In recent times, UNICEF has partnered with radical organizations pursuing pro-Palestinian and Islamist agendas.  NGO Monitor produces and distributes critical analyses and reports on the activities of the international and local non-governmental organization (NGO) networks. It has just issued a scathing report claiming that UNICEF’s Occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt) branch is working with radical anti-Israel NGOs to add the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to a UN blacklist of “grave” violators of children’s rights, like reported by frontpagemag.com.

Each year, the UN Secretary General publishes a report on “Children and Armed Conflict,” which, since 2001, has included an “annex” listing “parties to armed conflict” that engage in certain practices that fundamentally violate the rights of children. This annex is regarded as a blacklist of villainous entities that harm children. Palestinians and their advocates are seeking to abuse the process by enlisting UNICEF to do their dirty work in demonizing Israel yet again.

“The UN blacklist consists almost entirely of terror groups and militias from failed states,” according to the NGO Monitor report. “In essence, by pushing for the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) inclusion on the list, UNICEF and its NGO partners are claiming that Israel’s army is equivalent to ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda.”

The pro-Palestinian advocacy groups spoon-feeding libelous information to UNICEF about IDF include organizations that have links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S., EU, Canada, and Israel. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

Rather than follow its own stated guidelines of neutrality, impartiality, independence and credibility, UNICEF has allowed itself to become an instrumentality of virulent anti-Israel groups to exploit concerns over violence against children for the sole purpose of delegitimizing the Jewish state of Israel. The so-called “working group,” put together to ostensibly engage in objective fact-finding regarding alleged instances of grave violations against children, was dominated, according to the NGO Monitor report, by non-governmental “organizations that have alleged ties to terrorist groups and/or are prominent actors in anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) and lawfare campaigns.” The result is that “the NGOs’ factually inaccurate and biased narratives feed directly into the UN system.” The NGO Monitor report further explained that “UNICEF and the NGO members of the Working Group are active in a coordinated attempt to place Israel on the Secretary-General’s Annex, and UNICEF sees its work as serving this purpose.”

Not only are the anti-Israel narratives blatantly false. They are one-sided. UNICEF has been silent on Hamas’s use of children as human shields, while actually accusing the IDF of using Palestinian children as shields. UNICEF claimed in a 2010 report that there is “no evidence of systematic attempts to recruit children to Palestinian armed groups for training or operations,” although it acknowledged a few “individual cases” and “anecdotal reports” of such recruitment without further comment. In a bulletin published on December 22, 2017, UNICEF claimed that it was “not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children” by armed groups in Gaza, where Hamas is in charge.

UNICEF also reduces the number of Israeli children killed by Palestinian terrorists to the level of statistical afterthoughts. It has ignored the psychological trauma visited on Israeli children when the sirens blare and the children have 15 seconds to run for cover to escape incoming Hamas rockets.

Even worse, UNICEF has been complicit in helping to educate Palestinian children in the ways of terrorism. “UNICEF has been a major financier of Palestinian ‘summer camps’ which encourage children to become suicide bombers,” Dave Kopel warned more than a decade ago in an article for National Review. “One such camp is named for Wafa Idris, a female suicide bomber.”

UNICEF has not limited itself to the Palestinians in partnering with a terrorist-affiliated organization.

For example, on June 9, 2008, UNICEF signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Islamic Relief Organization to provide support, supposedly to help children in Saudi Arabia and other countries. “Building partnerships with leading organizations like the International Relief organization is the result of our trust in their continuous and effective efforts to protect and secure a better future for children,” declared Dr. Ayman Abu Laban, UNICEF Representative in the Gulf. The U.S. Treasury Department designated two of the International Islamic Relief Organization’s branches as terrorist organizations, which the UN itself had also done. The Treasury Department named the International Islamic Relief Organization’s Executive Director of the Saudi Arabian office as a money man for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

UNICEF has also played a role in whitewashing Sharia law when it comes to children. In 2005, UNICEF co-authored a report with the International Islamic Center for Population Studies and Research of Al-Azhar University. The report made false claims about how well children were treated under Sharia, claiming it “pays utmost attention to securing all that is needed to guarantee a wholesome psychological climate for the rearing of children, a climate wherein they learn about the world and formulate their customs and norms.”  Sharia law is not guaranteeing a “wholesome psychological climate” for children when girls are taught that they don’t deserve the same rights as boys because women are inferior to men, when child marriage is permitted, or when children are taught to hate any enemy of Islam, particularly the Jews.

