Sheibani, an Iranian Diplomat with Intelligence Clout

Iranian ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad Reza Sheibani (Iranian media)

Beirut: Asharq Al Awsat

05:56-26 March 2026 AD ـ 08 Shawwal 1447 AH

Beirut: Asharq Al Awsat

05:56-26 March 2026 AD ـ 08 Shawwal 1447 AH

Sheibani, an Iranian Diplomat with Intelligence Clout

Iranian ambassador to Lebanon Mohammad Reza Sheibani (Iranian media)

Only weeks after Iranian diplomat Mohammad Reza Sheibani returned to Beirut as ambassador, his name has become the focus of a diplomatic crisis.

Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry withdrew its approval and declared him “persona non grata”, reflecting rising tensions between Beirut and Tehran and drawing renewed attention to a career tied to some of the Middle East’s most complex issues.

The decision swiftly ended the mission of a diplomat Tehran had sent back to Beirut, relying on his long experience on Lebanon and Syria.

His return had collided with a Lebanese political climate increasingly sensitive to the limits of foreign diplomatic roles.

War experience and regional role

Sheibani is no stranger to Lebanon. He served as Iran’s ambassador to Beirut from 2005 to 2009, a period that coincided with the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, giving him direct experience managing ties under complex security and political conditions.

His reappointment in early 2026 reflected an Iranian preference for seasoned diplomats in areas where politics and security overlap.

He replaced former ambassador Mojtaba Amani, who was injured in a pager explosion in Beirut, at a time of regional escalation, giving his return added weight beyond routine diplomacy.

Between Beirut and Damascus

Born in 1960, Sheibani joined Iran’s Foreign Ministry in the 1980s and rose through its ranks, focusing on Middle East affairs.

He served as chargé d’affaires in Cyprus and as head of Iran’s interests section in Egypt, before being appointed ambassador to Lebanon and later to Syria from 2011 to 2016, during which he covered the early years of the war.

He later served as ambassador to Tunisia and non-resident ambassador to Libya, and as assistant foreign minister for Middle East affairs.

He also worked as a senior adviser and researcher at the Institute for Political and International Studies at the Foreign Ministry, before returning to the forefront amid rising regional tensions.

Roles during escalation

In October 2024, he was named special representative of the Iranian foreign minister for West Asia, and in January 2025, he was appointed special envoy to Syria following developments in Damascus, including the closure of Iran’s embassy.

He was also tasked with following the Lebanese file as a special envoy during a sensitive phase, reinforcing his role as a crisis diplomat.

His career reflects a distinction within Iran’s diplomatic structure, as he is linked to the Ministry of Intelligence rather than the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, highlighting a division of roles in foreign policy.

Legal and constitutional debate

The move by Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry has also sparked legal debate over how such decisions are made and enforced.

Constitutional expert Saeed Malek said the decision is based on Article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which allows a state to declare a diplomat persona non grata without a specific procedure.

He said the measure does not amount to a break in diplomatic ties but falls within the management of diplomatic representation, adding that such decisions fall within the foreign minister’s authority under Article 66 of the constitution.

Malek said the decision is binding, and once the deadline to leave Lebanon expires, the ambassador’s presence becomes unlawful.

He added that security forces are required to enforce the decision and remove him once located.

However, he said enforcement remains bound by international rules, as the ambassador’s presence inside the embassy prevents Lebanese forces from entering under diplomatic immunity, meaning his expulsion can only be carried out once he leaves the premises.

Pro-Israel Lobby Spends Big on US Midterms as Backlash Grows

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, DC, US, March 6, 2018. (Reuters)

09:09-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Pro-Israel Lobby Spends Big on US Midterms as Backlash Grows

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the AIPAC policy conference in Washington, DC, US, March 6, 2018. (Reuters)

The most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States is spending more than any other outside group on the 2026 midterms -- even as its once-coveted backing becomes an increasingly potent weapon for political opponents.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has poured tens of millions of dollars into races nationwide through its main election-spending vehicle, the United Democracy Project (UDP).

The so-called "super PAC" -- a group allowed to lavish unlimited sums to influence elections, provided it operates independently of candidates -- has spent $54 million on congressional races, according to campaign finance monitor OpenSecrets.

That has made it the single largest outside spender of the cycle, OpenSecrets said, while the wider pro-Israel donor network spent $71 million -- placing it second only to the cryptocurrency industry.

The extraordinary financial firepower underscores AIPAC's continued influence in Washington -- but also a growing backlash over US policy toward Israel and the role of wealthy interest groups in American elections.

AIPAC has concentrated much of its spending on Democratic primaries, supporting candidates strongly committed to Israel and trying to defeat critics of unconditional US military aid.

It didn't respond to a request for comment, but it has rejected suggestions that its influence is collapsing, saying hundreds of candidates it backed have won their primaries.

