Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.Congress rebukes the president on Iran; a ceasefire in Libya falls through. In a reprimand of the president, the House voted Thursday to rein in presidential war powers and cease all military action toward Iran following a US missile strike last week that killed a top Iranian general. [CBS / Grace Segers] Democratic lawmakers have argued that Gen. Qassem Soleimani did not pose an “imminent threat” to the US and that his killing exceeded the limits of presidential power. [Politico / Sarah Ferris and Andrew Desiderio] The measure draws on a Vietnam-era law, the War Powers Resolution, intended to reassert Congress’s warmaking powers and force the president to seek congressional authorization for any further action against Iran. However, the resolution passed in the House is not binding. [NYT / Catie Edmondson and Charlie Savage] A similar Senate resolution gained bipartisan momentum Wednesday after lawmakers received a briefing on the strike. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) described parts of the briefing as “insulting and demeaning.” [Washington Post / Aaron Blake] Lee and fellow Republican Sen. Rand Paul (KY) said they would support Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine’s war powers resolution, but the bill would need at least four Republican votes to have a chance of passing. [Roll Call / Rachel Oswald] Unlike the House resolution, Kaine’s bill would be binding — but even if it survives in the Senate, it would face a near-certain presidential veto. [NPR / Claudia Grisales] The House last year supported a different measure that could have limited the president’s power to wage war against Iran. The amendment garnered bipartisan support but didn’t make it into the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act. [Vox / Emily Stewart and Li Zhou] Despite backing different sides in Libya’s ongoing civil war, Russia and Turkey on Wednesday called for a ceasefire in the conflict between Libya’s United Nations-backed government and warlord Khalifa Haftar. [NYT / Carlotta Gall] Turkey has deepened its involvement in Libya recently by deploying troops in support of the Government of National Accord. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan maintains, however, that the troops are not there to fight. [Economist] President Trump isn’t keen on Turkey getting involved in any capacity. He warned Erdogan last week that “foreign interference is complicating the situation in Libya.” [BBC] For now, it seems there’s little prospect of a truce: Haftar rejected the idea of a ceasefire in a statement Thursday. [Al Jazeera] Clashes will likely continue for the foreseeable future as Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces attempt to take Libya’s GNA-held capital, Tripoli. [AP / Noha Elhennawy] The International Olympic Committee wants to ban athlete protests at the 2020 Olympics. [Vox / Katelyn Burns] How the United Arab Emirates’ Mohammed bin Zayed has quietly assumed a leading role in the Middle East. [NYT / Robert F. Worth] A “megafire” covering about 2,300 square miles has emerged in Australia as a historically bad fire season continues. [NPR / Scott Neuman] After his support flagged following a heart attack in October, Bernie Sanders is now the frontrunner in the Democratic presidential contest per some polls. [WSJ / Eliza Collins] “Let me be clear, I do not believe Democrats are in love with terrorists, and I apologize for what I said earlier this week.” [Republican Rep. Doug Collins walks back a comment attacking his Democratic colleagues / Politico]Megan Rapinoe on pay equity and why she’s not running for political office. [Recode Decode / Kara Swisher]Romance is publishing’s most lucrative genre. Its biggest community of writers is imploding.“You little pencil neck”: Trump’s taunts of Schiff in Toledo were like a parody of a playground bullyAre we morally obligated to meditate?

