-controlled judiciary, attempting to hold the police accountable for using torture to extract confessions or keeping detainees in secret locations, have been detained or tortured themselves. But Xiaobo didn’t let the repression cloud his unflappable optimism. His firm belief that freedom is “the source of humanity and the mother of truth” should continue to guide all of us. – New York Times