Its money has indeed delivered victories this year, but also some expensive failures.

- Money meets resistance -

In Michigan, AIPAC and allied groups spent around $30 million in an unsuccessful effort to prevent progressive former health official Abdul El-Sayed from winning the Democratic Senate nomination over establishment-backed Congresswoman Haley Stevens.

Progressives have also defeated candidates supported by AIPAC-linked money in congressional contests in California, Illinois and New York, often turning the group's spending itself into a campaign issue.

Eli Clifton, of US foreign policy think tank the Quincy Institute, said UDP was the biggest spender in Michigan, although 97 percent of its large contributions came from outside the state -- and its biggest donors are Republican billionaires.

"This is a special interest that participates outside of the partisan framework, and it's really all about advancing the interests of a foreign country," he told AFP.

Unease over the group is no longer confined to Democrats.

Allies of Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, recently asked AIPAC not to run advertisements publicly on his behalf, US media reported, fearing its overt involvement would benefit El-Sayed in the Arab-American heartland.

- Shifting opinion -

The discomfort reflects a broader transformation in US attitudes toward Israel following years of war in Gaza and widening conflict across the Middle East.

A June Quinnipiac University poll found 48 percent of American voters believed Washington was too supportive of Israel, including 66 percent of Democrats -- the highest overall figure in nine years of the survey.

The change has been clearest on the Democratic left, where candidates increasingly portray AIPAC as too closely aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and emblematic of big-money interests overwhelming ordinary voters.

But criticism has spread to the populist right, where some "America First" conservatives have attacked Washington's support for Israel and blamed pro-Israel lobbying for drawing the United States deeper into foreign conflicts.

AIPAC's financial strength, meanwhile, continues to grow. OpenSecrets says the organization itself has contributed $30 million to UDP.

And its political power remains formidable, with US military aid to Israel continuing to attract broad support in Congress.

But the primaries have demonstrated that record spending cannot guarantee victory -- and a once-prized endorsement can now, in some races, be something candidates would rather their opponents talked less about.

"That's precisely why they never mention US foreign policy and Israel in their ads," Casey Kennedy, co-founder of the Track AIPAC advocacy platform, told AFP.

"AIPAC knows AIPAC is toxic, and the more they spend, the more toxic they become with voters across the political spectrum."

Features

Satellite Images Show Bedrock and Glacier Collapsed on Nepal-China Border, Then Rivers Flooded

This satellite image provided by Vantor shows destruction at Syapru Besi, Nepal on Thursday, Aug. 27, 2026. (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor via AP)

07:35-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Satellite Images Show Bedrock and Glacier Collapsed on Nepal-China Border, Then Rivers Flooded

As rescue teams searched for missing people following catastrophic flooding along the Nepal-China border, Earth scientists reviewed satellite imagery for clues to the cause and assessed the devastation.

The flooding Wednesday killed hundreds of people in Nepal and Tibet, and hundreds more are missing, including foreigners and pilgrims.

Geomorphologists Kristen Cook and Dan Shugar said initial images from Nepal were obscured by clouds and dust from the debris, so they could only see that part of a glacier had broken off from Langtang Lirung peak, near the border with Tibet. In clearer images from Thursday, they said they could see that the bedrock underneath the glacier had collapsed, taking the massive chunk of ice down with it and sending boulders and ice into the valley.

“It shows the whole area without anything hidden, and we could see that, yes, it looked like there was not only this glacier that had failed, but a much larger chunk of the bedrock of the mountainside itself that had given way,” said Shugar, associate professor at the University of Calgary. “You have this big bedrock failure that took part of the glacier with it.”

This satellite image provided by Vantor shows Syapru Besi, Nepal on Oct. 18, 2023. (Satellite image ©2026 Vantor via AP)

Shugar said it’s heart-wrenching to look downstream from there on the images, to where people were living, and see how the debris has buried villages.

After slamming to the valley floor, the debris maintained its momentum through the steep, narrow valley as ice melted, said Cook, at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France. Water and mud several stories high swept through communities.

The Trishuli River surged during the flooding. Before and after satellite images of the Kolpurtar, Betrawati and Syapru Besi areas of Nepal show that the river is now much wider, and brown and black, because it overtopped its banks in some areas and filled with debris in others. The change in the color of the water shows how much sediment the flow was carrying, turning from greenish to very brown because it's full of mud, Cook said.

Towns and villages that were devastated along the river banks are submerged in debris and mud. They appear as areas of brown. Some houses are still poking through in an image of the Betrawati area.

The flooding toppled and swept away buildings in Syapru Besi, a popular tourist spot where a famous trek to Langtang begins. In before and after images, a side river is now wider too, because the flow was so powerful it pushed upstream.

