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In this mailing:
* Pete Hoekstra: Iran's Dangerous New Terror Proxy: Sudan
* Amir Taheri: Trials and Tribulations of a Foreign Correspondent


** Iran's Dangerous New Terror Proxy: Sudan ([link removed])
Iran's Encirclement of Israel, Control of Red Sea, Almost Complete
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by Pete Hoekstra • May 5, 2024 at 5:00 am
* "What makes the future in this case darker is Sudan's history of hosting extremists and jihadists from the far right and far left. During the previous regime, Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden, leader of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Carlos the Jackal. This warm embrace of violent extremists earned Sudan a spot on the list of state sponsors of terrorism."— Areej Elhag, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, January 31, 2024.
* The bottom line for America and Europe is that the strategy of engaging and appeasing Iran has failed miserably.
* The U.S. and Europe must step up now to counter Iran's efforts in the Middle East and Sudan.
* We cannot allow new "proxies of terror" for Iran.

Bloomberg reported on January 24 that Iran has been supplying the Sudanese Armed Forces, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, with military drones. Iran has also been teaching the Sudanese how to make them locally. Both the Iranian and Sudanese regimes, by a security cooperation agreement signed last month, have becomes an additional threat to Israel, to the region, and to the national security of the United States and its allies. Pictured: Al-Burhan in Gedaref State, Sudan, on April 10, 2024. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

While the Biden administration is preoccupied trying to win re-election this November, as well as putting out a series of fires it helped start in Ukraine, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, a new area of urgent concern, largely flying under the public's radar, has been brewing: Iran's increasing penetration of Sudan.

Pocketing Sudan would provide Iran with more oil, gold and rare minerals, as well as another port on Red Sea from which to continue blocking maritime commercial passage. Sudan would also provide Iran with proximity to Israel, and serve as an additional launching pad from which to swarm Israel with more lethal drone attacks – at least until its nuclear weapons program is complete.

Iran could also add Sudan to the list of the four other countries it already effectively controls in the region: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

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** Trials and Tribulations of a Foreign Correspondent ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • May 5, 2024 at 4:00 am
* We cite the 1991 date because it was at its very end that one of the most famous foreign correspondents, Terry Anderson of the Associated Press, was released after 2,454 days of being held hostage by Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon. Anderson passed away aged 76 last month, by sheer coincidence, just days before World Press Freedom Day on May 3.
* Covering what all those actors did was no easy task. The smallest risk was that they would treat you like mushrooms, keeping you in the dark and feeding you bullshit. But there were bigger risks, including being caught in crossfire or targeted for assassination, as several Lebanese journalists had been. The entry of Iran's mullahs in the Lebanese game introduced a new risk: being seized as hostage and used as a bargaining chip in haggling with the American "Great Satan" and its smaller French and British companions.
* Anderson was seized on a Saturday after a game of tennis with his AP photographer, Don Mell. AP's star reporter was to spend the next seven years often kept in the dark, subjected to severe beatings and chained to a radiator. His captors wanted him to confess to being a CIA spy.
* Years later, Mell asked Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's chief, why he had been released quickly. "Do you fish?" Nasrallah asked. "If you catch a big one, you throw the other ones back."
* Anderson had been the big fish, as every foreign correspondent, before and after Joel McCrea, dreams of becoming.

Journalist Terry Anderson of the Associated Press, was released in 1991 after 2,454 days of being held hostage by Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon. Anderson passed away aged 76 last month, by sheer coincidence, just days before World Press Freedom Day on May 3. Pictured: Anderson waves during a press conference in Damascus, Syria on December 4, 1991, the day he was released from Hezbollah captivity. (Photo by Amr Nabil/AFP via Getty Images)

As the first rumblings of war are heard from Europe, the editor of a major American newspaper decides to send a reporter to the old continent to see what is going on. He wants "our best and brightest" for the job and finds it in John Jones, arousing the jealousy of older and more experienced reporters.

This is the opening of "Foreign Correspondent," Alfred Hitchcock's fast-paced 1940 film with Joel McCrea in the title role. The idea that you need your best and brightest as a foreign correspondent existed before McCrea faced Hitchcock's camera and has continued ever since.

However, working as foreign correspondent didn't remain the exciting, risk-free and glamorous role that the old movie implies. To be sure, the exciting aspect has remained, along with fading shades of glamour. But the job is no longer risk-free and, in more and more cases, could even lead to death. Since 1991, over 2,600 reporters have been killed in the line of duty, so to speak.

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