Against all this background, UNICEF’s denial of the NGO Monitor’s characterization of UNICEF’s role in trying to add IDF to the UN children’s rights violators blacklist rings hollow. UNICEF’s spokesperson claimed that UNICEF’s “role, working with select partners on the ground, is to collect data on grave violations against children, verify it using multiple sources and share it with the Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict who then passes it on to the Secretary-General for review and decision.” The spokesperson added that its working group brings together UN agencies and international, Israeli and Palestinian NGOs, which “are selected based on their ability to regularly provide accurate, reliable, impartial and objective data on children affected by armed conflict.” Nothing of the kind happened in this case. The NGO Monitor’s detailed factual account of the anti-Israel NGOs involved, and the manner in which they collaborated with UNICEF towards a common objective, undercuts UNICEF’s attempt to insulate itself from the nefarious scheme it facilitated with those NGOs to demonize Israel.

In 2016, the total revenue for UNICEF was $4.9 billion. The United States government has been donating approximately $132.5 million a year to UNICEF’s regular resource budget. Altogether, including emergency and other funding, the United States government contributed $658,585,655 in 2016. In addition, the United States of America National Committee contributed another $272,175,691 in 2016.

President Trump’s proposed spending budget for 2018 would reduce funding for UNICEF by 16 percent. That’s not enough unless UNICEF reforms itself very soon and stops serving as a shill for anti-Israel Palestinian activists and Islamists.

The international media has a poor record in reporting protests and uprisings in the wider Middle East since 2011. These complex struggles were presented as simple battles between good and evil, like a scene out of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Surprise and anguish were expressed when the supposed dawning of freedom and democracy in Libya, Syria and Yemen instead produced savage civil wars while Egypt and Bahrain became strikingly more authoritarian and repressive than before, like reported by counterpunch.org.

Whatever the causes of the failure of news organisations to understand developments in these countries, they had clearly got something very wrong about what was happening.

The recollection of being so very wrong about the likely direction of the Arab Spring should make the foreign media warier in reporting the demonstrations in Iran; which started in the city of Mashad on 28 December and swiftly spread all over the country. The Iranian government claims that its security forces have suppressed the protests or they are fizzling out, but there is evidence of fresh outbreaks, though at a reduced level. The slogans shouted and the limited number of interviews with protesters suggest that they are motivated by poverty, unemployment, rising prices and reduced subsidies for food and fuel, combined with rage against the greed and corruption of the ruling elite.

Many commentators downplay the protests as unlikely to have a long-term effect on Iran, on the grounds that they have no leadership, organisation, plan or coherent set of demands. But journalists tend to overrate the need for such neat organisational structures in order to confront the state; they are frustrated by the absence of identifiable leaders and spokespeople whom they can quote and interview.

Some compare the demonstrators negatively, in terms of size and potential impact, with the mass rallies and marches in Tehran in 2009. This may be true, but the absence of an organised structure also makes suppression more difficult for government security forces, who find it easier to arrest opponents who are properly labelled and identifiable.

On the contrary, I find the lack of organisation, unpredictability and geographically widespread nature of the outbreaks of unrest a persuasive sign that they are genuine and express widespread discontent. Had they really been organised by the CIA and Mossad using Saudi money, as alleged by the Iranian chief prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, journalists would probably be dealing with a slick PR operation producing graphic images of police brutality and injured protesters.

As it is, there are many videos taken by smartphones in dozens of provincial cities and towns showing angry crowds chanting anti-government slogans. But the pictures I have looked at are mostly blurry and it is impossible to tell what sort of people are protesting, their numbers or even if they are men or women. This amateurism is convincing evidence for me that we are not dealing with a put-up job, because those who fabricate or manipulate video film often give themselves away because the images they produce are too compelling to be true.

If one was looking for signs of the involvement of the CIA, or of exiled Iranian opposition groups connected to foreign intelligence services, one would find their footprint in a more professional handling of publicity. I was in Tehran in early 2011 when there were some demonstrations seeking to emulate the Arab Spring, but they never gained momentum. In my hotel I could bring up plenty of exciting film on YouTube of protesters throwing stones at the security forces, but when I went out they were nowhere to be seen. I complained about this to local Iranian journalists who worked for the foreign media but had had their press credentials suspended by the government. They laughed and said the protests had dwindled to nothing because of the massive presence of riot police, but even if they had been allowed to report this, they would not have been believed because the carefully edited videos being pumped out by exile groups were setting the agenda.

