TheChek News Flow

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies are losing patience with a state under the shadow of Iran and Hizbollah

The row between a ruined Lebanon and its rich erstwhile patrons in the Gulf is tragic. It may start closing off Lebanon’s last significant cash inflow as its economy nears total implosion with almost three-quarters of its people sunk into poverty.

Saudi Arabia and its closest Gulf allies, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain, last week expelled Lebanon’s ambassadors and recalled their own envoys. The Saudis have banned Lebanese imports. But the spectre of restrictions on flights, visas and, above all, a hit to remittances to Lebanon from the Gulf is a greater threat.

Lebanese workers in the Gulf typically repatriated $3bn-$4bn a year, regional economists say, before the de facto collapse of Lebanon’s banking system over the past two years shut them out of their accounts. Though the banks are, in effect, confiscating their savings, the flows continue outside them in order to keep Lebanese families afloat.

The current storm has been in the offing so long it is mystifying that the Saudi-led boycott of Beirut took this long to materialise. When the Sunni Gulf looks at Lebanon, it sees the sentinel of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on the Mediterranean. In Hizbollah, the Shia paramilitary force that dominates an enfeebled Lebanese state, it sees the spearhead of Tehran in the Levant and Gulf.

The crisis erupted when George Kordahi, information minister in the new Lebanese government, gave a TV interview criticising the Saudi-led war in Yemen against Iran- and Hizbollah-backed Houthi rebels. The Saudis have been trying to disengage from this military fiasco and humanitarian catastrophe, as the UAE already largely has. But the Houthis keep winning. The timing of the Lebanese comments was bad.

Kordahi protests that he recorded the interview before being named minister. True, but disingenuous. A TV veteran, he was made rich and famous by MBC, a media giant owned by the Saudi royals, where for 10 years he hosted the Arabic version of Who wants to be a Millionaire? He parted company with the Saudis for siding with Bashar al-Assad’s butchery of a Sunni-led rebellion in Syria. Minister or not, he knew which hornets’ nest he was poking.

It was not as if Gulf rulers were champing at the bit to ride to Lebanon’s rescue, as so often in the past. The Gulf financed much reconstruction after the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. After the 34-day war between Hizbollah and Israel in 2006, a $5.7bn emergency rebuilding plan was assembled in five weeks, most of it from the Gulf, former ministers say.

The idea that white horses will keep emerging from the Arabian Desert to save Lebanon’s political elites from their folly is an enduring myth. In October 2019, then prime minister Saad Hariri held talks in Abu Dhabi about leasing the UAE control of Beirut’s port and airport, a former ally said. This came to nothing and his government fell to a civic uprising. After the port blast of August 2020, the UAE may feel it dodged not so much a bullet as a mushroom cloud. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia banned all fruit and vegetable imports from Lebanon earlier this year because some were used to conceal drugs shipments.

The Lebanese too have grievances, chief among them that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, effectively held Hariri hostage in Riyadh in 2017. But the context is important to the present row.

Hariri had enabled Michel Aoun, the Hizbollah-allied Christian leader, to reach the presidency in 2016. Riyadh, angry it was funding an Iranian takeover, cancelled $4bn in military aid. By 2018, an alliance of Aounists and Shia with Hizbollah at its core won a parliamentary majority. Ali Akbar Velayati, eminence grise to Iran’s supreme leader, greeted Aoun’s triumph as a victory for Iran and Hizbollah.

The geopolitical context is no less important. It has been clear since the dying days of the administration of Donald Trump — which appeared to give carte blanche to Mohammed bin Salman and his peers — that the US “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran was empowering hardliners in Tehran and sealing their regional victories. To that, Joe Biden’s team seems to have no answer.

Kordahi could hardly resign or be dismissed once Hizbollah publicly supported him. If he goes now, Hizbollah will expect action to hobble the judicial probe into last summer’s port blast. Its recent agitation against presiding judge Tareq Bitar caused the worst street-fighting in Beirut for more than a decade.

Lebanon is not like Qatar, the gas-rich emirate that survived a Saudi-led blockade in 2017-21 because it is wealthy and has friends. Lebanon is bankrupt and bereft.