The flooding “left a wasteland in its wake” that will take many years to recover from, said Alton Byers, a mountain geographer at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Byers lived in Nepal and now returns there yearly to study glacial hazards and work with communities to prepare. This is the largest glacier flood he has seen, by far.

Byers, faculty research scientist at the university's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, said he thinks Wednesday's flooding is related to climate change. The Earth's warming is melting glaciers and permafrost, causing instability and the breakage of massive amounts of snow and ice at high altitudes. That can be a catalyst for a series of cascading events, he said.

“All the indicators, to me, point to the impacts of warming trends,” he said. “In this case, the permafrost that for millennia has helped to hold together high-altitude rock and ice and soil and glaciers is now weakening and becoming unstable."

Cook and Shugar said that at this point, they can't say for sure there's a direct link to climate change. Slopes fail and landslides happen, Cook said, though permafrost is melting and that is destabilizing mountainsides.

“While we cannot at this point directly link this collapse to climate change, it is not unexpected to see more events of this type with a warming climate,” Cook said. “Not this big, hopefully not this big.”

Features

China's Help Critical, But Unlikely, for US to Choke off Iran

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out plans this week to strangle Iran's economy. Kent NISHIMURA / AFP

Asharq Al Awsat

06:10-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

06:10-28 August 2026 AD ـ 15 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1448 AH

China's Help Critical, But Unlikely, for US to Choke off Iran

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out plans this week to strangle Iran's economy. Kent NISHIMURA / AFP

The United States has threatened the "economic asphyxiation" of Iran, but analysts say that a successful chokehold would require unlikely cooperation from China.

Almost six months into the Middle East war, Washington this week laid out plans to expand sanctions against Iran, warning that any nation which continued to enable Tehran would become a "global pariah".

China is among countries whose entities have already been hit by the sweeping US plan, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent telling Beijing to "get with the program".

But Beijing instead has defended its cooperation with Tehran and vowed to safeguard its interests.

The apparent impasse is likely to further strain ties between Beijing and Washington, ahead of an expected visit by China's President Xi Jinping to the US capital in September.

- Oil 'central lever' -

Iran has weathered sanctions for decades, using complex international financial networks to evade restrictions.

Cutting off Iran "would certainly require China's help", said political scientist Dylan Loh of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.

Beijing is a key customer for Iranian oil, while "a good amount of their trade also relies on (the Chinese currency) renminbi, which can be outside the reach of US sanctions", Loh told AFP.

Before the war, Tehran exported millions of barrels of oil a day, mostly to China.

"Oil is the central economic lever," said Nino Lezhava, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis.

Although most ship traffic in the vital Strait of Hormuz is still blocked, China is not totally cut off from Iran's crude thanks to the highways and railways of Central Asia, said Sun Degang, a professor of political science at Shanghai's Fudan University.

Despite Chinese purchases being lower than before, they remain an important source of revenue.

"Simply continuing to... maintain commercial channels and provide alternative payment mechanisms can substantially reduce the effectiveness of economic isolation," said Lezhava.

- 'Economic sovereignty' -

The United States is well aware of this.

Bessent said "no one is above the reach of US sanctions" when asked if Washington would target Chinese banks that do business with Iran.

However, while its sanctions announced on Monday targeted some Chinese entities accused of helping Tehran procure "critical technology", Washington has so far held back from punishing major Chinese financial institutions.

The United States "can't expect to obtain China's support if it continues to implement sanctions on Chinese companies", said Fudan University's Sun.

"Sino-Iranian trade relations are legitimate and China will safeguard its economic sovereignty."

China is already feeling some consequences from the Strait of Hormuz disruption, adding to economic strain from persistently sluggish domestic consumption.

Cutting off Iran would exacerbate that, as well as implicate Beijing in a messy conflict that has already weakened its strategic rival Washington.

Overall, China has "little reason" to cooperate with the United States on sanctions, said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

- 'Push back' -

On Tuesday, China's foreign ministry said its cooperation with Iran has "always been conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted".

Chong said that "Beijing seems highly confident of its ability to push back successfully against the US", were it pressured.

China has expanded its capacities to deal "precisely with such scenarios", said Loh.

"China has its own tools to respond to protect its own interest as we have seen in the tit-for-tat export controls," he added.

China and the United States spent much of last year embroiled in an escalating trade war but reached a fragile truce when the two presidents met last October.

A successful global campaign against Iran may require Washington "to provide incentives" to Beijing to join it, said Lim Tai Wei, a professor and East Asia expert at Japan's Soka University.

China would only cooperate "if the costs of supporting Iran became significantly higher than the strategic and economic benefits", said Lezhava.

Sheibani, an Iranian Diplomat with Intelligence Clout

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Pro-Israel Lobby Spends Big on US Midterms as Backlash Grows

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