World Press on Assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Khan Sarwar Murshid and Covid-19: New Age Islam's Selection, 8 December 2020
By
New Age Islam Edit Desk
8 December
2020
• The
Assassination Of An Iranian Scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Will Make Joe
Biden's Job Harder
By
Mohamad Bazzi
•
Covid-19, Industry And Bureaucracy
By
Rubana Huq
• The
Intellectual Journey of Khan Sarwar Murshid
By
Tazeen Mahnaz Murshid
• On
Iran, Biden Can Bide His Time
New
York Times Editorial
-------
The
Assassination Of An Iranian Scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Will Make Joe Biden's
Job Harder
By
Mohamad Bazzi
7 Dec 2020
Iranian scientist,
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
------
The
assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on 27
November, which is likely to have been carried out by Israel, was intended to
undermine the possibility of a quick US-Iran detente once the president-elect,
Joe Biden, takes office in January. It’s part of a scorched earth campaign by Benjamin
Netanyahu and Donald Trump to make it as difficult as possible for Iran to
resume negotiations with the Biden administration and return to the 2015
nuclear agreement.
But the
brazen killing is also designed to exploit rifts within Iran’s factional political
structure: between conservative politicians and hardline factions aligned with
the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the reformist camp led by the
president, Hassan Rouhani. In January, the US assassinated Iran’s most powerful
general, Qassem Suleimani, in a drone strike outside Baghdad’s airport. That
attack exposed weaknesses in Iran’s security apparatus and the regime was
unable to follow through on threats to avenge the targeting of its top
officials. Iran did fire missiles at US bases in Iraq in retaliation for Donald
Trump ordering – and later boasting about – Suleimani’s killing. But that was a
largely symbolic act and Tehran has not targeted a US official of equal
stature, as it threatened to. Since Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, hardliners
have been calling for tougher action in order to restore some deterrence with
Israel and, by extension, the US.
In a speech
on 29 November, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliament speaker and a
conservative leader, warned that a “strong response” was the only way to deter
future attacks. He also cautioned Iranians against “sending any signals
indicating weakness”. Hossein Salami, the top commander of the Revolutionary
Guards, vowed at Fakhrizadeh’s funeral: “Enemies should be awaiting our
revenge.” The hardline Kayhan newspaper, whose editor was appointed by Iran’s
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, published an opinion article urging the
Iranian leadership to attack the Israeli port city of Haifa if it concludes
that Israel assassinated the nuclear scientist. The article argued that
Tehran’s previous responses to Israeli attacks had not gone far enough.
These fiery
denunciations are not unusual, especially from hardliners, after an attack on
Iranian interests attributed to Israel or the US. But leaders of the military
establishment, conservative politicians and analysts are signalling to the
supreme leader, who has the final say on Iran’s foreign policy and nuclear
programme, that even if it waits out the final weeks of the Trump
administration without retaliating, Tehran can’t negotiate with Biden from a
position of weakness. That vulnerability has been exposed by the recent
assassinations and a series of mysterious explosions and fires at Iranian
facilities connected to its nuclear enrichment programme.
The
perception of exposed weakness could lead the Iranian regime to launch a series
of escalations – revenge attacks against Israeli targets; advancing its nuclear
enrichment; using allied militias in Iraq to attack US troops there; or risky
skirmishes with US forces in the Persian Gulf – to try to establish an upper
hand to show the world and the Biden administration that it is not weak. Many
of these options carry the risk of a wider confrontation, especially if they’re
carried out in the waning days of the Trump administration.
And Tehran
has failed at some past attempts at retaliation. From 2010 to 2012, Iran blamed
Israel’s Mossad for assassinating at least four of its leading nuclear
scientists, part of a wider sabotage campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme.
In February 2012, Iranian agents tried, and largely failed, to carry out
revenge attacks against Israeli targets in India, Thailand and Georgia.
If the
hardliners’ rhetorical message is that Iran should exact revenge to avoid
appearing weak, internally they’re trying to undermine Rouhani’s ability to
negotiate with the Biden administration. The conservatives argue that Rouhani
will essentially be a lame duck since Iran is scheduled to hold presidential
elections in June 2021. Rouhani, who was first elected in 2013, will have
served two terms and is not eligible to seek re-election.