It was mid-winter in Tehran, but some film of rioting had trees in full leaf in the background. One should not be naive about this and assume it is just opposition groups that get up to such tricks: government intelligence agencies in the Middle East certainly try to discredit video evidence of dissent by posting demonstrably phoney film of demonstrations.

Genuine difficulties frustrate journalists reporting popular protests and uprisings which are, by their very nature, incoherent and ignite suddenly in unexpected places. Visas for journalists to stay in Iran are difficult to obtain, and, once there, there are restrictions on travelling around the country. A vacuum of information is created which, at a moment of intense international interest, is going to be filled with dubious stories from partisan sources. Governments hypocritically claim that they are being unfairly demonised when it is they themselves who have created the vacuum being used by their enemies.

There may be no evidence on the ground of a hidden American or Saudi hand behind the demonstrations at this stage, but they will presumably try to take advantage of them. The former US ambassador to the UN and neo-conservative John Bolton says firmly that “our goal should be regime change in Iran”, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has in the past called for intervention inside Iran.

President Trump is draining the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran of any benefit for the Iranians and is unlikely to recertify next week that Iran is sticking by its terms. He is trying to use the protests to justify toppling the deal, but the crudity of his anti-Iranian tweets may make it difficult for him to garner support when the UN Security discusses the protests on Friday afternoon.

It is right to criticise journalists who overstrain the evidence when it comes to Syria, but their sins are nothing compared to “experts” in think tanks or universities who this week were happily joining up dots that may not even exist and drawing broad conclusions on the strength of a few slogans shouted by some anonymous figure on a video of unknown provenance. For instance, one chant of “No Gaza, no Lebanon, our lives for Iran,” and another of “Leave Syria alone, think about us” immediately led some talking heads to conclude that Iranians in general oppose intervention abroad.

Such conclusions are dangerous because they are based on no real evidence, and the news that the rising Iranian regional superpower has feet of clay is exactly what many in the US and Saudi governments would like to hear. It is doubly welcome because it comes at the very moment when Iran’s allies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are in the ascendant and have emerged victorious from six years of war.

Governments should ask – as they did not do in Iraq, Libya or Syria – if the academic or think tank specialist so sure about what is happening in Iran has recently visited the country or knows much about it. They should recall that only a few years ago similar experts were predicting the break-up of Iraq and the inevitable fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

There are three main files formed during the tumultuous events of 2017 which will determine how the war against terrorism will proceed in 2018, like reported by alarabiya.net.

ISIS:

2017 was crucial in weakening the ISIS militant group and its strongholds in Iraq and Syria. It turned out to be just an extremist ideology embraced by different groups that belonged to different nationalities.

The first challenge would be to fight, hunt down and neutralize the ISIS who have gone back to their respective home countries to create immigrant cells that would settle in Europe and execute operations under the name of ISIS.

The second challenge would be fighting the militias that have declared allegiance to ISIS in Sinai, Libya and the African desert. Most probably in 2018 these militias will stop linking themselves to ISIS. They might continue their violent operations in their local strongholds but they might be scattered into extremist groups with new names or they might regain their original names like Boko Haram in northern Nigeria or Ansar Bait al-Maqdis in Egypt.

Most likely, 2018 will witness new names for organizations sprouting up where ISIS used to be. The mortal strike on ISIS would happen should Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi be apprehended or by his confirmed death. In that case, his successor in leading the militia would not be able to call himself “caliph” as al-Baghdadi did.

Al-Qaeda:

Since the death of Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda turned into a symbolic entity without any real structured organization. It’s supposed leader Ayman al-Zawahri failed to convince the sections of the militia with his position.

During 2017, there was a belief of re-birth of al-Qaeda and predictions that Hamza bin Laden was supposed to be the upcoming leader who would inspire new generations of extremists, and that he would be able to revive the militia.

However, with the exception of some reported clashes that were recorded on extremists’ blogs or audio recordings which would be leaked that alleged a conflict between al-Zawahiri and Hamza bin Laden, 2018 does not seem likely to witness any field or organizational developments that would make al-Qaeda regain its capabilities it had at the beginning of the millennium.

Thus al-Qaeda now is like a dead body. But it could be revived in 2018 on one condition: The Iranian support. The Revolutionary Guard might search for a way to revive the old beast in order to keep the countries of the region busy and forget their conflict with Al-Faqih state. This may pose a great risk for those involved in reviving it. The conspiracy will be obvious and might complicate the situation more for Tehran because of its suspicious relation with the violent hotspots in the region.

