Author Archives: News Sources

The magical realism of body counts

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad writes:

A gypsy named Melquiades who died many years ago in Singapore returned to live with the family of Colonel Aureliano Buendia in Macondo, because he could no longer bear the tedium of death. These are the kinds of characters that populate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magnificent work One Hundred Years of Solitude. Today they also seem to occupy the tribal badlands of Pakistan’s north-western frontier.

On June 3, when Ilyas Kashmiri was killed in a US drone strike, he had already been dead for over a year. In September 2009, the CIA claimed that it killed Kashmiri along with two other senior Taliban leaders in North Waziristan. But the lure of the limelight was seemingly irresistible even in death, because on October 9, Kashmiri returned to give an interview to the late Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times Online.

Baitullah Mehsud, the former commander of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also rose from the dead many times. On at least 16 occasions, Mehsud was in the gun-sights when CIA drones loosed their Hellfire missiles. Yet, until August 2009, he proved unable to settle into the afterlife. Mullah Sangeen also experienced at least two resurrections.

Death is clearly not what it used to be.

Or perhaps the people who were killed in the other attacks were not Kashmiri, Sangeen or Mehsud. Indeed, the attack on a funeral procession on June 23, 2009, which killed Sangeen was supposedly aimed at the TTP chief. It killed 83 people who certainly were not who they were supposed to be.

These are not isolated events. At the end of 2009, the Pakistani daily Dawn calculated that, of the 708 people killed in 44 drone attacks that year, only 5 were known militants. Earlier that year, The News, Pakistan’s other major English-language daily, had calculated that between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, 60 drone attacks killed 701 people – of whom only 14 were known militants.

The US has come a long way since July 2001 when it rebuked the Israeli government for its policy of “targeted assassination”, which it said were really “extrajudicial killings”. In September of that year, CIA director George Tenet confessed that it would be a “terrible mistake” for someone in his position to fire a weapon such as the predator drone. By 2009, such qualms were obsolete. Indeed, the new CIA director Leon Panetta declared predator drones “the only game in town”. The catalyst was 9/11 – and lifting the ban on extrajudicial killings was just one of the many illegal policies it licensed.

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Syrian troops target villagers near Turkish border

The Guardian reports:

Syrian troops have moved closer to the Turkish border as they sweep through villages north of Jisr al-Shughour, rounding up hundreds of people they claim are linked to armed gangs.

Turkey was on Monday assembling a fifth refugee camp in its southern border towns, but with the number of Syrians who have crossed the boundary topping 7,000, these camps may not be sufficient to deal with the fast-increasing number of people in need of help.

“There are 7,000 people across the border, more and more women and children are coming towards the barbed wires,” said Abu Ali, one of those who left Jisr al-Shughour. “Jisr is finished, it is razed,” he told Associated Press.

Time reports:

The Syrian colonel sat cross-legged on a patch of moist soil, in a borrowed plaid shirt and pale green trousers, surrounded by dozens of men who had fled from the besieged northern Syrian city of Jisr al-Shughour to an orchard a few hundred meters from the Turkish border. He says his name is Hussein Harmoush, and shows TIME a laminated military ID card indicating that and his title. Everyone around calls him moqadam, the Arabic for his rank. A colonel with the 11th Armored Division of the army’s 3rd Corps, the 22-year military veteran said he burnt his uniform in disgust more than a week ago, starting with the rank designated on his epaulettes, and then the rest of it.

“I defected from the Syrian Arab army and took responsibility for protecting civilians in Jisr al-Shughour,” he says. “I was late in taking this decision.” His lower lip quivers. He struggles to maintain his composure. After a long pause, and several deep breathes, the man with the thinning salt-and-pepper hair resumes: “I feel like I am responsible for the deaths of every single martyr in Syria.”

There have been growing reports of Syrian military defections in recent weeks, after regime loyalists escalated their attacks in the northwest of the country. On June 5, units of the army reportedly defected en masse in Jisr al-Shughour, and used their weapons to defend unarmed protesters. Some 120 security personnel were killed in the mutinous clashes with loyalists, according to residents and rights activists, although Damascus denies a mutiny and says the deaths were at the hands of “armed gangs” wearing stolen military uniforms.

Although foreign journalists are banned from reporting in Syria, TIME managed to get across the Turkish border along steep mountainous terrain to reach thousands of refugees, most from Jisr al-Shughour, staying in open fields and orchards on the outskirts of the Syrian town of Khirbet al-Jouz.