The
conservatives are jockeying to reassert their control over the presidency. In
February, conservatives and hardliners swept a majority of the new parliament,
winning 220 out of 290 seats. The election was marred by problems: more than
90% of reformist candidates were disqualified by the Guardian Council, an
oversight body controlled by the supreme leader, and voter turnout was 42.6%,
the smallest of any parliamentary election since the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Some conservative politicians are pushing for the next president to come from
the ranks of the Revolutionary Guards or another part of the military
establishment. It’s possible that the Guardian Council may block any reformist
candidate from even running.
The Iranian
election means that the Biden administration has only a few months after it
takes office on 20 January to reach an agreement to return to the joint
comprehensive plan of action, under which Tehran had agreed to limit its
nuclear programme in exchange for relief from international sanctions. In May
2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the deal and imposed new
sanctions that crippled Iran’s economy.
While some
Iranian officials, such as Rouhani and his foreign minister, Javad Zarif, may
view Biden as far more predictable than Trump, others in the Iranian regime are
wary of restarting negotiations that can be undone by future US
administrations. Already, Biden’s top foreign policy aides have said that in
order for the US to re-enter the nuclear agreement and provide sanctions
relief, Iran must commit to follow-up negotiations on broader issues, including
Iran’s ballistic missile programme and support for militant groups in the
region. That will be difficult even for moderates to accept, with Iran’s
presidential election months away. And it’s likely to be a nonstarter for the
supreme leader, who wants to project a sense of strength.
The other
variable in the coming weeks is whether Netanyahu’s government will carry out
more provocations that seek to further exploit Trump’s recklessness and
divisions within Iran. Fakhrizadeh’s assassination highlighted Israel’s ability
to act with relative impunity, especially in evading criticism from the US and
much of Europe. The killing is likely to have been in violation of
international law, as Agnes Callamard, the UN rapporteur on extrajudicial
killings, noted on Twitter. Even a former CIA director, John Brennan, lashed
out at the targeting of an Iranian official, saying if a foreign government was
responsible, it would be “an act of state-sponsored terrorism”.
The top
scientist’s killing may not set back Iran’s technical capabilities, but it
could weaken and humiliate the moderate Iranian factions that are most open to
rapprochement with a new US administration.
-----
Mohamad
Bazzi is a journalism professor at New York University and former Middle East
bureau chief at Newsday
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/07/assassination-iranian-scientist-joe-biden-mohsen-fakhrizadeh-us-iran
-----
Covid-19,
Industry and Bureaucracy
By
Rubana Huq
December
08, 2020
When the
sky isn't looking clear anymore, to say you are watching the clouds go by with
the hope of a better day is being cautiously optimistic. If there's rain in the
process, one gathers that it is what it is and a sense of ease settles in,
looking at the freshly cleaned landscape. With Covid-19, it's been neither
clouds nor rain. It's been a clear sense of a lingering thunder which has
frightened humanity and shooed us to our cubbyholes. There's no bravery that's
been able to confront this monster, no shield that's been enough. The world, at
the most, has just watched it unfold and handled it to its limited capacity.
Throughout
the world, Covid-19 is indeed being approached with caution and advisories at
all levels. Governments all over the world have reacted and rescued; businesses
all over have wailed and suffered. Yet, through all the losses and tears,
trepidations and predicaments, many lives and enterprises have learnt to cope
with the oscillations of the pandemic.
At our end,
the single largest industry of readymade garments had to deal with the crisis
of such magnitude. The impact of the pandemic on the lives, livelihoods and the
overall economy cannot be overstated. The USD 3.15 billion worth of
cancellations put a dent on the essence of trust between the suppliers and the
brands, and the inevitability of repatriation of funds had become a reality
overnight. At a time like that, the impact could have been more severe in the
absence of the incentive packages and policy interventions announced and
implemented by the government. Quite often, we hear about bureaucratic hurdles
("amlatantrik jotilota") but, during this pandemic, the promptness
and efficiency of the bureaucratic response had given the industries in
Bangladesh a fresh air to breathe in.
We are
grateful to the prime minister for providing the critical direction to the
industry and for having saved industry-related livelihoods. We also salute our
workers who have literally saved the industry from being doomed. And we must
also applaud the finance ministry, commerce ministry, Bangladesh Bank and all
other ministries and departments of the government for their fast response and
painstakingly implementing the incentive packages. These were absolutely
crucial for re-coursing the industry from obvious destruction.
At the very
outset of the calamity, the concern that grappled us immediately was saving the
livelihoods of four-million workers and their dependents from any possible
financial crunch. As the industry embraced the tsunami of cancellation
resulting in export slashed by 85 percent in April, the severity was foreseen
by the government, and the BDT 50 billion loan stimulus meant for paying
workers' wages in April, May, June and July marked the first turning point for
the industry to stay afloat during the peak of the storm, i.e. April-July 2020.
