Attention to the Unseen

Aaron Stein writes: President Donald Trump’s decision to stop abiding by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) has undercut American interests and has positioned the United States to fail. The debate in Washington about “fixing or nixing” the deal was never anything more than a euphemism for American abrogation of an international commitment. The discussion has ignored how isolated the United States now is and how its options to deal with Iran are far worse than they were before…

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Andrew Rudalevige writes: Back in 2015, there were loud calls — not least from senators — for President Barack Obama to ask the Senate to ratify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, calling it a “treaty.” Instead, he chose to enter into an executive agreement, which has become something of a trend: Treaties are a tiny fraction of international agreements overall. A 2007 study by political scientists Kiki Caruson and Victoria Farrar-Myers found that between 1977 and…

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Nikkei Asian Review reports: Malaysia’s opposition coalition, led by former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, won a majority of lower house seats in Wednesday’s general election, paving the way for the country’s first change of power since its independence in 1957. Mahathir, 92, is expected to become Malaysia’s seventh prime minister, returning to power 15 years after leaving office. According to the country’s Election Commission, the opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan, or Alliance of Hope, with an affiliate party has secured at…

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Robin Wright writes: After months of threatening, President Trump withdrew from the historic Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, unravelling the Obama Administration’s signature foreign-policy achievement and putting the United States on a collision course with allies as well as with Tehran. “This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” the President said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” Trump also announced that the United States is re-imposing economic sanctions…

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The Daily Beast reports: The Daily Beast can confirm that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company controlled by Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. The allegations were initially made Tuesday by Michael Avenatti, porn actress Stormy Daniels’ lawyer, and confirmed by a source familiar with the matter. “How the fuck did Avenatti find out?” the source asked The Daily Beast. According to a dossier published by Avenatti on Tuesday evening, “Vekselberg and…

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Noah Berlatsky writes: “I just feel like I had my best girlfriend break up with me,” Alex Jones declared in a live rant last month during the American bombing of Syria. “I will tell Trump that you really betrayed your family and your name, and everything you stood for with this horse manure.” Jones’ comments were, as is his wont, more than a little ridiculous. But they weren’t isolated. Many people on the right and far right, including Fox hosts…

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The Washington Post reports: In the past six months, the Trump administration has moved to expel 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living and working legally in the United States, disregarding senior U.S. diplomats who warned that mass deportations could destabilize the region and trigger a new surge of illegal immigration. The warnings were transmitted to top State Department officials last year in embassy cables now at the center of an investigation by Senate Democrats, whose findings were recently referred to…

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The Observer reports: Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal. People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an…

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The Washington Post reports: In the nine years before he ran for president, Donald Trump’s company spent more than $400 million in cash on new properties — including 14 transactions paid for in full, without borrowing from banks — during a buying binge that defied real estate industry practices and Trump’s own history as the self-described “King of Debt.” Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window…

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Susan B Glasser writes: Late on Monday evening, the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, started making calls to European allies. A few hours earlier, they had got word from sources inside the Trump Administration that the President was poised to impose costly steel and aluminum tariffs by the midnight deadline. No one knew for sure (“The decision lies with the President,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel had said on Friday, standing next to Trump, after flying to Washington to lobby him…

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Robin Wright writes: Since the historic Korean summit last week, Seoul has been consumed with hot gossip—not whether North Korea will abandon the bomb or end a sixty-eight-year-old war but over the quirks of Kim Jong Un, the world’s most mysterious leader. In interviews and conversations, everyone I’ve talked to in the South Korean capital has had a favorite anecdote: the North Korean did not smoke during meetings, despite having a notorious bad habit, photographed in North Korea with a…

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Anshel Pfeffer writes: Nowhere was Netanyahu’s erasure of American Jews more obvious than in his relationship with President Barack Obama. At least three million American Jews are estimated to have voted for Barack Obama in 2008. That is twice the number of Israelis who voted for Netanyahu for prime minister in the only direct elections Israel ever had, in 1996. Likud under Netanyahu has never surpassed the million-voters mark. No elected leader in any country has ever received more Jewish…

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The New York Times reports: In the United States, Paul J. Manafort is facing prosecution on charges of money laundering and financial fraud stemming from his decade of work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. But in Ukraine, where officials are wary of offending President Trump, four meandering cases that involve Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, have been effectively frozen by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor. The cases are just too sensitive for a government deeply reliant on United…

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