If you’re healthy and young, a third shot gives no benefit, so it isn’t worth even the small risk.

Healthy people in their 20s have been asking me about getting the third shot of the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines, recently authorized for older people. I’ve advised caution. More vaccine isn’t always better.

Doctors think of drug dosing using the metaphor of a “therapeutic window.” The bottom of the window is the lowest effective dose. The top is the dose at which the side effects become unacceptable. We aim to keep the dose within the therapeutic window.

When the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were first released, a second shot got 95% of patients into the therapeutic window, defined by total absence of symptoms. In the months since then, some of those people have dropped below the bottom of this therapeutic window because of a combination of fading immunity and the arrival of the Delta variant. Thus the case for boosters: A Pfizer study demonstrates that a third shot, administered some 11 months after the second, reduces symptomatic infections by 96% compared with those who had two shots.

So why not give everyone a third shot? Many people who got two shots are still in the therapeutic window and wouldn’t benefit from a third shot. For them, a booster would risk gratuitous inflammation that would push them above the window. The prospect of such inflammation wasn’t a deal breaker with the second shot. Months of follow-up revealed instances of heart inflammation, especially in young male patients, but these were rare and almost always mild and transient, and Covid itself can produce far worse heart inflammation. Other symptoms of inflammation, such as fever, fatigue and headache were far more common but lasted for only a day or two.

There could be other, more serious effects of inflammation that would take years to become apparent. In other contexts, strong inflammation has been shown to disrupt the “blood-brain barrier” and contribute to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. That possibility isn’t a reasonable argument against a second shot because the inflammation from Covid itself can be far stronger, and the second shot reduces that risk by providing solid protection against serious disease.

For third shots, the calculation changes. A booster makes sense for most older people and for the immunocompromised because they tended to get lower efficacy and little inflammation from the second shot. A third shot puts them back into the therapeutic window. But healthy young people typically had good efficacy from the two-shot regimen, and many had strong inflammation.

The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention struggled with such issues and recommended a third shot for the elderly and the immunocompromised, but not for healthy young people. Advisory committee members suggested that further research was needed to refine these initial recommendations.

Some such research will be at the population level, advising about particular ages and vaccines. Other recommendations will be more personalized, drawing on many decades of assessing immunity against other diseases. When I began my clinical training in the 1980s, our group of new doctors took a blood test to assess immunity to diseases for which we could be vaccinated. Similarly, more research using blood tests for Covid immunity and questionnaires about the risk of inflammation could allow us to assess whether further shots would move a particular patient in or out of the therapeutic window.

Personalized recommendations are particularly important for the more than 100 million Americans who have already recovered from Covid. Their immunity and risk of inflammation from vaccines is variable. But when health officials refuse to take account of natural immunity, they neglect the needs and concerns of a large segment of the population and give the public a reason to think experts are not telling the whole truth.

We also need answers to other questions about the therapeutic window for vaccines, such as whether taking anti-inflammatory drugs after vaccination is good because it reduces inflammation or bad because it could reduce the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Radio hosts often advise listeners to “do your own research.” What we really need is research that gives the CDC and FDA the data needed to refine their initial recommendations on third shots. The recommendations that will be most acceptable to the populace are the ones that promote trust by helping assess whether a particular patient would benefit from the shot.

China’s luxury fashion market in 2021 is being propelled by a cohort of 1.5 million consumers who each spend more than 40,000 yuan ($6,255) per year on fashion-related luxury products. As a group, they are responsible for 81 percent of the sector’s total sales over the past 12 months, according to a new research report from consulting firm, Oliver Wyman.

The report, compiled in October after surveying 3,000 mainland luxury fashion consumers, in addition to completing supplementary interviews with luxury brand sales associates working closely with them, also found that 50 percent of this group bought luxury fashion items (including ready-to-wear, footwear, leather goods and accessories) for the first time between October 2020 and September 2021.

According to “The New Faces of Chinese Luxury Shoppers” report, it’s this surge in first-time luxury fashion consumers that will be responsible for 88 percent of China’s luxury fashion market growth in 2021.

