Attention to the Unseen

Robin Wright writes: On September 19, 1983, during Lebanon’s long civil war, the Reagan Administration ordered Marine peacekeepers in Beirut to open fire on Muslim militias in the mountains overlooking the city. The marines had been deployed for more than a year, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, to help hold together one of the world’s most fractured states. Colonel Tim Geraghty, their commander, warned that an attack would cost the United States its neutrality and its mission; nevertheless, U.S….

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The Guardian reports: Riot police have been deployed in parts of Tehran the morning after tear gas was used to clear the streets of protesters angry at the government’s having mistakenly shot down a passenger jet killing all 176 people on board. Images of dozens of demonstrators taking to the streets in the capital and other cities including Esfahan were circulating on social media on Sunday morning and activists were calling for mass mourning rallies, raising the possibility of fresh…

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The New York Times reports: Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said on Sunday that he never saw any specific piece of evidence that Iran was planning an attack on four American embassies, as President Trump had claimed last week as a justification for the strike on an Iranian general that sent the United States and Iran to the brink of war. “I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Mr. Esper said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” But he…

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The New York Times reports: Iran’s stunning admission that its forces errantly downed a Ukrainian jetliner — reversing three days of denial — did little to quell growing fury inside the country and beyond on Saturday as the deadly tragedy turned into a volatile political crisis for Tehran’s leaders and overshadowed their struggle with the United States. Ukrainian officials criticized Iran’s conduct, suggesting that the Iranians would not have admitted responsibility if investigators from Ukraine had not found evidence of…

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The New York Times reports: The timing of the jet crash near Tehran on Wednesday — coming just hours after Iran fired missiles at Iraqi military bases housing American troops — immediately led to suspicion that the plane had been downed by a missile. Those suspicions were confirmed on Saturday, when Iranian officials accepted responsibility for the downing of the jet, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Ukraine International Airlines, saying it was an accident caused by human error. The 176…

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Jonathan Chait writes: Why did the United States kill Iranian general Qasem Soleimani? President Trump, in remarks to the nation the morning after the attack, gave a clear rationale. Soleimani “was planning new attacks on American targets, but we stopped him.” That information has not been made public. But the glimpses behind the curtain have not inspired confidence that Trump’s story is on the level. The most damning assessment is indirect. When the administration shared its intelligence with select members…

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The Washington Post reports: On the day the U.S. military killed a top Iranian commander in Baghdad, U.S. forces carried out another top secret mission against a senior Iranian military official in Yemen, according to U.S. officials. The strike targeting Abdul Reza Shahlai, a financier and key commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force who has been active in Yemen, did not result in his death, according to four U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The unsuccessful operation may indicate that…

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The Associated Press reports: Iraq’s caretaker prime minister asked Washington to work out a road map for an American troop withdrawal, but the U.S. State Department on Friday bluntly rejected the request, saying the two sides should instead talk about how to “recommit” to their partnership. Thousands of anti-government protesters turned out in the capital and southern Iraq, many calling on both Iran and America to leave Iraq, reflecting their anger and frustration over the two rivals — both allies…

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Politico reports: For years, they urged America to take a harder line on Iran, dissed its decision to ink a nuclear deal with Tehran and cheered when a tough-talking Donald Trump won the presidency. Now, America’s closest Middle East allies are practically ducking for cover. In recent days, as the U.S. killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iran fired back with a missile barrage in Iraq, Gulf Arab states and Israel were expressing second thoughts about what they’d helped unleash….

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Kareem Shaheen writes: The voice on the other end of the line sounded like nothing I had heard before. There was a gasping, exhausted weakness to it, as though the young man whose voice it was had put every ounce of energy he had left into articulating the words. It was the voice of somebody who was being starved to death. The young man was a resident of Madaya, a town of about 40,000 people near the Syrian-Lebanese border. It…

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Politico reports: In recent days, one aide to President Donald Trump has blitzed the media to talk about troop deployments, deterrence and the likelihood of American bombs raining down on Iranian soil. It’s not the man who leads the Pentagon. Instead, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has seized the spotlight amid the escalating U.S. confrontation with Iran. As he’s done so, he’s come across to some observers as an unofficial secretary of defense, overshadowing the actual defense secretary. Pompeo’s omnipresence…

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NBC News reports: Lawmakers came away with vastly different interpretations of two classified briefings that top Trump administration officials held Wednesday about the airstrike last week that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, with two Republican senators sharply criticizing the officials. “It was probably the worst briefing I’ve seen at least on a military issue in the nine years I’ve served in the United States Senate,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said. Lee said he left the briefing “somewhat unsatisfied” with…

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Politico reports: Capitol Hill breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday as President Donald Trump pulled the nation back from the brink of all-out war with Iran — with even some of the GOP’s staunchest defense hawks applauding Trump’s restrained response to the Iranian counter-attack. “A homerun speech by President Trump about the challenges we face with Iran. It was measured and firm,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s top allies in Congress. On the other end of the…

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Much of the work of H.P. Lovecraft, an American horror and science fiction writer who worked during the first decades of the 20th century, is defined by individual encounters with the incomprehensible, with sights, sounds and ideas that undermine and disturb reality as his characters understand it. Faced with things too monstrous to be real, but which exist nonetheless, Lovecraftian protagonists either reject their senses or descend into madness, unable to live with what they’ve learned. It…

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CNN reports: There is a growing belief among some Trump administration officials that Iran’s missiles intentionally missed areas populated by Americans when they targeted two Iraqi bases housing US troops early Wednesday local time, multiple administration officials said. Iran fired a number of missiles aimed at the bases in retaliation for the American strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani last week, further escalating tensions between the two countries. Officials have said there were no US casualties as a result…

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The Washington Post reports: The Iranian missile strike on American locations in Iraq on Tuesday was a calibrated event intended to cause minimal American casualties, give the Iranians a face-saving measure and provide an opportunity for both sides to step back from the brink of war, according to senior U.S. officials in Washington and the Middle East. White House officials were bracing as early as Tuesday morning for Iran to respond to the U.S. killing last week of Qasem Soleimani,…

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