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has invited British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to visit him in the White House in the new year, British media reported on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson welcomes U.S. President Donald Trump at the NATO leaders summit in Watford, Britain December 4, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/PoolTrump’s invitation was made after the British prime minister’s election win this month, The Sunday Times newspaper reported. Britain wants to strike a new trade deal with the United States after it leaves the European Union at the end of January. “Some potential dates have been floated in mid-January but nothing has yet been formally agreed. But it is clear that both sides want to make it happen some time in early 2020,” the Sunday Times quoted a source close to the White House as saying. A spokesman for Johnson’s Downing Street office said the reports were “speculation”. “We will respond to any formal invitation, but anything less than that is speculation,” he said. Johnson is reluctant to make the visit before delivering Brexit on Jan. 31 and would prefer to go after a cabinet reshuffle scheduled in February, when he is expected to appoint cabinet office minister Michael Gove as his new trade negotiator, The Mail on Sunday reported. That could allow Johnson to take Gove on the U.S. visit ahead of talks of a post-Brexit trade deal, according to the report. Some Downing Street insiders, however, have concerns about a visit by Johnson due to fears the prime minister could be dragged into Trump’s ongoing impeachment proceedings, the Sunday Times reported. Johnson won approval for his Brexit deal in the British parliament on Friday, the first step toward fulfilling his election pledge to deliver Britain’s departure from the European Union by Jan. 31. As Britain prepares to leave the bloc, Johnson and Trump agreed in a phone call last Monday to pursue an “ambitious” UK-U.S. free trade agreement. After Johnson’s election win on Dec. 12, Trump had said Britain and the United States were now free to strike a “massive” new trade deal after Brexit. “This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the EU,” Trump had said in a tweet earlier this month. The White House declined to comment on the reported invitation to Johnson. Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru, Paul Sandle in London and Timothy Ahmann in Washington; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore/Sam Holmes/Susan FentonOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Russian government figures, lawmakers and analysts sometimes mock U.S. President Donald J. Trump, and sometimes they heap praise on him as, you know, their guy. But it seems a man they really admired was Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force, who was blown away last week on Trump’s orders, precipitating a fraught international crisis.Among other things, Russian state media are describing Soleimani as the architect of Russia's involvement in Syria, an operation in which Moscow takes pride despite a long and continuing history of atrocities. Moscow live-streamed Soleimani’s six-hour funeral and showcased the procession of the mourners who brought flowers to the embassy of Iran in Moscow.Discussing Soleimani’s liquidation on the state television news talk show 60 Minutes on channel Rossiya-24, Russian State Duma lawmaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky—a controversial nationalist politician known as a showman of Russian politics—exclaimed: “Many don't understand it yet, but World War III is already underway. It is being carried out through different methods and technologies.” Zhirinovsky proceeded to extol General Soleimani’s popularity with the Iranian people by comparing his importance to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of Cheka—the secret police predecessor of the KGB and, now, the FSB) and Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, hero of the fight against the Nazis, put together.The Russian Defense Ministry praised Soleimani as “a competent military leader,” who “commanded well-deserved authority and significant influence in the entire Middle Eastern region.” The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that Soleimani’s killing would be “fraught with grave consequences for regional peace and stability,” leading “to a new round of escalating tensions in the region.”The chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Leonid Slutsky, described the action as “a barbaric provocation by the United States.” He opined that “the Americans have crossed the 'red line,' and this time the consequences can be very serious.”Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that when Russia urges restraint in the conflict between Iran and the United States, it means America “first and foremost.” Ryabkov said that Russia finds American politics “of controlled chaos and destabilization” unacceptable.Likewise, the Kremlin sided with Iran in discussing the Ukrainian airliner, reportedly downed by Russian-made missiles. Ryabkov called on senior world leaders to refrain from public statements accusing the Iranians until an investigation has been completed. “Military analysts and state media pundits rejoiced at the perceived humiliation and weakening of the United States on the world stage.”Senator Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Federation Council's International Affairs Committee, predicted that the killing of the general would lead to increased violence: “You won’t be forced to wait for a response… wars are easy to start, but very hard to finish.” Kosachev accused Trump of arranging the killing “to spectacularly begin his election campaign.”Russian state media have concluded that Trump's actions against Iran, including the liquidation of Soleimani, were primarily motivated by his re-election ambitions, as well as his urge to create a distraction from the ongoing impeachment proceedings. During the program 60 Minutes, the hosts played a 2011 video clip of President Trump, divining that President Barack Obama would start a war with Iran in order to secure his re-election. ‘Does it remind you of anything?”host Olga Skabeeva asked sarcastically. Trump’s ludicrous prediction revealed his own way of thinking. “Wag, wag, wag,” as in Wag the Dog, read the cartoon shown on 60 Minutes. Even as myriad pro-Kremlin voices condemned Soleimani’s killing, many could hardly conceal their glee about the side effects of the escalation. Military analysts and state media pundits rejoiced at the perceived humiliation and weakening of the United States on the world stage. Russian state TV programs repeatedly broadcast the photograph of American President Donald Trump with missile-shaped slap marks on his face, originally posted on a Twitter page linked to the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Russian state television aired the clips from Iranian state television referring to the American president as “a yellow-haired psycho” and offering a bounty for his head. Russian war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny said that for the first time since the Vietnam War someone dared to strike an American base. He pontificated that Iran raised the red flag of revenge for a good reason and managed to save face. The audience enthusiastically clapped in support of Poddubny’s statements.Russian and Iranian state media jointly emphasized that Iran’s campaign of retaliation against the United States is far from over. An unnamed U.S. government official told Ken Dilanian of NBC News that American intelligence agencies expect Iran to continue retaliating for the Soleimani killing, using clandestine measures.The source said, “If I were a U.S. ambassador, I wouldn't be starting my own car for the foreseeable future.” Likewise, the Russians anticipate that the Iranian revenge for the Soleimani killing won't end with the strikes of the American bases in Iraq. As that tweet of Trump’s slapped face puts it, the missile strike was, “Just a slap; revenge is another argument …”Russian State television reporter Valentin Bogdanov described the killing of Soleimani as “lawless” and opined: “Iranians know how to serve their revenge cold. They could choose to exercise it—for example—close to the November elections, not leaving Trump much time to respond.”Yevgeny Primakov, member of the Russian State Duma, a grandson of a former Russian Foreign Minister and Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, and host of the state TV program International Review, said that “Iran demonstrated to the whole world that the hegemon could be kicked.” “Iran showed its strength and America revealed its weakness,” argued military expert Vladimir Evseev, adding: “Nothing like this has ever happened before.”“You can deal with Americans only from a position of strength. Note how they got punched in the nose and that was the end of it,” remarked Nikolay Platoshkin, a former Russian diplomat and a Professor at the Moscow University of the Humanities. “You crapped all over yourselves, that's why the United States needs to shut up! Your time is over!”— Russian military expert Igor KorotchenkoRussian State TV host Olga Skabeeva mocked President Trump's assessment that Iran decided to back down. In reality, Skabeeva argued, “Trump got scared of Iran.” She marveled at the unprecedented nature of the unfolding events: “What other examples could you give when some country, some regional power that doesn't possess nuclear weapons— as far as we know—delivered a strike at the United States of America? Simply wow! How is that even possible? Can it really be done?”Skabeeva added: “Trump demonstrated that he can't strike back… Your hegemony no longer works. What are your allies doing? Who supported you, Americans, in this action?” Skabeeva smugly surmised: “You are alone.” America’s deteriorating relationships with allies delight not only the state media, but also the Russian lawmakers. On his Twitter page, Senator Alexey Pushkov pointed out that the great majority of America's traditional allies did not support President Trump's decision to kill General Soleimani. During the state TV show 60 Minutes, Russian military expert Igor Korotchenko yelled at the American panelist, and in the process sketched Moscow’s strategic calculations: “You crapped all over yourselves, that's why the United States needs to shut up! Your time is over!” said Korotchenko. “America is no longer the same. It's come to nothing. America admitted its own defeat, politically and militarily. Iran—an independent strong country, which is significantly weaker militarily—whipped and slapped you all over the face. Two waves of missile strikes—where are your Patriot [anti-missile] systems? They detected nothing and couldn't ward off the attacks. You utterly screwed up. America is not the same and the world is different. The year 2020 is breaking all established norms. Not one of your allies relies on you—not in Europe or the Middle East. You're weak and helpless… You're losing the status of a superpower. Your weapons are bad. Your allies found out that it's senseless to rely on the United States or their weapons systems. Your Patriot systems are ineffective, nothing more than a bluff.” “Trump forced his way into a trap.”— Nikita Daniuk, deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and ForecastsIt should be noted that the Patriot systems reportedly were absent from the targeted military facilities in Iraq.Korotchenko predicted: “The year 2020 opens up new opportunities, it will be the time of new alliances—and the place of the United States won’t be in the lead, but somewhere off to the side... Iran's missile strikes are not the final stage of the retaliation. You will no longer be able to decide the fate of the world. This is the collapse of the global U.S. domination. The multipolar world is coming into power in 2020. This represents new opportunities for our country.”Korotchenko is a member of the Russian Defense Ministry's public council, with high-level political and military connections, including the likes of Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and First Deputy Defense Minister Valery Gerasimov. Lest anyone mistake him for a random bystander, Korotchenko pointed out: “As a participant of the Defense Ministry Board meeting [attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin] in 2019, I can say that our generals are at ease, because our army and navy function like clockwork. We're in control of the situation… The world is changing and it won’t be the American world. It will be a multipolar world in which you will be asked to stand aside when the most important issues of the global world order are being decided.”Korotchenko concluded his tirade against the United States by proclaiming: “Today, Turkey, Russia and Iran are jointly working in Syria… from where you've been asked to get out. Tomorrow, you'll get out of Iraq and then you'll get out of everywhere else, because no one else places their hopes in you any longer. Other countries will be seeking support and alliance with Russia and buying Russian weapons… Russian political and military leadership is smarter and more successful than the Americans. That is the problem of the United States—the incompetence of their leaders. We are competent and that's why we're winning… We're back in the Middle East, we're again in the league of great nations. If the United States has a problem with that, criticize your own leadership that keeps on losing to us.” Expert Nikita Daniuk, deputy director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Forecasts, argued that “America can no longer dictate its conditions to its direct enemies… Yet again we're noting the weakness of the United States in the face of an indecisive president who can do nothing but raise the stakes… Trump forced his way into a trap.” There is a widespread consensus about the diminishing influence of the United States and the increasing role of Russia amongst Russian lawmakers and experts. “The geopolitical role of Russia and Putin keep growing,” boasted Igor Morozov, a member of Russia’s Federation Council.Elena Suponina, advisor at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, surmised that in light of Trump's actions in the Middle East, Russia is now seen as a more reliable and predictable partner. Political commentator Sergey Strokan wrote for the Russian newspaper Kommersant that the new regional crisis will further weaken Washington and increase Moscow’s geopolitical influence, widening the window of Russia’s opportunities in the Middle East.Russian experts see the Kremlin as the main beneficiary of the rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran—both geopolitically and financially. Oil and gold prices soared following the Soleimani killing, and the Moscow Stock Exchange reached all-time record levels. Financial analyst Andrey Kochetkov told the Russian news publication Vedomosti that the geopolitical crisis in the Middle East directly benefits Russia: “While others are fighting, we are out of the way and have the opportunity to profit in this situation through the sales of arms and the growing prices of oil and gold.” The Kremlin continues to reap the dividends of President Trump’s foreign policy blunders and is most certainly not “sick of winning.”