“A lot of consumers who might have spent [money] on travelling before other things, especially younger Gen-Z consumers, have instead entered the luxury category,” said Imke Wouters, retail and consumer goods partner at Oliver Wyman, adding that 40 percent of the first-time luxury consumers surveyed were under 25-years-old.

These younger Chinese consumers differ from their predecessors in terms of how they first purchase luxury. Whereas a decade ago, Oliver Wyman retail and consumer goods principle, Katie Sham, says “99 percent” of Chinese luxury consumers would have first purchased leather goods, today’s Gen-Z consumers are more likely to first buy a ready-to-wear item.

“We’re not talking about a very expensive jacket from Chanel or evening gown from Dior, we are talking about a signature T-shirt,” Sham explained, or other items in a price point below 10,000 yuan ($1,564).

Chanel and Dior were the most desired brands among Gen-Z overall (cited by 45 percent and 38 percent of respondents respectively), though Chinese designer brands were also in the mix, and 11 percent of respondents named local brand Shushu/Tong as a desired option.

Another stand out from the report that will be vital to luxury brand success in the China market is the importance of sales associates, who were especially important to Gen-Z consumers as a major point-of-contact with brands.

“In China, where guanxi is so important, the sales assistant is the most personal and impactful way for the brands to connect with the customers,” Sham said. “For brands, it’s critical for them to think about how much autonomy they want to give this sales associate versus [controlling their brand image].”

Washington accuses company of supplying technology to ‘maliciously target’ activists and journalists

The US has added NSO Group, the Israeli military spyware company that created software that has been traced to the phones of journalists and human rights activists, to a trade blacklist in a bid to tackle the growing surveillance threat posed by technology companies.

NSO and a smaller Tel Aviv-based company, Candiru, were among four companies added by the US commerce department on Wednesday to its so-called entity list, which would restrict exports of US technology to the companies.

Both are part of a growing Israeli cyber industry that often recruits veterans of the army’s elite units and sells software allowing clients to hack computers and cell phones remotely.

NSO’s licensed military-grade software, Pegasus, was last year revealed to have been used to target smartphones belonging to 37 journalists, human rights activists and other prominent figures.

The company has said repeatedly that it sells its weapon only to nations in order to fight terrorism and serious crime, and with the approval of the Israeli government. A spokesman did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

According to research by Microsoft and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, Candiru exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft and Google products, allowing governments to hack more than 100 journalists, activists and political dissidents globally.

The US commerce department said the designation of the two companies was “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.

“These tools have also enabled foreign governments to conduct transnational repression, which is the practice of authoritarian governments targeting dissidents, journalists and activists outside of their sovereign borders to silence dissent. Such practices threaten the rules-based international order,” the department said.

The US commerce department also added a Russian company, Positive Technologies, and Singapore-based Computer Security Initiative Consultancy to its list, alleging that they “traffic in cyber tools” used to gain unauthorised access to computer systems.

Gina Raimondo, US commerce secretary, said the US was “committed to aggressively using export controls to hold companies accountable that develop, traffic, or use technologies to conduct malicious activities that threaten the cyber security of members of civil society, dissidents, government officials, and organisations here and abroad.”

Deal at $2.3bn including debt deepens company’s foothold in main US gateway for trade with Asia

French shipping group CMA CGM has agreed to buy a container terminal operator at the Port of Los Angeles, where the global supply chain turmoil has been most visible, in a deal worth $2.3bn including debt.

The Marseille-based company will take full ownership of Fenix Marine Services (FMS), buying 90 per cent of the company for $1.8bn, using its own funds. It adds to its existing 10 per cent stake in the company and deepens its foothold in the main US gateway for trade with Asia.

Rodolphe Saade, chief executive of CMA CGM, the world’s third largest container shipping carrier, said the industrial facility would help to strengthen its rapid growth in the US market and transatlantic trade.

“The swift recovery of the global economy has demonstrated the importance of ports and logistics infrastructure,” he said in a statement.

“In order to manage efficiently our port operations on the west coast of the United States, we have decided to acquire Fenix Marine Services.”

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have been hard hit by chaos in global container shipping because of supply chain problems and the coronavirus pandemic. As of Tuesday, 77 container ships were at anchor or stranded at sea, outside the ports.