Iranian militias

In 2017, armed militias backed by Iran were led to the peak of fighting in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. Iran’s armed support for its militias is unlimited and these militias’ violence became unlimited also. The weakness of these militias is that it depends on the sectarian incitement and battles.

In 2018, these militias will face a decisive stage that will determine its existence. In Yemen, the Houthi militias became completely isolated from all the elements of the Yemeni tribal and political society.

In Iraq, the popular mobilization militias have no obvious enemy after the ISIS collapsed, these militias might attempt to join the mainstream political life through the upcoming elections, but this will make it unable to receive the Iranian support or practice its unlimited violence.

Restoring a regime ruled by the law in Iraq may make the leaders of the popular mobilization face investigations about corruption and the modus operandi of receiving Iranian funds.

As for Syria, where the Iranian militias grew more violently under the cover of al-Assad regime, its fate depends on the Russian will and the complex struggle of power between the active partners in the Syrian file (America, Turkey, Iran). Certainly, this will be reflected on the role of the Lebanese Hezbollah, which intensively interfered in the Syrian arena in a risk that made it face an international confrontation which is bigger than its capabilities.

One outcome of recent protests in Iran has been a blizzard of commentary. Poking their heads up are the “Iran experts” that sit in comfy squishy chairs behind prestigious think tank desks bought with money from Saudi Arabia, the Israeli Lobby, and the warmongering industry, like reported by counterpunch.org. Alongside these are the tired delusional bleats from the Rajavi and Pahlavi cults, which are always guaranteed to be out of touch with reality. Mixed in with this crowd are the “regime change” cheerleaders and the pissed off losers that backed the anti-Assad “opposition-terrorists” who see an opening to punish Iran for its success in Syria. If you don’t want to get blinded in this blizzard make sure to identify whose axe the commentator is sharpening and then ignore what they have to say.

I certainly don’t want to pretend to be an “Iran expert” but at least I’ve been living here for the past seventeen years and have hired and fired workers, had to deal with numerous government organizations while trying to manage a business, chased various cases through the judicial system, and pursued a claim against the Revolutionary Guard for the past five years regarding a grave injustice that took me into the heart of the power structure.

What I have to say may be considered insufficiently anti-regime, or way too pro-regime, and this will depend on which desk you sit behind, or which side of the border you live on, or how long your beard is, or what your source of income is. But let’s assume you are reading this without any presumptions or self-centered bias.

First of all the protests were inevitable and are a symptom of our system of government, which I label as “beeorzacracy”: a fossilized incompetent system of government incapable of reform because its incompetency is encouraged and required by those earning an income beyond their official paycheck. “Beeorzacracy” exists because a competently operated government organization will be sabotaged and dismantled because it threatens the blood supply of the leeches.

Secondly, Iranians need to wake up to the fact that we are no different to the Native Americans in the eyes of those that actually run America. Simply read up on how the genocide was conducted and how every treaty was trampled underfoot and you will understand why we ended up getting tricked into closing down our nuclear power industry while sanctions are still crippling our economy. Our big mistake was to not to demand the removal of all sanctions in return for compiling with the terms of the agreement.

Those desperate and eager brain drain candidates that have left Iran and those still scrambling to end up in California really should read Howard Zinn’s “People’s History of the United States” and “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee”.

All Iranians, wherever they live or what their income level, need to understand that turning Iran into what they have done to Iraq is the central objective of the ancestors of those that perpetuated the genocide of the Native American. Don’t be fooled by their forked tongues talking about “freedom”, “human rights”, and “democracy”. All they want is either the destruction of Iran or its total subjugation to America’s “vital national interests”.

“To ensure peace long enough to establish a settlement at Jamestown they put a crown upon the head of Wahunsonacook, dubbed him Kind Powhatan, and convinced him that he should put his people to work supplying the white settlers with food. Wahunsonacook vacillated between loyalty to his rebellious subjects and to the English, but after John Rolfe married his daughter, Pocahontas, he apparently decided that he was more English than Indian.” — Dee Brown. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

Simply substitute Pahlavi for Wahunsonacook and you will get the picture.

Why do you think Iran has been under attack since 1979? Because of America’s “vital national interests”, which translates into forcing Iran to become another servant state of the American Empire. And they are fully prepared to kill millions of Iranians and poison our land with depleted uranium, so as to have MacDonald’s, Monsanto, Raytheon, and Halliburton back in business in Iran.