As far as
the salary packages are concerned, the integrity of the disbursement of incentives
could not be questioned. The farsightedness and pragmatism of the government
had made the digital wage payment possible, and this itself ensured
transparency. Needless to say, at a time when the West came to a dead halt by
lockdowns and emergencies, the "financial flow" came as the lifeline
of the industry. Thanks to the Ministry of Finance for efficiently stitching up
the much-needed rescue package for the industry, and thanks to Bangladesh Bank
for particularly having eased off and enhanced the export development fund.
Apart from this, the retention of foreign currency in single pool for
back-to-back import payments, extension of the tenure of realisation of export
proceeds, and suspension of loan classification till December 31, 2020, served as
saviours.
It's true
that our expectations from the working capital loan assistance packages was
higher, particularly for the SMEs since the working capital loan was meant for
supporting the affected factories. In reality, it was difficult for the RMG SMEs,
who are the most-affected groups, to access this support to a large proportion
due to the nature of business and conditions set out to access the incentive.
However,
while enthralled by the revival in exports since July (by 0.82 percent during
July-September), albeit short-lived, the emergence of the second wave of
Covid-19 is extremely worrying for the industry. The dwindling retail sales in
the West and further slowdown in export since October could be early signs of a
resurgence of the situation we have passed through earlier this year. The
approval of vaccines is a great source of hope, but as far as trade is
concerned, the worries may still persist as the global economy may take time to
generate momentum in employment, consumption, spending and trade. The
double-edged sword of the pandemic is slicing the price. Data suggests that our
RMG has been consistently losing unit value by around 5 percent since
September.
The
industry has contributed so much to our nation, and we only have a nominal
share in the global market, thus we have a great potential to grow further. We
have painstakingly prepared ourselves for the renewed opportunities over the
past few years in the area of industrial safety, sustainability and
eco-efficiency. Therefore, the needs of the industry are clear: 1) The industry
needs continuity of the supports received to stay afloat in the upcoming days,
along with additional supports to withstand any adverse impact; 2) The industry
would expect the empathy of the authorities in ensuring legal protection for
our exporters who dealt with bankrupted buyers to deal with the losses and
outstanding liabilities, because without resolving these issues, the affected
factories (supposedly employing hundreds of thousands of workers) cannot fight
back. And essential alignment between the policy makers and the industry must
continue.
While
exports dip and concerns are heightened, this should not be taken as a cry-wolf
syndrome. With the cry and the ask also comes the promise of turning around by
2021. With the vaccines, a better time and a better consumption trend will
surely set in. Besides, we are better-placed than most of our competitors.
Ethiopia is politically troubled, Vietnam's export basket isn't prioritising
RMG and won't grow capacity overnight, Myanmar is questionable in terms of
capacity and ethical sourcing, and Cambodia has just lost its GSP. Therefore,
it's important to stay on course and be hopeful.
There's no
alternative to depicting the real picture. Reality cannot be exaggerated. Projections
cannot be amplified. The only answer is to handle the situation as it comes and
hope that the policy makers stand by our side and help us swim through the
troubled waters, as they have in March 2020. It's an industry where 4.1 million
workers are engaged. The numbers cannot be ignored, the impact cannot be
underestimated, and the potential cannot be insulted by scepticism.
-----
Dr
Rubana Huq is President of BGMEA and Managing Director of Mohammadi Group.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/knot-so-true/news/covid-19-industry-and-bureaucracy-2007549
-----
The
Intellectual Journey Of Khan Sarwar Murshid
By
Tazeen Mahnaz Murshid
December
08, 2020
In the
black-and-white cultural milieu that often engulfs us, we are frequently unable
to grasp a man's intellectual worth when neat categories cannot pin them down.
But man is a many-splendoured being. I have tried to understand what had made
the man, my father. I delved into family history, and in his activist and
teaching roles. I knew him to be detached from any ostentatious show of
religious affiliation, a man who questioned all assumptions and yet continued
to search for moral order and spiritual certainty. For him, truth and beauty
were integral elements of that quest. Intellectually, at one level, it led him
to explore philosophy and study the great literary minds of the early twentieth
century, both Eastern and Western. At another level, he came to appreciate
refined culture, arts, manners, and etiquette. Gradually, he evolved into an
aesthete.