WASHINGTON—Britain, France and the U.S. united Thursday around broad plans for a military strike against Syria as they worked to bridge differences over the scope and purpose of a coordinated response to a suspected chemical weapons attack, U.S. officials said.President Donald Trump met with his national security team on Thursday to weigh military options while Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sought to limit the impact of an expected attack by moving warplanes under the protection of Russian air defenses....

closeVideoSen. Thom Tillis says President Trump needs to be prepared to respond appropriately for Iranian missile attackThe Iranian leadership needs to apologize for decades-old campaign to harm Americans, says North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.Sen. Thom Tillis, R.-N.C., said Tuesday that Iran's missile attack on two Iraqi airbases following the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike last week was “expected,” but the fact that Iran quickly claimed responsibility for the assaults was “concerning.”The U.S. blamed Soleimani for the killing of hundreds of American troops and said he was plotting new attacks just before his death early Friday. Iran, in turn, launched more than a dozen ballistic missiles early Wednesday targeting U.S. military and coalition forces in Iraq. An American military official in Baghdad told Fox News there were "no U.S. casualties."“I think this is a provocation that we expected, or I should say retaliation that we expected. The fact that they were so quick to claim responsibility for it is concerning to me,” Tillis told Martha MacCallum on "The Story," adding: “I think that the president has to be prepared to respond appropriately."Tillis said that Iran had been given many passes for previous provocations but the latest attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad “crossed a line,” and required “consequences.”ANDY MCCARTHY: SOLEIMANI WAS 'A LEGITIMATE TARGET' FOR DRONE STRIKE THAT KILLED HIM“If we give them another pass like we did with maritime attacks in the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf, the attacks on the Saudi oil field, the rocket attacks that killed a U.S. contractor, sooner or later, you have to say, ‘You have crossed the line and there has to be a consequence for it," the senator said. “You have to draw a line. I think the president appropriately did that when he took out Soleimani last week."“I think the leadership of Iran, not the Iranian people, the leadership of Iran, need to apologize for decades-old attempts to harm Americans, kill Americans, hundreds of Americans,” Tillis added. “Soleimani has created a network of terror across the Middle East. He needed to be taken out. He is responsible for the attacks on the embassy. He was killed less than 15 miles away from the embassy, traveling against U.N. Sanctions. He was not there for a good purpose.”Tillis also asserted that the American people stand behind President Trump in his decision to take out the Iranian military leader and claimed that the administration's decision to escalate economic sanctions against Iran was working.“The economic pressure is working," Tillis said. "The [Iran] economy is failing."

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department official leading the investigation of big tech companies’ market dominance is stepping aside from the department’s Google probe because of his previous lobbying work for Google as a private attorney. Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim, the department's antitrust chief, is recusing himself from the investigation into Google, a person familiar with the matter said Tuesday. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Delrahim lobbied on Google’s behalf in 2007 when the Mountain View, California-based internet company faced antitrust scrutiny over its acquisition of DoubleClick, a competitor in digital advertising. The Justice Department’s ethics office apparently found no potential conflict of interest when Delrahim sought guidance as the investigation of Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple began last spring. But as the competition probe progressed, Delrahim “revisited” potential conflicts with the ethics staff, and he and the ethics office "have decided that he should now recuse himself from a matter within the tech review in an abundance of caution,” said a department statement, which did not mention Google. Associate Deputy Attorney General Ryan Shores will continue to oversee the tech review, the statement said. Scrutiny of Big Tech has deepened and widened across the federal government, U.S. states and abroad. The Federal Trade Commission also is conducting a competition investigation of the four tech giants, and state attorneys general from both major political parties have opened antitrust probes of Google and Facebook. The House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust has been conducting a sweeping bipartisan investigation of the big tech companies and their impact on competition and consumers. Delrahim has suggested in speeches that he’s taking a broad view of how competition is harmed, when assessing whether big tech firms should be broken up. He also has made clear that he is aware that just two companies dominate digital advertising, though he hasn’t named the two, Google and Facebook. Justice Department and FTC officials haven’t publicly named the companies under investigation or indicated whether they plan to move against any particular company. The companies have said they'll fully cooperate with the investigations. But in congressional testimony, their executives have pushed back against accusations that they operate as monopolies, laying out ways in which they say they compete fairly yet vigorously against rivals in the marketplace. Delrahim's recusal was first reported by The New York Times.

Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device Video Qasem Soleimani: Mourning begins in Iran The body of Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general killed in a US drone strike, has been brought back to Iran.Footage filmed by Iran Press shows huge crowds taking to the streets of the Iranian city of Ahvaz, marking the beginning of ceremonies in his honour.General Soleimani's burial will take place in his home town of Kerman on 7 January.

As the Trump administration faces questions about the rationale behind its killing of Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a Friday drone strike, Vice President Mike Pence is being scrutinized for his claim that Soleimani helped carry out the 9/11 terrorist attacks.Pence, in a wide-ranging Twitter thread detailing Soleimani’s alleged crimes against America, claimed Soleimani “assisted in the clandestine travel of 10 of 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks.” Yesterday, President @realDonaldTrump took decisive action and stood up against the leading state sponsor of terror to take out an evil man who was responsible for killing thousands of Americans. Soleimani was a terrorist. Here are some of his worst atrocities:— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 3, 2020 Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.— Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) January 3, 2020 The tweet drew immediate criticism, in part because it is factually incorrect. Pence wrote that there were 12 terrorists who attacked the US on 9/11, but there were actually 19 hijackers. Pence’s press secretary Katie Waldman later clarified in a tweet of her own that Pence was referring to “12 of the 19” hijackers who “transited through Afghanistan,” saying “10 of those 12 were assisted by Soleimani.” It is unclear where the claim Soleimani helped the hijackers originated — in defending her correction, Waldman told the New York Times a 2016 US Treasury Department report found Iran permitted several of the 9/11 hijackers passage through the country. A State Department summary of that report does indeed say its authors found some Iranian officials allowed 9/11 hijackers to move through the country, but it does not specify Soleimani as one of these leaders.Similarly, the 9/11 Commission Report found “8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi “muscle” operatives [those assigned physical tasks in the hijackings] traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001,” but clearly states that neither the Iranian government nor Hezbollah helped facilitate the attack. Page 241 of the report reads: We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the Al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation.The report does, however, cite “strong evidence that Iran facilitated the travel of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers.” But, again, there is no mention of Soleimani playing a part in that transit. In fact, Soleimani’s name does not appear a single time in the entire 9/11 Commission Report. There are other dubious elements to Pence’s tweet, too. Soleimani was the leader of a Shia Muslim military group from Iran, and the members of al-Qaeda who carried out the 9/11 attacks were mostly Saudi nationals from a Sunni extremist group. The Sunni-Shia conflict was notoriously bad at the time, and Pence’s suggestion that Soleimani would be helping a group of Sunni extremists seems absurd on its face. There’s also extensive reporting that in the wake of 9/11, Soleimani was actually helping the US military track down their mutual enemy: the Taliban. Exactly why Pence tied Soleimani to 9/11 is not clear. It is possible he is privy to some newly discovered information the experts who compiled the 9/11 Commission Report were not aware of, but he has presented no evidence that this is the case. Some observers, like Christine Pelosi — the Democratic strategist and daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — speculated that Pence was trying to tie the strike to 9/11 so it would be covered by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF), a post-9/11 bill that gives the president wide-reaching authority for military action against anyone involved in the attacks. As of now, there is some question as to whether the attack on Soleimani was legal; national security expert Heather Hurlburt told Vox’s Sean Illing the strike likely was not. Proving that the attack was carried out under the auspices of the AUMF, then, could give the Trump administration grounds for arguing for the legality of the strike. Complicating this argument, as Hurlburt explained, is the fact that the 2001 AUMF — and the ones that followed — gave the White House “the power to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and later, ISIS in Iraq,” not Iran. Hurlburt said, “There’s just no plausible legal justification under which you could stretch any of the AUMFs to include an attack on an Iranian official.”On an individual level, President Trump already has a reputation for dishonesty, having made more than 15,000 false or misleading claims since entering office, according to a Washington Post fact-checker count. Pence does not have quite the same reputation, but has gone on record making misleading statements, like his claims about terrorists at the border, and questionable ones, like the reasoning behind his patronage of a Trump hotel while on a work trip in Ireland. And the vice president does not have the best track record when it comes to repeating falsehoods around military action in the Middle East. For instance, Saturday morning, a video of Pence parroting the infamous lie that “weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq” while he served in Congress began circulating online. Rep. Mike Pence in 2004: “Weapons of mass destruction have been found.” pic.twitter.com/iYITpWlS21— Eric Koch (@EricDKoch) January 4, 2020 The vice president’s tweets, however, point to the issues of credibility the Trump administration has as a whole. The White House’s justification for the attack on Soleimani — that he represented an “imminent threat,” and that his death “saved American lives” — has faced scrutiny not just because the administration has not yet produced any evidence that this is the case (and not just because reporting, such as the work done by the New York Times’s Rukmini Callimachi, suggests no such evidence exists), but because Trump, and many of his officials, lie often.Vox’s Matthew Yglesias noted, for example, that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, while serving as CIA director, frequently “distorted intelligence about Russia to fit Trump’s preferred narratives.” And that habit continued once Pompeo became secretary of state, as Yglesias explained: This history of not telling the truth has now become a problem for the Trump administration as it asks the public to trust that it did the right thing for the right reasons in killing Soleimani. The unfortunate timing of Pence’s tweet — and the misinformation it contains — only highlights why so many are reticent to do so. As Yglesias wrote, “When someone has proven over and over again that they are not trustworthy, you can, and in important situations should, stop trusting them.”