The biggest problem Iran faces internally is a broken, inefficient, and cumbersome system of decision making. Iranian authorities are all in favor of technology transfer but a decision making process can also be easily transferred. Many countries have had corruption and unworkable systems of government but now they have succeeded in finding a way to make good decisions that benefit a majority of their inhabitants without having leeches suck out the blood of their country.

If those in power in Iran set their minds on transferring and implementing good decision making processes most of Iran’s problems can be resolved. The leadership of China is well informed about environmental problems and is implementing solutions that both the private and public sector are fully in support of. Iran can do the same, and needs to do so very quickly because soon we will have water riots given current trends. Syrian authorities failed to find solutions to the countries water problems back in 2011 and the result was a half a million dead Syrians.

The authorities need to immediately set up safe meeting places where protesters can express their concerns, be heard, and solutions worked out. If they fail in finding workable solutions to Iran’s dire economic hardships then the only beneficiary will be Iran’s enemies who are frothing at the mouth to attack.

Regional chaos is set to continue with no solution in sight to Yemen crisis and power struggle over shape of post-war Syria, like reported by theguardian.com

Another turbulent year in the Middle East has drawn to a close, but there will be no respite in 2018 from the regional chaos that is underpinned by the inflamed rivalry of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The young crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has consolidated power, embarking on an unprecedented cultural revolution and economic reforms in Riyadh, but his foreign policy ambitions have yet to bear fruit. Instead they will continue to sap lives and resources in neighbouring Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, unless a political settlement is reached.

That possibility appears farther away now with the death of Sana’a’s longtime strongman and president for 30 years Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose killing at the hands of Houthi rebels leaves the country with no clear end to the conflict. Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of backing the Houthis.

Iran has its own domestic challenges to contend with. Hundreds of people have been arrested and at least 21 killed in the biggest challenge to the Islamic Republic’s ruling clerics in recent years, in a week of protests that began against rising prices and developed into broader demands for political change.

In Syria, Prince Salman will have less say in how the war will turn out as the country lurches towards a political settlement with Bashar al-Assad’s regime, backed by Moscow and Tehran, retaining the military momentum. The opposition is scattered, its rebels eclipsed by the local al-Qaida affiliate or owing their existence to backers in Turkey, and the politicians are in exile and out of touch with people on the ground.

Russia, Iran and Turkey hold the reins and will decide the shape of a final deal, though there is no guarantee it end the violence or the rebellion against Assad. As global and regional powers look to a post-war Syria, the jockeying will begin for a slice of the reconstruction projects in the country.

It is there, also, that the fate of Kurdish aspirations for autonomy or statehood will be decided. Syria’s Kurds have proven a valuable ally to the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State, but now that campaign is nearly over and the military aid will come to a halt. The Kurds say they want autonomy, but their opponents in Syria see their westward expansion in the north as an attempt to carve out a state.

Whatever those ambitions, they have run up against Turkey’s strenuous objections that the Kurdish militias fighting in Syria are a national security threat, and it is likely Washington and Moscow will ultimately side with Ankara.

Turkey watchers will keep an eye on the ongoing deterioration in human rights and curtailing of freedom of speech as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan strengthens his grip on power and further marginalises the opposition before presidential and parliamentary elections slated for 2019. Those may yet be brought forward, though the government strongly denies any such suggestion.

The crackdown is likely to be accompanied by further conflict as fault lines continue to emerge over Turkey’s identity, and secularists and Islamists wage that battle through public debate on social media. The secularists’ anxiety will be fuelled by Turkey’s drift away from its traditional allies in America and Europe, a result of mutual antagonism and Turkey’s strategic divergence from the west and its Nato allies.

In Iraq, the focus will be on rebuilding the country after a gruelling, years-long campaign to oust Isis from its strongholds. But Baghdad faces a monumental task in bringing a scarred nation together, with the Kurds smarting from the defeat of their independence bid, and many Sunnis who lived in Isis-controlled areas desperate for their homes to be rebuilt and for their communities to play a role in post-war Iraq.

The central government will have to balance those aspirations with reigning in the Iranian-backed Shia militias that played a key role in the campaign but have been found guilty of atrocities and whose influence protects them from accountability.

Despite the defeat of Isis, terrorism remains a key challenge in the region. Though the terrorist group has lost vast tracts of territory in Iraq and Syria, its fighters are returning to their insurgent roots in desert hideouts, as the group contemplates its next move.