An unexpected
finding has enabled me to explore some of these dimensions of his intellectual
world when I chanced upon his moth-eaten thesis with a letter of recommendation
for its publication by his external examiner, Professor Bullough of the
Department of English Language and Literature, University of London's King's
College. Indian Elements in the Works of W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and Aldous
Huxley is now awaiting publication by the University Press Limited. The
following ruminations follow from my many readings of the manuscript as I
prepared it for its publication in 2020. I hope that my father will forgive me
for this audacious task. Being a perfectionist, he only brought out one or two
articles from this work. When he undertook this study, it was an uncharted field.
It was many years later that the theme of Indian elements was touched upon by
other scholars. The work remains relevant for us today because it touches on
issues of moral responsibility, right conduct and social order.
What
transpires are the musings of a young man navigating the crossroads where the
great minds of the West meet those of the East. It required considerable
courage for a young man to tell the Occident, in the immediate aftermath of the
end of empire, that the East had exacted its revenge on the West. The western
intellectual milieu had been changed forever.
Through
this study, along with what we know of Murshid's life and other interests, we
can picture the image of a more complex and nuanced human being than what we
had supposed. It provides the missing link that helps us understand his own
development better, for the impact of his study on himself had been no less
profound than it had been on his subject matter: the intellectual worlds of
Yeats, Eliot and Huxley.
We had
always sensed that the Buddha had a special place in his heart: not only was
the bust of the Buddha one of his two most cherished possessions, next to that
of the ancient Greek goddess, Venus, but he had also lovingly called his
first-born Gautam Firdous, after Gautama Buddha! But the manuscript reveals how
that connection manifested itself.
Reading his
literary treatise, it struck me that some of the basic values he sought to
inculcate in us were, in fact, Buddhist in origin, particularly the ideas of
sangha and moral responsibility. Young Murshid shared Huxley's idea that a
minority of individuals can "attain enlightenment" and make a
difference. His life and works came to embody that value. He championed the
values of right conduct, followed a path of legitimate action in its defence,
and sought the company of like-minded people in its pursuit. He painstakingly
promoted the selection of suitably qualified persons for given tasks in the
interests of an orderly society. His passion for teaching to train young minds
in critical thinking was an aspect of promoting that ideal.
Like Eliot,
Murshid was fascinated by the idea of the "Eternal now"; and like
Yeats, the concept of the "unity of Being" exercised him. However,
the Buddhist concept of anatman—that there is no soul, but there is
rebirth—left a sense of uncertainty. Surely this is the only life we know, and
this was the only life to be lived. Beyond death was the realm of the
mysterious unknown. Like Rilke, he found it slightly fearful.
He
identified most with Yeats. Both opted for a this-worldly approach to life,
where love, beauty and delight have a place. Eliot and Huxley chose detachment
but fell short due to their excessive loathing of the body and preoccupation
with negativity, such as with "dung and death", possibly due to their
traditional Christian upbringing centred around concepts of original sin and
guilt. They missed the cue of the ancients that life is to be delighted in even
as we separate ourselves from its attachments.
At the core
of Murshid's world view had already evolved the concept of values. It included
ideas of order and moral responsibility, justice and right conduct, truth and
beauty as the measure of such an order. He summed these up in his concept of
values. To him, values were what made a man, and those values are what held
society together. He had already come to call these new values when at the ripe
age of 25 years he began to publish a journal from Dhaka in 1949, called New
Values, several years before he embarked on his spiritual journey into ancient
Indian philosophy in the context of his literary studies. The influence of the
Buddhir Mukti Andolana of the 1930's in Bengal can be traced to the secular
appeal of the journal. Some may even venture to relate this stance to the
values of the European Enlightenment. He had also explored other spiritual
systems focussed on the Qur'an and Sufi thought, his interpretations bringing
out their hidden wonder and depth.
With
hindsight, it would appear that his intellectual pursuit for an orderly society
based on the values of right conduct, truth and beauty found a spiritual
counterpart in his quest to understand the nature of man's relationship with
God. In essence, one could conclude that these two journeys—the intellectual
and the spiritual—that compelled him to action all his life were one and the
same. Notably, however, he was the living embodiment of the values he upheld
and the world view he adopted.
-----
Professor
Tazeen Mahnaz Murshid is a social scientist and historian, and daughter of
Professor Khan Sarwar Murshid, who died on this day eight years ago.
https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/news/the-intellectual-journey-khan-sarwar-murshid-2007521
-----
On Iran,
Biden Can Bide His Time
New
York Times Editorial
Dec. 7,
2020
President-elect
Joe Biden has made it clear that his preferred method for dealing with Iran is
to find a way back to the nuclear deal the Obama administration concluded in
2015, while bargaining for an extension to some of its key provisions.
