Iranian commander visited Lebanon to honor Qunaitra victims

BEIRUT: A senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard quietly paid tribute earlier this month to six Hezbollah fighters who were killed during a Jan. 18 Israeli airstrike on a party convoy in Syria’s Golan Heights, according to a report.

Major General Qasem Soleimani, a senior commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard visited Lebanon only 24 hours after the party commemorated its fallen fighters and met directly with Hezbollah Chief Hasan Nasrallah alongside other senior party officials, As-Safir said Friday.

Soleimani is thought to have been the mentor of Jihad Mughniyeh, son of late top commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was among the six Hezbollah fighters killed in the attack. Several photos of the two together were circulated shortly after Mughniyeh’s death.

Revolutionary Guard Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi was also killed in the attack.

After his meeting with Nasrallah, Soleimani visited Mughniyeh’s residence, where he offered condolences to the fallen fighter’s grandfather and relatives.

At midnight, the senior commander visited Rawdat al-Shahidayn cemetery in Beirut’s southern suburbs and laid wreaths at the graves of Jihad and Imad Mughniyeh before heading back to Tehran the same night.

In photos published in the media, Soleimani is seen kneeling at Jihad Mughniyeh’s grave and reading the Quran.

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Bassil inks draft to allow married women to become diplomats

BEIRUT: Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil Friday signed a draft law allowing an amendment in his ministry’s internal regulations under which married women could apply for employment in the diplomatic corps, an opportunity that was previously limited to single females.

A ministry statement said the move came as part of Gebran’s bid to reform the ministry’s bylaws to achieve more gender equity.

The proposed draft demanded the amendment of clause 4 in Article 12 of the ministry’s bylaws, which required potential female diplomats to be unmarried.

The draft was referred to the Council of Ministers for approval, the statement said.

The decision was applauded by female activists from the Lebanese Democratic Women’s Gathering, who had addressed an “open letter” to Bassil Thursday, urging him to rectify the “flagrant discrimination” against married women.

“The Lebanese Democratic Women’s Gathering underlines the importance of such a move by Minister Bassil, and congratulate Lebanese women for that achievement, hoping that more such moves will come in order to reach total (gender) equality,” the group said in a second statement issued shortly after Bassil had signed the draft law.

In their open letter on Thursday, the group said: “Persistence in excluding Lebanese women who had fulfilled their natural right for marriage, and depriving them from applying to employment (in diplomatic corps) amounts to a violation of the Lebanese constitution which provides for equality between all citizens.”

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Iran seeks to strengthen Saudi, regional ties: official

BEIRUT: Visiting Iranian official Alaeddin Boroujerdi Friday underlined the need for stronger ties among Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries to boost regional stability.

“The more fraternal relations among countries in the region are reinforced the more stability takes root,” Boroujerdi told reporters following talks with Prime Minister Tammam Salam at the Grand Serail in Downtown Beirut.

He said Iran's policy aims to build good ties with regional countries, including Saudi Arabia.

Boroujerdi, the chairman of the Iranian parliamentary committee for national security and foreign policy, believed that political developments in the region help bolster Lebanon’s stability.

Boroujerdi arrived in Lebanon Thursday to attend a Hezbollah ceremony later Friday in honor of six fighters killed in a Jan. 18 Israeli strike in Qunaitra in Syria’s Golan Heights.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah will give a speech at the 3 p.m. ceremony outlining his views on the Qunaitra attack and the Israeli shelling of south Lebanon in response to a Hezbollah revenge ambush in the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms.

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4 Reasons Why It's Veto Season At The White House

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President Obama has said he will veto the Keystone XL pipeline project, which passed in the Senate on Wednesday. Historically, political scientists say 90 percent of veto threats are issued behind the scenes but Obama has issued nine veto threats so far — in public. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama has said he will veto the Keystone XL pipeline project, which passed in the Senate on Wednesday. Historically, political scientists say 90 percent of veto threats are issued behind the scenes but Obama has issued nine veto threats so far — in public.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

President Obama is about to get his first veto opportunity of the new Congress. A bill that would approve the Keystone XL pipeline project will be on his desk soon. He's promised to veto it and that's unusual. In his first six years in office, Obama issued just two vetoes — the fewest of any president going all the way back to James Garfield, and Garfield only served 199 days in office! But with the Republican takeover of both chambers of Congress, that will change. Here are four reasons why:

1. Nothing left to lose: the Janis Joplin doctrine.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose , Joplin sang. The thing that holds presidents back from taking executive action is very often that members of Congress of their own party don't want him to trample on their prerogatives. When the president has an opposition party controlling Congress, he doesn't have to worry about that. And he's no longer concerned with the political fate of red-state, pro-Keystone Democrats like Sen. Mary Landrieu or Sen. Mark Begich — they both lost their seats in November. So he's free to stand with the environmentalist base of his party.

2. A divided government.

Instead of a divided Congress, where a Democratic Senate kept almost anything from coming to the president's desk, we now have divided government. A Republican Congress will actually be passing things and sending them to President Obama to sign or veto.

3. The desire to draw a bright line.

In the past, presidents often used vetoes as a negotiating tool — to shape legislation. Bill Clinton, who famously said "I was not elected to produce a pile of vetoes," vetoed plenty of bills, including welfare reform twice before he got a version he was willing to sign. That may be the case with some future Obama vetoes, but right now the dynamics between Congress and President Obama are so contentious neither side is looking for a negotiation. Both Congress, by passing bills it knows the president will veto, and the president, by vetoing them, are making a political statement.

4. Protecting the president's legacy and authority.

According to political scientists who study this, historically 90 percent of veto threats are issued privately, behind the scenes. Obama appears to be breaking with that tradition. He's issued nine veto threats so far — in public. Most are to defend his legacy initiatives: Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, immigration action. But several threatened vetoes are to preserve the authority of the executive. He says he'll veto the Keystone XL bill because its up to the State Department, not Congress, to approve cross-border pipelines. He's also promised to veto two bills about the Iran nuclear deal because they infringe on the president's ability to conduct diplomacy.