In Egypt, where elections are due to be held in 2018, Isis has sought to exploit the vacuum in Sinai and the incompetence of the government in Cairo to sow chaos, and it has continued launching solo terrorist attacks around the world.

Though beaten militarily, the conditions that fomented the rise of the world’s most brutal terrorist organisation remain in place in the region, from authoritarian rulers to disenfranchisement of communities, sectarian tensions, displacement, power vacuums, inequality and economic desperation.

Were Akayed Ullah a more accomplished suicide bomber, we might today be writing about the horrible repercussions of mass casualties in New York City‘s subway just days before Christmas. Fortunately, Ullah‘s makeshift bomb failed to fully detonate; he was most seriously injured in his own attack, like reported by kaplanherald.com.

“I did it for Islamic State,” Ullah reportedly told investigators.

You may ask: What remains of Islamic State?

In recent weeks the U.S. and its partners have crushed the last remnants of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria. The terrorists‘ dream of an empire lies in shambles.

We had hoped that the defeat of Islamic State on the battlefield would demolish the group‘s recruiting appeal. Unfortunately not. Its violent message still inspires willing wannabes via cyberspace. One British counterterrorism official warns that there is “incitement to attack through the internet, 24/7.”

There‘s much more work to be done before the U.S. can declare VI Day.

There is progress. The U.S. has choked off potential terror recruits‘ efforts to gain weapons training overseas. Instead, Islamic State devotees have turned to tutorials on encrypted communications channels, The New York Times reports.

The recent subway tunnel bombing was the third terrorist attack in New York City in about 15 months. Truck attacks, suicide bombings — more common in European capitals and the Middle East — are now moving up the list of potential threats to U.S. cities.

Two reasons:

These attacks take little expertise, planning or money.

They‘re nearly impossible for law enforcement to detect and thwart.

When Obama crawled into bed with Iran, so did the media. Defending the legacy of the Iran Deal has become one of the media’s projects. And so the media was caught completely unprepared by the massive protests in Iran. Instead of covering the protests, the media instead initially produced rewritten spin from the Iranian regime, like reported by frontpagemag.com.

Even now that actual coverage of the protests is underway, here are three myths to look out for.

1. The protests are about internal corruption

The protests in Iran are about corruption in the same way that they were in the USSR. They’re anti-government protests in a state where political power is inherently Islamist. And therefore so is the corruption. And they often carry an anti-Islamist tone because that is the nature of power in Iran. All abuses in an Islamic state converge on Islam.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has consolidated political and economic power into a variety of military-religious institutions that maintain that power through political terror. That’s what we’re seeing from the Iranian regime. And from the protesters against it.

It’s why the symbol of the current protests has become a woman who took off her hijab.

The media’s denial that there is an ideological component to the protests has been repeatedly proven false. But it neatly fits the regime’s narrative.

2. Iranian protesters don’t want our support

What this myth really means is that those who don’t want us to support protesters in Iran claim that by supporting them, we’re really undermining them. Somehow that same logic didn’t figure into their own support for Islamists in Syria, Egypt and across the region. Or for that matter, the regime in Iran.

Iranian protesters have made it quite clear that they do want our support. And that they want us to speak out.

3. No one knows what’s going on in Iran.

We know quite a lot about what’s going on in Iran. We can’t and don’t know everything, but this pose of manufactured ambiguity rings false. Especially when it comes to media outlets who claim to know everything that’s going on everywhere else. “It’s complicated” is universally true. But it’s not an excuse for the media’s refusal to report honestly on what’s going on.

While in the Arab Spring, the media was eager to utilize social media reports from protesters, in Iran it initially relied on the regime’s own spin.

That’s not complicated. It’s just dishonest.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani may have to step back from some of his core economic policies in the face of nationwide protests by tens of thousands of people frustrated by high unemployment and stagnant living standards, like reported by fortune.com.

The protests, during which at least 10 people have been killed, are fuelled by disappointment that the lifting of sanctions on Iran in January 2016 has failed to deliver an economic boom.

Instead, the non-oil part of the economy has continued to struggle, with unemployment officially put at around 12.5 percent – in reality, much higher for Iran’s millions of young people – and inflation running at nearly 10 percent.

“There is a crisis of expectations in Iran,” said Tamer Badawi, a research fellow at the Istanbul-based Al-Sharq Forum. “It is a deep sense of economic frustration.”

To ease that discontent, Rouhani may need to spend more government money on creating jobs, restrain inflation by supporting the rial exchange rate and do more to eradicate the widespread corruption which angers the protesters.