US president Joe Biden has been calling for logistics companies, port operators and large shippers to step up actions and investments to ease the supply chain bottlenecks restraining economic growth.

The FMS container terminal is one of the largest in North America, handling about 2.3m 20ft containers a year.

The company plans to invest in extending the terminal’s container yard and rail capacity, as well as building a new berth and digitising the facility further.

Container shipping companies are experiencing an earnings bonanza, driven by the supply chain disruption that has pushed up freight rates and squeezed the available supply of ships to move cargo.

Most container shipping companies have earned more in the most recent quarter than they have in the past decade.

The takeover follows moves by competitors such as Denmark’s Maersk to use bumper earnings to bolster their presence across the logistics supply chain including at ports, rail companies and warehouses. CMA CGM holds 49 investments in port terminals around the world.

The French company is returning as the owner of the terminal, after selling a 90 per cent stake for an enterprise value of $875m, which included debt, in 2017, when it was shoring up its finances following its takeover of Neptune Orient Lines, a Singapore-based shipping carrier.

Netflix and ViacomCBS are opening an online store selling a host of luxury products.

Have you noticed that more women are wearing berets, and brightly colored clothing?

Fashion executive Mindy Lin Prugnaud certainly has, and she draws a straight line to “Emily in Paris,” the hit Netflix series that spawned dozens of websites that meticulously document every outfit and accessory worn by the main characters.

Now Netflix and ViacomCBS are further fanning interest in the hit show by opening an online store to sell merchandise from a clutch of top luxury houses featured on the show. It is slated to go live just as season two starts streaming on Dec. 22, allowing viewers to buy the checkered jacket from Chanel-owned Barrie worn by the main character, portrayed by Lily Collins, or the tasseled Roberto Coin earrings worn by her vivacious sidekick Mindy, played by Ashley Park

Other participating brands include AZ Factory, Eye M by Ileana Makri and Zeus+Dione, along with other Chanel-owned specialty labels: Maison Michel for hats, Goossens Paris for jewelry and Causse Gantier for gloves. Mint Group, the Paris-based buying office run by Prugnaud and her husband Jean-Philippe, spearheaded the project and curated the product selection, including a separate initiative with My Beachy Side resortwear that winks to the episodes filmed in Saint-Tropez.

A bizarre and dangerous encounter between US naval and Iranian forces in the Sea of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz has been revealed this week, which Iran state TV says took place "recently".

Iran is alleging that a US warship "attempted to seal Iran's oil" in the Sea of Oman, but it was an attack which elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces thwarted, according to the account by Tehran. The US side has not recognized the Iranian narrative of events.

Illustrative: Iranian military plane over Persian Gulf, via Reuters

"Iran's state TV said US forces used helicopters and warships to try to block an Iranian oil tanker in the Sea of Oman," Reuters describes of footage aired by Iranian broadcasters. "Iran's English-Language Press TV said the tanker was back in Iran's territorial waters."

PressTV is calling the incident an "abortive act of piracy" - however, the US Navy's Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet has not confirmed or provided any information related to the alleged encounter, only saying its aware of the reports.

The detailed description of what allegedly happened is being presented Wednesday by PressTV in the following:

Reacting promptly, however, members of the IRGC’s Navy carried out a heliborne operation on the stolen ship’s deck, gained control of the vessel, and directed it back toward Iran’s territorial waters.

US forces then proceeded to chase the tanker using several helicopters and warships, but their attempt at taking over the vessel for a second time was thwarted again by Iranian naval forces.

The tanker is currently in Iranian territorial waters and under the protection of IRGC’s Navy.

If accurate, the US side would certainly possess video of the encounter, but it's only the Iranian side that's currently advancing the claims of a wild helicopter chase, including releasing clips showing IRGC fast boats through state channels...

Later, Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji was reported in semi-official Tasnim as having thanked the IRGC for "rescuing the Iranian oil tanker from American pirates."

During the Trump administration, there were instances of US forces seizing some Iranian oil as tankers were en route to Venezuela; however, these examples were not in the area of the Persian Gulf, aggressive maneuvers which would be unprecedented so close to Iran's coast.