When former Senator Al Franken described CNN as “playing it down the middle, except we hate Trump” on this week’s new episode of his interview podcast, his guest was quick to correct him. “No, they don’t,” Lawrence O’Donnell, who hosts The Last Word on MSNBC’s primetime lineup, replied. “One third of the people on their payroll love Trump. So you’re guaranteed on any hour of CNN to, minimum one third of the programming will be supportive of Trump—someone on their payroll saying, ‘Here’s why Trump’s right.’” The “one third” suggestion may be somewhat of an exaggeration, but the MSNBC host isn’t wrong to point out his rival network has a habit of paying Trump-defending pundits who in some cases cannot even publicly criticize him without violating non-disclosure agreements. “That’s one of the reasons why Trump kind of wants you to watch CNN instead of MSNBC,” O’Donnell added. “Because he knows on MSNBC there will be no one defending him. Because we don’t bring on liars. I don’t bring on a liar. I won’t do that.” O’Donnell’s NBC colleagues appear to have varying opinions on the matter of bringing known “liars” onto their shows. When The Daily Beast asked Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd early last year why he continues to book Trump surrogates like Kellyanne Conway, given her proven propensity to mislead, he said, “I don’t have a hard and fast rule about who I put on and who I don’t.” He added, “I don’t think you ban anybody. She works for the president of the United States. If she is relevant to a story we’re doing, I do think it’s important for the country to hear from a senior aide to the president.”Asked a similar question this past September, primetime host Chris Hayes drew a line between “good faith” and “bad faith” arguments, telling The Daily Beast, “To me, the distinction between good faith and bad faith is an elemental one, and I just can’t deal with bad faith hackish spinning,” adding, “I hate running around in circles with people who are just gaslighting you, like Corey Lewandowski. Life’s too short to argue with Corey Lewandowski.” There is also a difference, of course, between having someone on as a guest and hiring them as a paid contributor for the network, as CNN did with Lewandowski in 2016 shortly after he was fired as Donald Trump’s campaign manager. He resigned from the network two days after Trump won the presidential election but has continued to appear on its air periodically, including after he admitted lying to the media. After O’Donnell laid out what he sees as the differences between CNN and MSNBC, Franken jokingly asked, “Are you saying that to defend Trump you have to lie?!”“Yes, absolutely you do,” O’Donnell responded. “How else do you defend a liar—a pathological liar who lies about everything? You have to lie.” “So CNN has people on the payroll who they pay to tell their lies to the CNN audience in the middle of a CNN hour for some number of minutes,” he continued, making Franken laugh sardonically. “And so Trump knows that if you watch CNN ‘at least you’ll hear someone lying in my favor.’” For more, listen to the most recent episodes of The Last Laugh podcast.

PARIS -- Paris commuters who have battled through six weeks of misery-inducing transport strikes found their smiles again Monday as some subway workers ended their walkouts against a contested overhaul of France's pension system. A weekend announcement by the UNSA union's subway wing of a return to work after 46 consecutive days of strikes produced a marked improvement in services Monday in the French capital. “It was very fluid,” commuter Eric Lebrun said after taking a train and then riding the Metro during the morning rush hour. Lebrun, who travels weekly to Paris from Switzerland, where he lives, said the strikes have had a “catastrophic” impact on his journey since they started Dec. 5. “Now it's much better,” he said. Services were completely or almost back to normal on 11 of Paris' 16 subway lines for the first time since Dec. 5, said the RATP company that runs the metro system. The other five lines were still somewhat disrupted. But not all strikers voted to return to work. Unions have split over whether to accept French government compromise proposals on the pension changes or to continue pushing for a complete withdrawal of the bill. UNSA's subway wing said while its strikers had opted to return to work, the union plans to continue protesting what it calls the “unfair" pension reform. Unions are calling for a massive day of demonstrations and strikes on Friday, when President Emmanuel Macron's centrist government will present the pension reform bill to the Cabinet ahead of a debate in parliament next month. Macron, who is trying to blend scores of separate pension systems and rules into a universal French pension, says his plan will be fairer to all French workers and will be sustainable as the country ages. Transit workers, who now can sometimes retire earlier than the official age of 62, don't want to lose their special privileges and French workers in general fear the government will raise the pension age. On Paris' suburban train network, some commuters noticed improvements while others said they were still waiting longer than normal for trains. “It's no better than usual, the same as it was last week,” said commuter Pierre Bouteloup, braving the morning chill on a platform in the west of Paris. "I've been waiting for almost 10 minutes for a train. Normally, there's a train every three or four minutes.” But student Lea Toussaint said her wait for a train to her university was far shorter on Monday — just a few minutes — than last week. “It's a lot better,” she said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sharply at odds with liberal justices, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to abolish protections that permit 660,000 immigrants to work in the U.S., free from the threat of deportation.That outcome would “destroy lives,” declared Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one the court’s liberals who repeatedly suggested the administration has not adequately justified its decision to end the seven-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Nor has it taken sufficient account of the personal, economic and social disruption that might result, they said.But there did not appear to be any support among the five conservatives for blocking the administration. The nine-member court’s decision is expected by June, at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign.President Donald Trump said on Twitter that DACA recipients shouldn’t despair if the justices side with him, pledging that “a deal will be made with the Dems for them to stay!” But Trump’s past promises to work with Democrats on a legislative solution for these immigrants have led nowhere.The president also said in his tweet that many program participants, brought to the U.S. as children and now here illegally, are “far from ‘angels,’” and he claimed that “some are very tough, hardened criminals.” The program bars anyone with a felony conviction from participating, and serious misdemeanors may also bar eligibility.Some DACA recipients, commonly known as “Dreamers,” were in the courtroom for the arguments, and many people camped out in front of the court for days for a chance at some of the few seats available. The term comes from never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act.The high court arguments did not involve any discussion of individual DACA recipients or Trump’s claims.Instead the focus was on whether either of two administration rationales for ending DACA, begun under President Barack Obama, was enough.Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was a key part of his presidential campaign in 2016, and his administration has pointed to a court ruling striking down the expansion of DACA and creation of similar protections, known as DAPA, for undocumented immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens as reasons to bring the program to a halt.After lower courts stepped in to keep the program alive, the administration produced a new explanation memo from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh were among the justices who indicated on Tuesday that the administration has provided sufficient reason for doing away with the program. Kavanaugh referred to Nielsen’s memo at one point as “a very considered decision.” Roberts suggested that worries that DACA is not legal might be enough to support ending it.Roberts, who could hold the pivotal vote on the court, aimed his few questions at lawyers representing DACA recipients and their supporters. He did not seriously question the administration’s argument.However, justices’ questions don’t always foretell their votes. In June the chief justice surprised many when he cast the deciding vote to prevent the administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, despite not voicing much skepticism during arguments in the case.Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito raised questions on Tuesday about whether courts should even be reviewing the executive branch’s discretionary decisions.Sotomayor made the only direct reference to Trump, saying he told DACA recipients “that they were safe under him and that he would find a way to keep them here. And so he hasn’t.”She also complained that the administration’s rationale has shifted over time and has mainly relied on the view that DACA is illegal, leaving no choice but to end it.In her most barbed comment, Sotomayor said the administration has failed to plainly say “that this is not about the law. This is about our choice to destroy lives.”Solicitor General Noel Francisco, representing the administration, did not directly respond to Sotomayor. But near the end of the 80-minute arguments, he asserted that the administration has taken responsibility for its decision and is relying on more than merely its belief that DACA is illegal. The administration has the authority to end DACA, even if it’s legal, because it’s bad policy, he said. “We own this,” Francisco said.If the court agrees with the administration in the DACA case, Congress could follow up by voting to put the program on surer legal footing. But the absence of comprehensive immigration reform by Congress is what prompted Obama to create DACA in the first place, in 2012, giving people two-year renewable reprieves from the threat of deportation while also allowing them to work.Young immigrants, civil rights groups, universities and Democratic-led cities and states sued to block the administration. They persuaded courts in New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., that the administration had been “arbitrary and capricious” in its actions, in violation of a federal law that requires policy changes to be done in an orderly way.If the justices sustain the challenges, the administration could try again to end the program. A lawsuit in Texas claiming that DACA is illegal also would be likely to go forward.___This story has been changed to delete because of uncertainty the reference to Trump falsely claiming of DACA participants that “some are very tough, hardened criminals.”