But all of those actions would involve policy change. Rouhani has been pursuing a conservative budget policy to bring Iran’s volatile state finances under control, part of his effort to create an attractive environment for foreign investors. Meanwhile, fighting corruption would risk a backlash from powerful interests hurt by a crackdown.

Mehrdad Emadi, an Iranian economist who is head of energy risk analysis at the Betamatrix consultancy in London, said Rouhani faced a “Herculean challenge” fighting corruption in particular. But he suggested Rouhani might have no choice.

“People are more and more desperate,” he said. “In this situation, there will be periodic outbreaks of dissent.”

Sanctions

After taking power in 2013, Rouhani quickly reversed the spendthrift fiscal and monetary policies of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, curbing a system of cash handouts for lower- and middle-income Iranians.

Last month he proposed another conservative budget to parliament for the Iranian year starting next March 21. The $104 billion budget was up about 6 percent from the plan for the current year – a cut in real terms at current inflation rates.

Such austerity has become increasingly unpopular among the public as the economy has struggled despite the end of sanctions. Many foreign banks and companies remain reluctant to do business with Iran, partly because U.S. President Donald Trump’s hard line on Tehran has deterred trade and investment.

Emadi said a study to which he contributed found Iranians were dissatisfied with the economy for five main reasons: unemployment, weak purchasing power, corruption, a weak rial, and unequal distribution of wealth among Iran’s regions.

The study showed their perceptions of the first three areas have worsened this year, he said. In some areas of southeast Iran, unemployment among young people has reached 45 percent and the job market is shrinking, he added.

The rial has sunk to 42,900 against the U.S. dollar from 36,000 a year ago. Rouhani’s administration might support the currency by spending more of Iran’s foreign reserves, but this would risk deterring foreign investment; the International Monetary Fund warned against such a policy last month.

Emadi blamed much of the economy’s poor performance on a deep-rooted structural issue: the influence of paramilitary bodies such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as well as religious institutions on business.

Those interests, which according to some estimates control over 60 percent of assets in Iran, generally do not pay taxes and stifle competition from small private companies, blocking job creation, he said.

Emadi said Rouhani’s administration was addressing this problem, pressing institutions to open their books to tax audits and demanding more transparency in the business world.

But Badawi predicted the government would find it hard to secure any quick improvement in the economy.

While it may announce a stimulus package to create jobs, it is unlikely to backtrack on cash handouts, and problems such as diversifying the economy and repairing a debt-burdened banking system can only be solved in the long term, he said.

“My guess is that nothing significant will change. The government will try to be open with people, to propose initiatives, but there are structural problems – diversification, the banking problem and relations with the rest of world, especially Trump.”

As 2017 closes, so does the physical “caliphate” of a pseudo-religious criminal enterprise known by the names ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, and Islamic State, like reported by newsweek.com.

But killing the caliphate is only step one. Keeping it dead will be a generational struggle.

Rooted in al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and supplemented by pro-Saddam Hussein Iraqi Baathists, ISIS seized the Syrian city of Raqqa from Syrian rebels in 2013 and, from there, invaded Iraq in 2014.

For over three years an American-led military coalition has sought to degrade and destroy a ruthless collection of murderers, rapists, thieves, and terrorists; a band of criminals drawn from the dregs of the Sunni Arab world seeking to mask crude depredations by purporting to act in the name of Islam.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and other brands of murderous extremism are the results of political illegitimacy. Legitimacy exists when there is societal consensus that a political system is right and just: consensus reflecting the consent of the governed.

Legitimate systems can survive incompetent presidents, prime ministers, and kings. Illegitimacy reflects consensus that the system is rotten and merits destruction. Unless sustained by violent coercion, an illegitimate political system can open a governance vacuum. ISIS is a vacuum-filler.

When Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria responded to peaceful protests with lethal force, it created multiple political vacuums and opened Syria to penetration by al Qaeda.

In Syria, the most spectacularly evil of the vacuum-fillers—ISIS—entered from Iraq and imposed itself. In Iraq, the sectarian-tinged illegitimacy of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki enabled ISIS to form alliances with disaffected Iraqi Arab Sunnis.

It is one thing to kill ISIS militarily. Keeping it dead, however, requires legitimate governance. For both Syria and Iraq, the near-term prospects for neutralizing extremism through systemic political legitimacy range from nonexistent in the former, to difficult in the latter.