Harmoush, a native of the Syrian city of Homs, some 160 kilometers from the capital Damascus, says his orders were clear. His division was told to leave its base in Homs and “sweep the towns,” starting at al-Serminiyye and continuing five kilometers north to Jisr al-Shughour. “We were told that we were doing this to capture armed gangs, but I didn’t see any. I saw soldiers indiscriminately shooting people like they were hunting, burning their fields, cutting down their olive trees. There was no resistance in the towns. I saw people fleeing on foot to the hills who were shot in the back.”

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Erdogan pledges ‘constitution by consensus’

Al Jazeera reports:

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s re-elected prime minister, has pledged to build a new constitution for the country by consensus after winning a third straight term in parliamentary elections.
Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won nearly 50 per cent of the vote on Sunday, but came up just short of its target of 330 seats in the new parliament, which would have enabled it to draft a new constitution without consulting other parties.

In a victory speech before thousands of flag-waving supporters in the capital, Ankara, Erdogan pledged “humility” and said he would work with rivals.

“People gave us a message to build the new constitution through consensus and negotiation,” he said.

“We will discuss the new constitution with opposition parties. This new constitution will meet peace and justice demands.”

Erdogan put his plans for constitutional change at the heart of his party’s election campaign, arguing that a new one was needed to make Turkey more democratic and to enhance individual freedoms, replacing a document drafted under martial law in 1982.

Ibrahim Kalin writes:

The June 12 election, which gave the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) 50 per cent of the votes and a clear majority in the parliament, is a victory not only for Prime Minister Erdogan but also for Turkish democracy. With a new mandate to govern for another term, the AKP will now seek a broad consensus to write a new constitution and find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue.

Since the start of multi-party politics in 1946, no political party in Turkey has been able to rule for three consecutive terms while increasing its votes. The AKP came to power at the end of 2002 and has since then implemented numerous political and judicial reforms, boosted the Turkish economy, and expanded foreign policy. The results from Sunday’s elections show that the vast majority of the Turkish public approve of this model of development that has been spearheaded by Prime Minister Erdogan.

The opposition parties too have made some gains. The main opposition party, the People’s Republican Party (CHP), known for its radical secularism and pro-establishment stance, ran an issue-based campaign and increased its seats in the parliament. Contrary to expectations, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) passed the 10 per cent threshold but lost seats. The pro-Kurdish coalition group, known for its ties to the outlawed Kurdish terrorist group PKK, ran with independents and won 36 seats. Other smaller parties have fallen by the wayside.

Given decades of military coups and anti-democratic practices, this election once more proves the strength of Turkish democracy. The AKP’s success comes mainly from its ability to maintain a balance between democratization and reforms on the one hand, and nation-wide services and steady economic development on the other. Markets have already responded positively to the election results, and the strength of Turkish economy is expected to continue.

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FBI agents get leeway to push privacy bounds

The New York Times reports:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

“Claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse,” Mr. German said, pointing to complaints about the bureau’s surveillance of domestic political advocacy groups and mosques and to an inspector general’s findings in 2007 that the F.B.I. had frequently misused “national security letters,” which allow agents to obtain information like phone records without a court order.

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Gaza’s hospital stock running on near empty

Al Jazeera reports:

Human rights groups in Gaza are urgently requesting that international aid groups and donor groups to intervene and deliver urgent medical aid to Palestinian hospitals in Gaza. Palestinian officials say that Gaza’s medicinal stock is nearly empty and is in crisis. This affects first aid care, in addition to all other levels of medical procedures.

Adham Abu Salmia, Gaza’s Ambulance and Emergency spokesman, says the medical crisis is acute and near catastrophic levels for patients within the health sector of Gaza. If shipment of medicines are not replenished to Gaza stocks in the coming weeks, he says it will worsen.

Dr Basim Naim, the minister of health in the de facto government of Gaza, says 178 types of necessary medications are at near zero balance in stock. He says more than 190 types of medicine in stock are either expired or are close to their expiry date, which has forced his administration to postpone several medical operations.

According to Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the shortage in stock represents 50 per cent of the total medicine on the inventory of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza.

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Gadhafi insider defects

The Associated Press reports:

Another member of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime has defected and fled the country, two Libyan analysts in London said Monday, as fighting continued between government troops and rebel forces.