Both the Pound and the Franc dropped under severe economic stress, and did so only under those very specific circumstances. Bitcoin suffers from these wild swings routinely.There are currencies that have fluctuated the way Bitcoin does:Argentina PesosZimbabwe DollarsPeruvian IntiWhen a currency fluctuates like that, it is no longer suitable as a currency, and people abandon it. Even governments are powerless to stop the collapse of a currency under those circumstances.A currency is only as valuable as the ability to spend it. Bitcoin can't be spent in any meaningful way, so it is not valuable as a currency. Bitcoin only has value because someone out there will exchange other currencies for Bitcoin. The problem is that the actual number of such transactions is extremely low compared to the number of transactions where bitcoin is being moved into or out of another crypto-currency. This means that a very small set of transactions is establishing the value of bitcoin, but that small set of transactions doesn't scale. If you try, then the supply of crypto vastly out strips the demand, and the price falls (like a bank run except no one will bail out Bitcoin). Worse, the very structure of Bitcoin forces constant conversion to regular currencies vis-a-vis miners have to pay for their costs somehow, and even if their suppliers accept crypto, the suppliers are promptly selling the crypto to get real currencies. This puts massive downward pressure on the bitcoin exchange rate. Put in simpler terms, miners are constantly destroying value by spending capital to acquire the resources to "make" new bitcoin. That capital has to come from somewhere, and it can't come from the created bitcoin, so it comes from infusions of cash from people buying in. That influx was very fast in 2017, but has since slowed to a trickle. That is why the price rose sharply in 2017, and has since been slowly dwindling (except for a few brief periods of market manipulation by Tether/Bitfinex). In short, the miners are spending the value of bitcoin, and because of the very nature of bitcoin, they cant stop. If they ever do stop, then Bitcoin is officially dead.

Millions of women gathered across the world to strike, protest and party to mark International Women’s Day on Thursday. Trains stopped in Spain as female workers went on the country’s first “feminist” strike, newspapers dropped their prices for women in France, and the IWD flag flew over the UK parliament.In India, women marched in several cities including Delhi, Karachi and Kolkata, and women also took to the streets in Bangladesh, Belarus, Nepal, Pristina and Ankara among many others. It was a day of celebration and a day in which the message was spelt out that much work still needed to be done to achieve global gender equality. In London, an International Women’s Day flag flew over parliament for the first time as MPs and peers marked the day with a debate in both Houses of parliament. The shadow equalities minister, Dawn Butler, said she had been inspired by the flag flying over the Transport for London building on Monday and had approached the Speaker, John Bercow, about a flag for parliament. He approved the plan with less than 24 hours to go, as the House commemorated 100 years since the first women in the UK got the vote. Bercow said: “We must not sit smugly and think job done; there are still issues of unequal access to the labour market, occupational segregation, women and members of minority groups scaling the heights professionally, there is a substantial gender pay gap.”More than 100 MPs and peers from all parties wrote to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, calling for women in Northern Ireland to be allowed access to abortion services locally rather than having to go to England.Women tweeted about the global #WikiGap event, organised in partnership with the Swedish foreign ministry. The idea was to get more women contributing to the Wikipedia website to address the gender imbalance on the world’s largest online and user-generated encyclopaedia. The Swedish foreign ministry said: “Knowledge is power and Wikipedia has the potential to colour our view of the world. But there is great imbalance between men and women on the website, like in society at large.”It said 90% of those who added content to Wikipedia were men and there were four times more articles about men than women. “The figures vary regionally but, no matter how you look at it, the picture is clear: the information about women is less extensive than that about men. Regardless of which language version of Wikipedia you read. We want to change this.”Campaigners seeking to repeal the eighth amendment celebrated a “historic and momentous” step forward in their campaign to allow access to abortion. The wording of a national referendum to overturn the constitutional ban on abortion was agreed by the cabinet on Thursday. Ailbhe Smyth, convenor of the Coalition to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, welcomed the news as a significant milestone, adding: “It has been a very long time coming ... We need abortion care that is safe and regulated, in line with best medical practice, and today brings us a crucial step forward in trying to achieve this important goal.” Meanwhile, the former Irish president Mary McAleese said the Catholic church was an “empire of misogyny”, ahead of a conference in Rome calling for women to be given leadership roles by the Vatican. “There are so few leadership roles currently available to women,” McAleese said. “Women do not have strong role models in the church they can look up to. [A church hierarchy] that is homophobic and anti-abortion is not the church of the future.”Comedian Richard Herring continued his tradition of responding to Twitter users who ask “when is there an International Men’s Day?” This year he used his tweets to raise money for the domestic violence charity Refuge, which supports women and girls. In the outback town of Tennant Creek, Indigenous Australians women and girls marched to call for an end to alcohol-fuelled violence.Meanwhile, the Australian Council of Trade Unions used three billboards to demand paid domestic violence leave and an end to gender-based violence in the workplace. The 27th prime minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, gave a speech at the Royal Women’s Hospital, in Melbourne, in which she said more work needed to be done to counteract unconscious bias against women.Hundreds of South Koreans, many wearing black and holding black #MeToo signs, rallied in central Seoul. The movement has gained significant traction in the country since January when a female prosecutor began speaking openly about workplace mistreatment and sexual misconduct.Several high-profile South Korean men have resigned from positions of power, including a governor who was a leading presidential contender before he was accused of repeatedly raping his female secretary.On the eve of International Women’s Day, protesters in Seoul gathered outside the Japanese embassy to highlight the plight of so-called “comfort women” – a euphemism for the 200,000 girls and young women who were forced to work in Japanese brothels before and during the second world war.Demonstrators called for supporters, including men, to down tools in their workplaces at 15.40 in solidarity with their female colleagues. Research has shown women in France earn 24% less for the same work as their male colleagues, leading to calculations that they are working for free each day after 15.40pm. Members of the sénat suspended their session at that time after André Chassaigne, a member of the Communist party, requested a brief halt in proceedings.The French prime minister, Edouard Philippe, presented 50 measures to promote equality and combat violence against women, resulting from a nationwide consultation, entitled the Equality Tour de France. They include an equal pay task force and fines for companies not offering the same remuneration to staff. More than five million workers took part in the country’s first nationwide “feminist strike”, according to trade unions who said the “unprecedented” action was intended to highlight sexual discrimination, domestic violence and the wage gap.Huge crowds surged into streets and squares to call for change and equality in a demonstration coordinated by the 8 March Commission umbrella group which demanded an end to Spain’s enduring machista culture. It was supported by some of Spain’s best-known female politicians, including Madrid’s mayor, Manuela Carmena, and the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau.Under the slogan “If we stop, the world stops”, protesters congregated in cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Seville and Pamplona, to make their voices heard. The online Spanish newspaper eldiario.es marked the day by dotting its homepage with blocks of solid purple and the explanatory note: “This is a space that would be filled with a story from one of our female reporters who are on strike.”Spain’s transport ministry announced that 200 intercity trains out of 568 would not be operating, while 105 long-distance trains were cancelled. The underground in Madrid was also affected. Hundreds of activists in pink and purple shirts protested against Rodrigo Duterte, the country’s president, whom they claimed was among the worst violators of women’s rights in Asia. Protest leaders sang and danced in a boisterous rally in Manila’s Plaza Miranda where they handed red and white roses to mothers, sisters and widows of several drug suspects slain under Duterte’s deadly crackdown on illegal drugs.More than 1,000 female aid workers from around the world signed an open letter calling for urgent reform across the humanitarian sector. The letter, addressed to the leaders of international charities, the UN and donors, urged organisations to treat allegations of sexual harassment and abuse as a priority.The aid sector is reeling from allegations that charities including Oxfam, Save the Children and the UN mishandled claims of sexual misconduct. The letter warned of the need for action rather than words. “We are gravely concerned that the culture of silence, intimidation and abuse will continue as soon as the media spotlight on this issue begins to dim,” said the signatories. “We need effective leadership, commitment to action and access to resources.”At rallies in the capital, Islamabad, the largest city, Karachi, and the cultural capital, Lahore, women denounced violence against them in the country where yearly nearly 1,000 women are killed by close relatives in so-called honour killings. Pakistani women have largely been deprived of their rights since the country gained independence in 1947. Topics International Women's Day Women Gender United Nations Ireland South Korea France news

