In this mailing: Judith Bergman: Our Chinese Sister Cities: "Use the Countryside to Surround the City" Mohammed Habib: A Nobel Peace Prize for President Trump and His Majesty King Mohammed VI? Amir Taheri: Tehran Should Ask 'Then What?' Our Chinese Sister Cities: "Use the Countryside to Surround the City" by Judith Bergman  •  December 13, 2020 at 5:00 am       "While American local governments value such "exchanges" for financial and cultural reasons, 'exchange' (交流) has always been viewed as a practical political tool by Beijing, and all of China's 'exchange' organizations have been assigned political missions". — China's Influence & American Interests, Report of the Working Group on Chinese Influence Activities in the United States, by the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, 2019. "We will keep connecting schools in the U.S. and China one at a time". — USA-China Sister Schools Association. China has used its sister cities to boost its "mask diplomacy", in which it plays both the arsonist and the firefighter, and has written about this new initiative in state media with quotes from "grateful" US sister cities thanking China for sending them masks. Local politicians and others, such as school principals, are simply easy targets for the sophisticated tactics of CCP officials, who prey on the goodwill and naiveté of unsuspecting Americans, although willful blindness doubtless plays a role. "Local politicians typically know little about China and have no responsibility for national security, and because their Chinese interlocutors present themselves as offering people-to-people exchanges and 'opportunities for local business', these politicians have a strong incentive to remain uninformed". — Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World. In February, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned: "Chinese Communist Party officials... are cultivating relationships with county school board members and local politicians – often through what are known as sister cities programs... Last year, a high school – a high school, a high school in Chicago – disinvited a Taiwanese representative to serve on a climate panel after Chinese pressure." (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) On November 17, four US Senators introduced legislation to investigate the "sister city" partnerships between communities in United States and China. According to Senator Marco Rubio: "The Chinese government and Communist Party has a history of exploiting cultural and economic partnerships to conduct malign activities, and it's clear that opaque, sister-city partnerships deserve increased scrutiny. We must do more to better understand, and then counter, Chinese influence operations at the state and local level, which are often conducted under the benign auspices of sister city relationships." In February, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned: Continue Reading Article A Nobel Peace Prize for President Trump and His Majesty King Mohammed VI? by Mohammed Habib  •  December 13, 2020 at 4:30 am       Salmi Gailani, who was born in 1991, the year of the ceasefire, "blames the U.N. for the fact that for 30 years, Western Sahara has been a frozen conflict.... '30 years is long enough to place ballot boxes,' he said." — Euronews, November 17, 2020. The international community has been trying to broker a peace for the Western Sahara for 30 years. Some observers, however, suggest that "if the Polisario Front were to have sovereignty over the Western Sahara, it would mean that Algeria was effectively surrounding Morocco." Along with last week's the triumph for President Trump and King Mohammed VI, there have also been charges that Morocco could have joined the Abraham Accords without the US recognizing Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara. So far, however, no one has quite said how. Last week, US President Donald J. Trump and His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco (pictured), in a move that immediately prompted calls for a Nobel Peace Prize, agreed that Morocco would be the fourth Arab country -- joining the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan -- in establishing a solid peace with Israel this year. (Photo by Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images) Last week, US President Donald J. Trump and His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco, in a move that immediately prompted calls for a Nobel Peace Prize, agreed that Morocco would be the fourth Arab country -- joining the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan -- in establishing a solid peace with Israel this year. A felicitous reciprocity is that Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States. Continue Reading Article Tehran Should Ask 'Then What?' by Amir Taheri  •  December 13, 2020 at 4:00 am       Reacting to the killing of Major-General Qassem Soleimani and Brigadier-General Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, regime "thinkers" promise "revenge" and suggest this could be done with a single deadly blow to the "enemy".... Needless to say, when Khomeinists speak of "the enemy," they mean the American "Great Satan" and its sidekick Israel. Even Ghulam Esmaili, spokesman for Islamic Judiciary, has joined the armchair strategists by suggesting "the clearing out of America and Israel" with a "single blow." Launching the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese high command also forgot to ask "what next?". [T]he Kayhan editorialist who urged the attack on Haifa... says because the Islamic Republic has "all US bases within range", cowardly Americans won't react to a destructive attack on Israel. And if they did, he says, Tehran could pour missiles against US bases in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, the US 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, the CENTCOM in Qatar, bases in Omani part of Musandam Peninsula. The editorialist believes the US would simply grin and bear each attack. Iran's daily newspaper Kayhan, reflecting the views of "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei, says that Iran's "single blow" should come in a rainstorm of missiles against the Israeli port of Haifa. It then insists that the attack should not be merely symbolic but should cause total destruction and kill lots of people. (Image source: khamenei.ir) In the One Thousand and One Night tale of the princes of Serendip, all three have one desire: To achieve all their wishes with a single throw of the dice. However, not confined to the world of oriental tales, that dream has dictated quite a few tragic, comical and tragi-comical events in history. The latest appearance of the "one throw" theme could be witnessed in Tehran these days, where Islamic Republic leaders offer both tragic and comical versions of it. Reacting to the killing of Major-General Qassem Soleimani and Brigadier-General Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, regime "thinkers" promise "revenge" and suggest this could be done with a single deadly blow to the "enemy". Continue Reading Article