Sassi Garada, one of the first men to join Gadhafi when he took power more than 40 years ago, left Libya through Tunisia, according to Noman Benotman, a Libyan analyst in London who was in contact with his friends and family. Guma el-Gamaty, U.K. organizer for Libya’s interim council, also confirmed the defection.

There were initial reports that Garada fled to Britain, where he has several family members, but Benotman said Garada was in Switzerland.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports:

Germany, which declined to participate in the NATO air campaign against Libya, on Monday recognized the opposition National Transitional Council as the legitimate representative of Libya, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said during a visit to the rebel capital of Benghazi.

The announcement by Mr. Westerwelle comes after weeks of hesitation by Germany over which rebel leaders or movements, if any, it would recognize as an alternative to the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

“The Transitional Council is the legitimate representation of the Libyan people,” Mr. Westerwelle said after arriving in Benghazi. “With this council, we want to support the building of a democratic and law-abiding Libya.”

Germany will open a small mission in Benghazi, joining the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, Britain, France, Spain, Malta and Qatar, which have established a presence there in the past several weeks. Washington, however, has not extended diplomatic recognition to the council.

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The fall of the house of Assad

Robin Yassin-Kassab writes:

“Selmiyyeh, selmiyyeh” — “peaceful, peaceful” — was one of the Tunisian revolution’s most contagious slogans. It was chanted in Egypt, where in some remarkable cases protesters defused state violence simply by telling policemen to calm down and not be scared. In both countries, largely nonviolent demonstrations and strikes succeeded in splitting the military high command from the ruling family and its cronies, and civil war was avoided. In both countries, state institutions proved themselves stronger than the regimes that had hijacked them. Although protesters unashamedly fought back (with rocks, not guns) when attacked, the success of their largely peaceful mass movements seemed an Arab vindication of Gandhian nonviolent resistance strategies. But then came the much more difficult uprisings in Bahrain, Libya, and Syria.

Even after at least 1,300 deaths and more than 10,000 detentions, according to human rights groups, “selmiyyeh” still resounds on Syrian streets. It’s obvious why protest organizers want to keep it that way. Controlling the big guns and fielding the best-trained fighters, the regime would emerge victorious from any pitched battle. Oppositional violence, moreover, would alienate those constituencies the uprising is working so hard to win over: the upper-middle class, religious minorities, the stability-firsters. It would push the uprising off the moral high ground and thereby relieve international pressure against the regime. It would also serve regime propaganda, which against all evidence portrays the unarmed protesters as highly organized groups of armed infiltrators and Salafi terrorists.

The regime is exaggerating the numbers, but soldiers are undoubtedly being killed. Firm evidence is lost in the fog, but there are reliable and consistent reports, backed by YouTube videos, of mutinous soldiers being shot by security forces. Defecting soldiers have reported mukhabarat lined up behind them as they fire on civilians, watching for any soldier’s disobedience. A tank battle and aerial bombardment were reported after a small-scale mutiny in the Homs region. Tensions within the military are expanding.

And a small minority of protesters does now seem to be taking up arms. Syrians — regime supporters and the apolitical as much as anyone else — have been furiously buying smuggled weapons since the crisis began. Last week for the first time, anti-regime activists reported that people in Rastan and Talbiseh were meeting tanks with rocket-propelled grenades. Some of the conflicting reports from Jisr al-Shaghour, the besieged town near the northwestern border with Turkey, describe a gun battle between townsmen and the army. And a mukhabarat man was lynched by a grieving crowd in Hama.

The turn toward violence is inadvisable but perhaps inevitable. When residential areas are subjected to military attack, when children are tortured to death, when young men are randomly rounded up and beaten, electrocuted, and humiliated, some Syrians will seek to defend themselves. Violence has its own momentum, and Syria appears to be slipping toward war.

Meanwhile, CBS News reports:

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday called for increased U.S. action in Syria, and said “now is the time to let [Syrian president Bashar] Assad know that all options are the table” – including the possible use of military force.

Graham, in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” decried what he described as the Assad regime’s “wholesale slaughter” against the Syrian people, and urged the U.S. to take a similar approach in that nation as it has in Libya in seeking the ouster of Muammar Qaddafi.

It’s time, Graham contended, to “get the regional partners to tell the Assad he has to go. And put everything on the table – including military force.”

“If we don’t turn this dynamic around, the Red Cross can’t go into Syria,” he continued. “It’s wholesale slaughter. We’re about to get Qaddafi going. We need to turn our attention strongly to Syria with the regional cooperation like we have in Libya.”