Some 700,000 Syrians were fleeing toward the border with Turkey on Thursday after an intensification of deadly airstrikes, widely believed to have been carried out by Russian warplanes backing a Syrian government offensive, in rebel-held Idlib province.The U.S. special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, told a news briefing that Syrian government and Russian warplanes had hit Idlib with 200 strikes "mainly against civilians" in the past three days.He warned that the situation could "create an international crisis," according to Reuters.The recent attacks in Idlib have killed at least 10 people, including some who were fleeing the attack, as well as opposition activists, a rescue service said.Let our news meet your inbox. The news and stories that matters, delivered weekday mornings.A late Wednesday night assault was on Ariha, a town in Idlib province, which has been controlled by the Syrian opposition for nearly eight years.The Idlib province is home to 3 million civilians, and the United Nations has warned of the growing risk of a humanitarian catastrophe along the Turkish border.The rescue Syrian Civil Defense — known as the White Helmets — believes 11 people, including a child, were killed when Russian warplanes hit a road used by displaced people trying to leave Ariha.At least 24 people were wounded, including a doctor, a White Helmet volunteer, three women and two children, the rescuers said.An Associated Press video shows a damaged hospital in a residential area, with medical equipment broken, supplies strewn over the floor and windows and doors dislodged from their frames.At least six people — relatives of patients — were killed as they waited outside the hospital, Zuheir Qarat, a surgeon at the Ariha hospital told the AP. Hospital generators and one hospital car were burned, he added. No patients were hurt.The Ariha hospital is the only medical facility in the area with surgical facilities. There are no government-run hospitals in opposition-held areas, where health and education services run on donations and international aid.“It destroyed the hospital and put it out of service,” Qarat told the AP in a voice message from Ariha, describing the three raids that were within minutes of each other. “There were also people injured from neighboring buildings.”The U.N. humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, Mark Lowcock, described to the Security Council on Wednesday the dire conditions in the rebel-held areas.“Many families are moving multiple times. They arrive in a place thought to be safe, only for the bombs to follow, so they are forced to move again," he said. “This cycle is all too familiar in northwest Syria.”Syria's nearly nine-year conflict has killed close to half a million people and displaced half of the population, including more than 5 million who are now refugees, mostly in neighboring countries.

The war in Syria, which will enter its 10th year next month, shames the world. Powerful western countries, namely the US, Britain and their European allies, could and should have done more to stop it. Instead, they have failed to act decisively as Bashar al-Assad’s regime perpetrated countless repeat atrocities against the Syrian people, assisted by Russia and Iran. This butchery continues.It’s not only governments that failed in their legal and moral duty to protect life and uphold international law. More than any other recent crisis, Syria has exposed the fatal impotence of a divided UN security council. Britain’s parliament got Syria badly wrong. In 2013, the House of Commons, running scared of another Iraq, blocked military intervention. The US Congress followed suit.A massive influx of war refugees shook Europe in 2015 and could do so again but still the EU cannot muster a humane collective approach. The UN’s “peace process” lacked energetic support and was sidelined by a self-interested rival effort involving Russia, Iran and Turkey. Unsurprisingly, ceasefire after ceasefire has broken down.The enormous scale of the Syrian catastrophe can be measured in other ways, for example, by the damage done to the international consensus banning chemical weapons and to humanitarian law in general. Another dreadful consequence was the reprieve it provided Sunni jihadists defeated and dispersed by the Iraq “surge”. Syria gave the Islamists a new battlefront. The result was Islamic State’s caliphate.For Britain, which joined a coalition to crush Isis – but not to stop the wider war – the blowback from its incoherent, inconsistent policy continues, in the form of raised terrorist threat levels and increasing Islamophobia. The problem of below-the-radar Islamist radicalisation, highlighted by the terrible Streatham and London Bridge attacks, is exacerbated by tensions fuelled by Syria’s war.Respect for civil liberties in Britain has also been negatively affected, as shown by the case of Shamima Begum, a naive, British-born teenager of Bangladeshi descent who travelled to Syria to join the jihadists, got married and now wants to return home. Last week, she lost the initial stage of her appeal against the Home Office’s decision to revoke her UK citizenship. As we’ve said before, the government’s treatment of British wives, children and orphans of jihadists is unfair and short-sighted. The correct approach to British citizens such as Begum, however abhorrent their views, is not to abandon our values or to junk due process. Begum should be allowed back to the UK and put on trial, if the evidence against her allows. The same approach should apply to captured fighters.Unchecked chaos in Syria has meanwhile allowed foreign state actors with no interest in stemming human suffering to exploit the situation. Russia’s behaviour is unforgivable. Like Assad, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has a case to answer for alleged war crimes. Turkey and Qatar should sever links to anti-western Islamist groups. Israel must stop using Syria as a battleground for a not-so-covert war against Iran.Past failures should not discourage an urgent new effort to avoid impending calamity in Idlib and end the war. Idlib’s doctors and medical staff are calling on António Guterres, the UN secretary general, to intervene personally. Guterres should go there – and see for himself the wreck of humanity, the ruin of a nation and the shame of a once-proud international system of laws. Topics Syria Opinion US Congress Shamima Begum United Nations editorials

