Palestinian factions oppose PA plan to hold municipal elections

Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip announced on Tuesday that they are opposed to the Palestinian Authority’s intention to hold municipal elections in December.

They said that the decision to hold the elections, which was recently announced by the Ramallah-based PA government, was taken without consultation or agreement with the factions in the Gaza Strip.

The PA government said the initial phase of the elections, the first since 2017, will be held on December 11 for 388 municipalities and village councils in the West Bank and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. The second phase of the elections will be held at a later date.

Last week, the head of the Palestinian Central Elections Commission, Hanna Nasser, sent a letter to PA Prime Minister

Mohammad Shtayyeh informing him that holding elections in the Gaza Strip “requires political approval” of Hamas.

On Monday, Shtayyeh urged Hamas to allow the elections to take place in the Gaza Strip.

in Yediot Aharonot that the Islamic Republic may be concealing portions of its 60% highly enriched uranium before IAEA inspectors get a handle again on the state of the nuclear program.

Barak warned that once uranium is highly enriched, it is easier to conceal and easier to activate a clandestine program to complete the weaponization up to 90%.

Nothing in Biden’s comments about Iran indicated any urgency or any specific determination to thwart these new potential threats – even as he repeated the constant generic US commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The US president has a bully pulpit and had the capability at his UN speech to flip the script on Iran, but there was no attempt to do so.

In contrast, his main message was that he is shifting the US away from using force worldwide.

That diplomacy is important to US policy is not a new message. But taken against the backdrop of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Biden’s emphasizing that the US is not at war anywhere, the message indicated that he will be less likely to use force than even some of his predecessors of either US political party.

Biden also tossed Iran in with North Korea in a list of crises he hopes to resolve through positive engagement. Obviously, he emphasized different tactics for each. Yet, even associating the two as he did could be symbolic of a US grudging readiness to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon the same way Pyongyang did, despite a clear preference to prevent this.

Every time a major US official such as Biden, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken or lead Iran negotiator Rob Malley repeat that their patience for Iran is not endless, without setting a deadline for negotiations or at least a freeze in 60% uranium enrichment, America’s determination is exposed as hollow.

Raisi came out all guns blazing (in the verbal sense) in his speech, with no urgency to return to the JCPOA, and essentially focused on his demand for the US to lift sanctions – which he called a war crime (he conveniently ignored or denied all of Iran’s actual war crimes.)

It now seems clear that Raisi’s script was meant to maximize a period of months to advance Iran’s understanding of more advanced aspects of nuclear weapons development and proximity for reaching a weapon, while pressuring the US for new concessions.

Due to Iran’s physical and knowledge gains in the nuclear

arena, a return to the JCPOA in October, December or 2022 will not have the same meaning in blocking Iranian progress toward a nuclear weapon that it might have had back in May.

A deal arising from expected renewed negotiations in the coming weeks can still stop any imminent Iranian nuclear threat to cross the nuclear threshold of having sufficient weaponized uranium for a nuclear bomb.

But Raisi has exposed how unlikely it is that Biden will act decisively unless Tehran is beyond weaponizing enrichment and close to being ready to actually deploy a nuclear weapon.

Even in that scenario, there is a growing likelihood that Israel would be left to act alone, should any country be ready to use force to stave off such a potential Iranian nuclear threat.

In this way, Raisi appears to be firmly in control of the current nuclear script.