Regional cooperation for a US intervention in Syria? He must be joking! There would be opposition from Turkey, Iraq, Iran and even Israel. Maybe Graham thinks his proposal would get Kurdish support.

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Syrian lesbian blogger is revealed to be an American married man

The Guardian reports:

The mysterious identity of a young Arab lesbian blogger who was apparently kidnapped last week in Syria has been revealed conclusively to be a hoax. The blogs were written by not by a gay girl in Damascus, but a middle-aged American man based in Scotland.

Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old Middle East activist studying for a masters at Edinburgh University, posted an update declaring that, rather than a 35-year-old feminist and lesbian called Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari, he was “the sole author of all posts on this blog”.

“I never expected this level of attention,” he wrote in a posting allegedly emanating from “Istanbul, Turkey”.

“The events [in the Middle East] are being shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.”

The admission – confirmed in an email to the Guardian from MacMaster’s wife – apparently ends a mystery that has convulsed parts of the internet for almost a week. But it provoked a furious response from those who had supported the blogger’s campaign, with some in the Syrian gay community saying he had risked their safety and seriously harmed their cause.

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Bahrain doctors go on trial, alleging torture to extract confessions

CNN reports:

Dozens of doctors and nurses went on trial Monday in Bahrain, accused of taking control of a hospital during anti-government protests, storing weapons and keeping people prisoner.

The doctors, their lawyers and international human rights activists say the defendants were tortured to extract confessions against a background of demonstrations in the kingdom.

Eleven male doctors appeared in court Monday, their heads shaven, alongside at least five female doctors. They appeared stressed and anxious.

One of the doctors tried to tell the judge that his confession had been extracted under torture, but the judge told him to stop and that he would be able to give evidence later in the trial.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports:

A 20-year-old woman who recited poems critical of Bahrain’s rulers — and later claimed she was beaten in jail — was sentenced Sunday to a year in prison as part of the kingdom’s crackdown on Shiite protesters calling for greater rights.

The ruling by a special security tribunal sent a strong message that Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy is not easing off on punishments linked to the unrest despite appeals for talks with Shiite groups in the strategic Gulf island nation, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

Ayat al-Qurmezi became a minor celebrity among protesters after reciting poems critical of Bahrain’s king and prime minister during gatherings in the capital’s Pearl Square, which was the hub for Shiite-led demonstrations that broke out in February after drawing inspiration from the Arab uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

One verse, addressed to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, included the lines: “We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery. Don’t you hear their cries? Don’t you hear their screams?”

She was convicted of anti-state charges, including inciting hatred, said the official Bahrain News Agency. Her mother, Sada al-Qurmezi, said an appeal is planned.

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Jordanians ‘welcome’ King Abdullah by pelting his car with rocks and bottles

BBC News reports:

A group of young men in the Jordanian city of Tafileh have pelted the motorcade of King Abdullah II with stones and bottles, officials say.

The king is unharmed, they add.

The attack comes a day after King Abdullah announced major reforms, promising to relinquish his right to appoint prime ministers and cabinets.

The Jordanian government spokesman later denied that such an attack had taken place.

“The motorcade of his majesty the king was not attacked,” Taher Adwan told Agence France Presse.

A Royal Palace official who accompanied the king said that he had been enthusiastically greeted, not attacked.

“It was a gesture of welcome, not an attack,” he said, according to AP.

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How new is Egypt’s ‘new’ foreign policy?

Barak Barfi writes:

In the months since Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, his successors have signaled a shift in foreign policy by reaching out to former adversaries. Egypt’s government has welcomed Iranian diplomats and embraced the Palestinian group Hamas. Many interpret such moves as clear evidence of Egypt’s desire for a diplomacy that is not subordinate to American interests.

But Mubarak never entirely fit his detractors’ portrayal of him as an American lackey. In fact, Mubarak’s need to please his Saudi Arabian benefactors, not the United States, was paramount in his thinking. Although he sometimes supported American policies, Mubarak frequently rebuffed the US when its positions did not align with his own.

Since the end of the October 1973 war, Arab-Israeli peace has been a cornerstone of America’s Middle East agenda. The US often looked to Egypt, the most important and influential Arab country, to play a leading role in promoting this goal. And, when it suited him, Mubarak played his part. When the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat humiliated Mubarak before the US secretary of state and the international media by refusing to sign an annex to an Israeli-Palestinian accord brokered in Cairo, Mubarak told him, “Sign it, you son of a dog!”