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday announced a new wave of sanctions on Iran following this week’s missile strikes by the Islamic Republic on U.S. bases in Iraq. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the new sanctions will target eight senior Iranian officials involved in “destabilizing” activities in the Middle East as well as Tuesday’s missile strike, which came in retaliation for the U.S. killing of a senior Iranian general in a drone strike. Mnuchin said President Donald Trump will issue an executive order imposing sanctions on anyone involved in the Iranian textile, construction, manufacturing or mining sectors. They will also impose separate sanctions against the steel and iron sectors. “As a result of these actions we will cut off billions of dollars of support to the Iranian regime,” the treasury secretary said. The administration has already reinstated all the U.S. sanctions that were eased under the 2015 nuclear deal, which has caused significant economic hardship in Iran and cut its oil exports to historic lows. Iran this week launched the strikes in retaliation for the U.S. drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the country’s most powerful commander, in Baghdad last week. RELATED... As Iran And U.S. Take Step Back From The Brink, Canada Grieves 'No War With Iran' Protesters Demonstrate Across U.S. Ukrainian Airplane Crashes Near Tehran, Killing All 176 On Board Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

On January 3, 2020, a US airstrike outside Baghdad, Iraq, killed several Iraqi and Iranian military officials. One of them was arguably the second most important person in Iran, Qassem Soleimani. His killing set off several days of huge demonstrations throughout the Middle East and an Iranian retaliatory missile strike on a US military base in Iraq. Soleimani became an immensely powerful figure by commanding Iran’s elite Quds Force, a group of soldiers and spies tasked with spreading Iranian influence outside of its borders. They achieved this by partnering with and supporting militias throughout the Middle East. At the time of his killing, Soleimani had orchestrated a vast array of militias that stretched from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq. This episode of Vox Atlas explains why Iran created the Quds Force, how they use proxy militias, and how Soleimani took the strategy to a new level. You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. Subscribe for the latest.

With the accidental destruction of a Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet by an Iranian SA-15 missile near Tehran on Wednesday, fears of an imminent escalation of hostilities between the United States and Iran have largely subsided. Iran’s initial military response to the Jan. 3 targeted killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a leading military strategist and commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, was as limited and restrained as the targeted killing was bold and unexpected.On Jan. 8, Iranian forces fired 16 ballistic missiles at two American-run military bases in Iraq, resulting in no deaths and limited damage. Iran telegraphed the missile launch, suggesting to experts on that country’s foreign and defense policies that Tehran wished to de-escalate tensions with the United States, at least in the short run. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the strikes as a “proportionate” measure, taken in “self-defense.” And so they were. President Donald Trump, in his remarks after the missile attack, seemed to indicate a similar desire to cool things down.Nonetheless, the odds are better than good that we will see more military action than negotiation between the two nations in the not-too-distant future. But the consensus view among military analysts is that the fighting to come is not likely to take the form of conventional military operations on land, sea, and air. Rather, the violence will almost certainly remain episodic, limited in scope, asymmetrical, and carried out on the ground largely by proxy and special forces rather than regular troops.In other words, the 40-year twilight war between the two rival powers in the Middle East is likely to continue along the same lines as it has in the past. To understand why, one need only look at the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s grand strategy, and the remarkable success it has enjoyed since 9/11.Just what is “grand strategy?” Renowned British military historian B.H. Liddell-Hart defined it in the 1930s as the process by which policymakers “coordinate and direct all resources of a nation toward the attainment of the political object.” Iran’s chief “political object” has been consistent since the Islamic Revolution of 1979: It seeks to become the dominant cultural and political power in a Middle East free from the baneful influences of Western culture, secularism, and “the Great Satan,” i.e., the United States. The hardliners in Tehran see themselves as the guardians of the one true faith of Shiite Islam and believe they have a sacred obligation to rid the entire region of infidels so the True Faith—and those who espouse and defend it—may flourish. Statements by Iran’s leaders about their overarching objectives exhibit a somewhat paranoid worldview, as is often the case with authoritarian and theocratic regimes. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the military force of about 125,000 that bears responsibility for defending the faith at home and executing Iran’s military responsibility for expeditionary operations abroad, issued this remarkable description of their mission not long ago:Imperialism and global Zionism, with the help of governments and their henchmen, are everyday involved in plots against the spread and penetration of the Islamic revolution among the hearts of the people of Iran and the world... Therefore we can and must shoulder the global message of Islam. We have no recourse except the mobilization of all the faithful forces of the Islamic revolution and must, with the mobilization of forces in every region, strike fear into the hearts of our enemies so that the idea of invasion and destruction of our Islamic revolution will exit their minds. If our revolution does not have an internationalist and aggressive approach, the enemies of Islam will again enslave us culturally and politically. To achieve its regional strategic objectives, Iran has made some highly unusual strategic choices. First off, it has eschewed conventional alliances with other nation states. It has opted to forego construction of an expensive conventional military force to deal with perceived threats from its chief adversaries—the United States and its allies in the Middle East, particularly Israel and Saudi Arabia. Instead, it has invested heavily in a formidable ballistic missile program, which serves as both sword and shield for the nation. It also has developed a sophisticated, cutting-edge cyber warfare capability to disrupt its adversaries’ economies and infrastructures, and harass its critics.Iran’s most important vehicle for forwarding its regional objectives, though, and its most controversial, is a carefully cultivated network of as many as 200,000 militant foreign fighters that share its commitment to spreading the message and spirit of the Islamic Revolution, and ridding the region of Western influence. “Unlike the deterrent value of ballistic missiles and the non-kinetic options afforded by cyber warfare,” writes Afshon Ostovar, a widely published expert on Iran defense and security policy at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, “militant clients are the only tool Iran has for extending its strategic footprint and directly countering its adversaries through armed force. For that reason, they have become the centerpiece of Iranian grand strategy, and an investment Tehran is not likely to abandon.”Iran has used this weapon effectively again and again since the 1980s to achieve its ends against the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. In October 1983, Iranian-trained and -supported Hezbollah fighters blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines. President Ronald Reagan opted to withdraw U.S. peacekeeping forces from the Lebanese Civil War rather than escalate the conflict there, or attack Iran. His failure to strike back is widely believed to have emboldened Iran to expand its support for anti-Western forces and projects in the region.Iran and America have pursued directly conflicting objectives and strategies in the Middle East ever since, narrowly evading full-blown war on several occasions.““Of all the players of the wars in Iraq and Syria, Iran has arguably come out of these campaigns better placed than any other, with the possible exception of Russia.””Over the last 10 years, the client militia network has become larger, better led, and much more effective in terms of forwarding Tehran’s political and military ends. Brian Katz of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington writes that “these groups view Tehran and each other as battlefield partners, ideological allies and separate flanks in a common regional front.” Moreover, in many cases, but especially with Hezbollah in Lebanon and with a cluster of Shiite groups in Iraq, the militias have become key players in national politics, and their leaders function, in effect, as political cadres who do Tehran’s bidding.Major General Soleimani made his considerable reputation by orchestrating the campaigns of these foreign militia clients in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iraq. He has also been widely credited with helping the Assad regime in Syria—another American enemy—all but destroy rebel resistance as well. The Quds Force that he led, an elite part of the Revolutionary Guards that serves as a kind of cross between the American CIA and the Special Forces, has supported and trained fighters for the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but on a relatively small scale.The work of the Quds Force under Soleimani has only further enhanced Iran’s reputation as one of the world’s foremost practitioners of irregular, or hybrid, warfare, in which conventional military operations take a back seat to proxy war, cyber operations, and political struggle.It is clearly in Iraq that Iran’s militia clients have been most successful. According to a 2019 study by the prestigious British think tank the Institute for International Strategic Studies (IISS), within a few months of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 the Quds Force was putting in place a subtle and effective hybrid warfare campaign aimed at frustrating America’s designs for building a pro-Western, democratic Iraq. By 2011, according to the IISS study, “Iran’s influence over Baghdad’s political, security, and media architecture was significant… Soleimani played an increasingly open role in Iraq’s political process, resolving disputes among the Iranian [supported] militias, as well as seeking the election of Nouri al-Maliki as prime minister, who was considered [by Quds] to be sufficiently compliant that he would neither challenge Chia militia influence nor aggressively oppose Iran’s activities in Iraq.” In Iraq, Quds Force operatives gained invaluable experience both training and fighting with Arab militias against the Americans. Those militias were able to inflict damage on American targets without prompting a direct response against Iran.Indeed, it has to be said, but seldom is: Iran has enjoyed far more strategic success in the Middle East since the beginning of the Global War on Terror than the United States, and those gains have come at a considerably lower cost in blood and money than what the American people have borne for their troubles. As the IISS Report concludes, “Of all the players of the wars in Iraq and Syria, Iran has arguably come out of these campaigns better placed than any other, with the possible exception of Russia.”Of course, Iran has incurred significant costs for pursuing its geopolitical objectives with militant clients who often use terror as a weapon. Fears that Tehran wants to spread its revolutionary ideology have led its immediate neighbors to treat it as a pariah. Widespread international fear that Iran might use nuclear weapons as a shield for aggression led to a 2015 agreement restricting Tehran’s nuclear development program, but after President Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, it fell apart. Its status as a state that sponsors terrorism has led to the imposition of a host of stringent international economic sanctions that have prompted domestic unrest and discontent. But the domestic strain and stress that have resulted from the sanctions do not appear to endanger the survival of the current regime, and there are no signs at all that Iran is seeking to wind down the political and military operations of its many client militias. It seems that a worthy objective of America’s strategy in the days ahead would be to find ways to check their influence by convincing Tehran that it will pay a higher price in the future for supporting such operations than it has in the past. More broadly, the United States needs to improve its hybrid warfare capabilities, and the sooner the better. The twilight war is likely to be with us for a long, long time.