“If Iran
returns to strict compliance,” Biden wrote in a September op-ed for CNN, “the
United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on
negotiations.”
The Iranian
regime, for its part, has made it clear that, in reaction to last month’s
assassination of its nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, it intends to ramp
up its production of enriched uranium while threatening to expel international
inspectors by early February if the United States doesn’t immediately lift
sanctions.
The regime
has also ruled out any extensions to the nuclear deal, from which President
Trump withdrew in 2018. “It will never be renegotiated,” says Foreign Minister
Javad Zarif. “Period.”
There’s a
way out of this impasse. The Biden administration should — and, more important,
can — bide its time.
Tehran is
desperate to have sanctions lifted. In 2016, after the nuclear deal had taken
effect, it exported roughly 2.1 million barrels of crude oil a day. In 2020,
after the Trump administration imposed sanctions, it exported less than a
quarter of that. The inflation rate is running somewhere between 42 and 99
percent. Protests a year ago, triggered by a rise in fuel prices, led to
massive street demonstrations calling for an end to the regime.
The
regime’s response to its economic and political crises has been to up the
stakes. It wagers that it can provoke a nuclear crisis and then stampede the
new administration into giving up its immense economic leverage even before
meaningful negotiations begin. Once the main sanctions are lifted, Tehran can
concede things it never had a right to withdraw, such as U.N. access to its
nuclear facilities under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,
while haggling for things it shouldn’t be allowed to get, such as the lifting
of sanctions on an Iranian airline that supports the regime’s proxies.
But
Tehran’s escalation is also a bluff. There’s a limit to how far it can go in
provoking a nuclear crisis with the United States without risking a
confrontation with an enemy that is much closer to home.
In the last
six months, explosions in Iran have destroyed large parts of a centrifuge
manufacturing facility in Natanz, a secretive military installation at Parchin,
a power plant in Isfahan, a missile facility in Khojir and an underground
military installation in Tehran, among other places. Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah,
Al Qaeda’s second-highest leader, was gunned down in August in the streets of
Tehran. As for Fakhrizadeh, he was not the first Iranian nuclear scientist to
meet a violent end, and probably won’t be the last.
Nobody has
taken responsibility for these attacks, but nobody is in much doubt about their
source, either. They reveal an astonishing degree of penetration of the Iranian
security complex. If Tehran tries to race toward nuclear breakout, it knows it
will encounter a determined and effective challenge. There’s a limit to how far
the regime can go with its provocations before those provocations become
dangerous to the regime itself.
In short,
Tehran’s negotiating position is weak and its options for escalation are
limited. (Even its apparent attack last year on Saudi Arabia’s oil
installations, while technically impressive, did little permanent damage to the
Kingdom while accelerating the recent Arab-Israeli rapprochement.) If disputed
rumors of the 81-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s ill health prove true,
the country would experience its first transfer of real authority since 1989,
another tumultuous event for an already unpopular regime.
Contrast
this with the Biden administration, which will come into office holding four
powerful cards — assuming it chooses to play them. First, it can credibly
outsource effective deterrence to Israel without having to bear the immediate
risks. Second, it can leverage the military, economic, intelligence and
diplomatic resources of an increasingly united Israeli-Arab front. Third, it
doesn’t have to impose new sanctions to cripple Iran’s economy. It merely has
to enforce the ones already in place.
Finally,
there is growing evidence that Iran has long been in breach of its past
commitments by hiding hundreds of tons of nuclear equipment and material that
should have been disclosed under the terms of the nuclear deal. The Biden
administration and its European partners have a right and responsibility to
insist that Tehran provide a full accounting of that material as the entry
price of negotiations.
There is a
road toward a credible and durable deal with Iran that can muster the kind of
regional support and bipartisan buy-in the last one lacked. It’s a deal that
forces the regime to choose between a nuclear program or a functioning economy,
rather than getting both. A Biden administration that has the patience to see
through Tehran’s bluster can be rewarded with a lasting diplomatic achievement
that a future administration, unlike the last one, will not easily erase.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/opinion/on-iran-biden-can-bide-his-time.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
-----
URL: https://newageislam.com/world-press/world-press-assassination-mohsen-fakhrizadeh,/d/123688
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