For the United States and its allies, this is not a matter of abstract political science. From a safe haven in Raqqa, the ersatz caliphate planned and executed multiple deadly atrocities in Western Europe and Turkey. If vacuums of political illegitimacy are not sealed properly, Syria and Iraq will continue to host parasites capable of doing great damage internationally.

In Syria, the challenge is striking: a murderously corrupt and incompetent ruling family and its entourage have combined mass civilian homicide with Iranian and Russian military intervention to prevail over a disjointed armed opposition. Leaders in Moscow and Tehran know the cause-and-effect of the Assad regime’s illegitimacy and the rise of the ISIS caliphate. But they have, for distinct but compatible reasons, prioritized saving that regime.

For Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling his constituents that Russia has saved Assad from an US-led regime-change plot and that Russia is, therefore, back as a great power is a talking point of incalculable value in a nationalistic country otherwise suffering from economic mismanagement and bottomless corruption.

For Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Assad alone is willing and able to place his country at the disposal of Iran’s most valuable regional player: Hezbollah. With its expeditionary military forces, money laundering, drug running, and strategic assassinations, Hezbollah is the point of the spear Iran aims at the Arab Levant and Israel.

Putin and Khamenei have, until very recently, treated ISIS in Syria as an afterthought, focusing their firepower on anti-Assad rebels and supporting a live-and-let-live relationship between their client and the caliphate.

Now that the regime’s opposition is largely neutralized, they seek to extend their client’s rule to all of Syria, including areas liberated by the United States and its Kurdish-led allies from ISIS. They may succeed.

Yet the Assad regime will remain the antithesis of political legitimacy, and will find it difficult to restore internal terror as a stabilizing mechanism. Islamist extremists will welcome Assad’s extended tenure.

In Iraq, the United States has had a recognized government and an official army with which to work in trying to defeat ISIS. Still, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi and those who will succeed him in the coming years will find it difficult to secure broad societal consent to a political system binding all Iraqis to a common purpose.

To gain traction in the quest for legitimacy, a system must be seen by its constituents as the best possible political tool for stability, economic advancement, and dignity. Sectarianism, corruption, Kurdish separatism, and an Iranian presence seeking to keep Iraq weak and divided are among the many obstacles to Iraqi legitimacy.

As 2018 opens, it is not clear that the United States has arrived at a strategy that, in Syria, would promote political transition away from an illegitimate, extremist-abetting regime and, in Iraq, implement long-term US commitments to help with security, reform, and economic progress consistent with the US-Iraq Security Framework Agreement signed in November 2008.

The trans-border ISIS caliphate is dying. Keeping it and its imitators dead requires legitimacy. For both Syria and Iraq, attaining political legitimacy will require generational efforts and sustained external assistance.

According to several security reports, the popularity of Hamza Bin Laden, the son of Osama Bin Laden, is increasing and some reports suggest that amongst followers of Al Qaeda, he is actually more popular than Al Zawahiri, like reported by jordantimes.com.

The gradual fall of Daesh in Syria and Iraq is likely to result in the growth of other groups in the terrorist scene.  We are already starting to see the appearance of a new generation of Al Qaeda. Daesh increased the brutality and global reach of the jihadi movement, so any group that steps into its shoes is likely to step up on both those factors suggesting we should expect devastating attacks in large cities in Europe and the US as new groups step into the void left by Daesh — likely to use similar tactics as Daesh, such as lone wolf attacks.

We may not see an immediate successor to Daesh, but with several indicators suggesting new groups infiltrating through, it is unlikely to take very long. Propaganda around the New Qaeda is likely to intensify in order to claim their place as the successor of the global jihadi movement. 

With the recent decision of US President Donald Trump to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognise it as Israel’s capital, we could also see the New Qaeda enter the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is a particular risk given the recent failed attack in New York, demonstrating the capacity to operate on American soil with a Jewish target. The group behind that unsuccessful attack appears to be seizing the current inflamed situation and is likely to be used to gain more funding and followers.

The idea of a potential successor to Daesh is not new, many expect to see new groups coming out of the ashes soon enough, especially since the defeat of Daesh was focussed on the military aspect without necessarily addressing the socioeconomical or ideological aspects.

The most probably successor of the jihadi movement today is a new version of Al Qaeda, with Hamza Bin Laden emerging as a young, popular and capable leader who understands all the attraction and strengths of Daesh and ready to press these advantages across Al Qaeda network. If he is successful in growing the network, then we are likely to see a new phase of terrorist attacks in major Western cities, and he will use them as a way to raise his profile and announce the return of Al Qaeda with a new leader.