Brazil’s supreme court chief justice on Wednesday granted imprisoned former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva temporary leave to visit the body of his recently deceased brother.But the decision came too late for Lula to attend the funeral as his brother was already about to be buried.The former president chose to stay at the prison, a federal installation in the southern city of Curitiba, an elected congressman and fellow member of Lula’s Workers party said on Twitter.Lula’s brother, Genival Inácio da Silva, died on Tuesday from cancer. Lula’s defense filed a court request hours later asking permission for him to take part in the funeral.Lower courts rejected the request because of security worries since his presence at the funeral could attract a large crowd.Supreme court chief justice Dias Toffoli decided to allow Lula to see the body of his deceased brother and some family members, but ruled that the body should be transported to a military base, with restricted access to the public.Lula is serving a 12-year sentence for corruption. Topics Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Brazil Americas news

The internet is full of wild-eyed insinuation. Seemingly accidental events are not actually accidental. A few powerful people have hatched plots to bring about certain outcomes, usually with the goal of benefitting the shadowy string-pullers. As Karl Popper noted in Conjectures and Refutations (1963), some people tend to attribute anything they dislike to the intentional design of a few influential “others.” While conspiracy theories have long existed, the internet has accelerated their circulation (like the circulation of all information).Who believes in conspiracies, and what might these people have in common?There are, of course, differences in the plausibility of any one conspiracy theory. In a 2013 poll, every second United States citizen questioned seemed convinced that there was some larger conspiracy at work in the assassination of the president John F Kennedy in 1963, while “only” 4% endorsed the notion that “shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining power.” (Still a somewhat unnerving 12 million people.)Despite these differences, one of the most robust findings in the research on conspiracy theories is that there is a commonality to conspiracy theorists, even if the theories themselves are different. For instance, people who believe in the shape-shifting reptilian are much more likely also to doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald acted as a lone wolf. Indeed, those who believe that Osama bin Laden was dead before the Navy Seals shot him are also more likely to consider it plausible that bin Laden is still alive.This has led many researchers to conclude that the agreement with specific conspiracy theories is not so much dependent on the specific topic, but is rather the manifestation of a more general worldview. The “conspiracist ideation,” “monological belief system,” or “conspiracy mentality” can be thought of as the general extent to which people see the world as governed by hidden, sinister forces.Most blame the conspiracy mentality on a sense of profound lack of control in their lives, whether due to randomness or the machinations of others. In one study, research participants who were asked to remember instances over which they had no control, such as the weather, were more likely to accept a conspiracy theory than those who were asked to remember instances in which they do have control (e.g., what they wear or eat). In a similar vein, survey respondents who faced working conditions with reduced levels of control (e.g., long-term unemployment, temporary employment) expressed greater levels of a conspiracy mentality than those who had more control (e.g., permanent employment).The rationale behind this is that lacking control increases the need to engage in the compensatory illusion of control—that is, in conspiracy theories. Detecting patterns where there are, in fact, none at least leaves open the possibility of gaining control, whereas the attribution of, say, a natural disaster to unchangeable and uncontrollable weather dynamics does not.While there’s something to this, it isn’t the full story. This compensatory theory portrays conspiracy theorists as nothing but the poor victims of control deprivation, clinging to conspiracy as the last defence against a chaotic world. This almost stereotypical image, though, is contradicted by the often vocal, evangelising conduct of actual conspiracy theorists, their claims to superior insight, and their degradation of non-believers as ignorant sheep (German conspiracy theorists label the uninformed masses Schlafschaf, literally ‘sleepsheep’).Belief in conspiracies can serve to set oneself apart from the ignorant masses.What this observation suggests is that adopting a conspiracy belief doesn’t always have to be mere compensation for a lack of control but can be instrumental in its own way. Belief in conspiracies can serve to set oneself apart from the ignorant masses—a self-serving boast about one’s exclusive knowledge. Adherence to conspiracy theory might not always be the result of some perceived lack of control, but rather a deep-seated need for uniqueness. My research team and I tested this gut hypothesis empirically through a series of studies.In our first study, the extent to which people described themselves as needing to feel unique corresponded to some extent with their endorsement of specific conspiracy theories. What’s more, people who were generally prone to accept a conspiracy theory were more likely to believe theories that were themselves accepted only by a very few people. In other words, those with a conspiracy mentality were more likely to believe less popular theories, perhaps suggesting that the “exclusivity” of the belief is the very commodity they seek.Of course, correlation does not imply causation (even if they often occur together). Finding that people with a high need for uniqueness tend to endorse conspiracy theories could mean that their need drives them to adopt such theories in order to separate themselves from the naive masses. Or it could mean that believing in conspiracy theories increases the need to feel special and distinct, as a way to distance the self from the ignorant many. And there might be no direct link at all—perhaps people who do not care about what others think exhibit tendencies to set themselves apart from these others and disbelieve what others say. The ultimate litmus test for a causal effect in psychology is an experiment.So we invented a conspiracy theory from scratch. We asked US participants to read about an entirely fictitious debate unfolding in Germany. The installation of smoke detectors is mandatory according to German housing law (this much is true). Now here comes the fiction: Allegedly, a retired engineer had found evidence that these smoke detectors have serious side effects, emanating a ‘hypersound’ that causes nausea, gastritis, and depression. This was forcefully rejected by VdS Schadenverhütung GmbH, the largest (and invented) producer of smoke detectors. The conspiracy: VdS was in cahoots with the government and knew about the dangerous smoke detectors, but did nothing.Then we introduced the conspiracy as being believed either by a majority (81%) or a minority (19%) of the German public. Our hypothesis was that those with a higher conspiracy mentality (already correlated with a higher need for uniqueness) were more likely to endorse the conspiracy when finding out that fewer people believed in it than when they found out that many people believed it. And that’s exactly what our study showed. The new conspiracy seemed to be more attractive if it was a minority opinion. It set them apart from the masses.These findings draw a more nuanced understanding of what attracts people to conspiracy theories. Although the effects of our smoke-detector experiment were relatively small, they are consistent. In fact, an independent team from France tested the same hypothesis (without either of our teams being aware) and obtained a very similar result. Seeing evil plots at play behind virtually any world event is not only an effort to make sense of the world. It can also be gratifying in and of itself: It grants one the allure of exclusive knowledge that sets one apart from the sleeping sheep.This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons. This story is a part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.