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Hamas rejects Fatah nominee for PM

BBC News reports:

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has rejected its rival Fatah’s nomination of Salam Fayyad as prime minister in a transitional government.

The decision came hours after Fatah agreed to back Mr Fayyad, who currently heads the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank.

Delegates from the two factions are due to meet on Tuesday in Cairo to agree the make-up of the new government.

Fatah and Hamas signed a deal in May ending their four-year split.

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NSA case unlikely to deter Obama’s take on leakers

The Associated Press reports:

Criminal defendants of all stripes in national security cases, including Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North in the Iran-Contra affair and al-Qaida terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, have long sought to work government secrets into their defense.

The hope is the prosecutors will skip a trial rather than expose sensitive information in court.

This strategy worked perfectly in the just concluded leak case against a former National Security Agency official, Thomas Drake. But civil libertarians doubt the setback for prosecutors will halt the Obama administration’s vigorous legal attack on leakers, and the government shows no signs of backing off other cases.

After all, the strategy of threatening to expose secrets at trial to ward off charges has a decidedly mixed history for national security defendants. The practice is known as graymailing the government.

Drake pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in Baltimore to a single misdemeanor charge in a deal with prosecutors that avoided a trial in the case accusing Drake of passing classified material to a Baltimore Sun reporter.

Drake had faced up to 35 years in prison had he gone to trial and been convicted. The lesser charge carries a penalty of up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Drake’s defense was that he was a whistleblower exposing waste in an NSA program called TrailBlazer. That ill-fated effort was to have overhauled the agency’s vast computer systems to capture and screen information flooding into the agency from the Internet and cell phones. Begun in 2002, the project eventually cost $1.2 billion, but never worked as intended and was scrapped in 2006.

For more on the case, read Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article, “The Secret Sharer.”

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AIPAC from the inside — Part 2: wrangling over regime change

Robert Dreyfuss writes:

With the election of George W. Bush, the events of 9/11, and the invasion of Iraq, Iran became front and center for Weissman at AIPAC. “Iran came back in a big way after the invasion of Iraq, because you had all these guys running around saying, ‘Next stop Tehran!’ and all that,” says Weissman. Many within AIPAC, and some of Israel’s top Iran-watchers, wanted to push hard for Iraq-style regime change in Iran, too, beginning with overt and covert support for dissidents, minority groups, and exile militia such as the Mojahedin-e Khalgh (MKO).

“You should see the people who crawled out of the woodwork to talk to me! I talked to monarchists, to socialists, to communists, everybody. And they all wanted AIPAC to support regime change,” remembers Weissman. “Israel was also trying to unduly influence the United States, too. They were sending a lot of Iranian exiles to the United States from Europe to give talks, purporting to be Iranian leaders. A lot of times, I remember, when I went to Israel Uri Lubrani would take me to meet these people who were stashed in various hotels all over Tel Aviv and he would always make me switch cabs on the way, that kind of thing! This culture of regime change was very strong, very powerful, inside elements in Israel, and the Pentagon, the neoconservatives, a lot of pundits here.”

But Weissman says that AIPAC and other organized Jewish groups in the United States avoided direct calls for regime change, and he takes credit for restraining AIPAC in that regard. “A Jewish organization would not so much get up and say, ‘We want regime change.’ They might say, ‘We need to contain Iran,'” says Weissman.

“[Support for regime change] was the personal opinion of many people in AIPAC, but it never uttered the words ‘regime change.’ And I think my efforts were part of the reason why they never did,” he says, adding: “How would it look anyway? This is what makes it so stupid! The American Jewish community choosing the next government of Iran? Helping to change the next government of Iran? How can that government have any legitimacy? It’s completely ridiculous. And I think the arguments that I raised against it convinced AIPAC, no matter what they personally thought, they realized that what I was saying was right.”

It was at this time that the AIPAC-Franklin espionage controversy erupted. What happened and why? Perhaps the full story of the Rosen-Weissman case, Franklin’s involvement, and what role was played by AIPAC and by Israel will never be known. So far, it’s never been proven that either of the two AIPAC officials either received or passed on any classified documents, either to Israeli intelligence or anyone else. According to Weissman, they merely engaged in what every Washington insider does, namely, meeting with and sharing gossip with U.S. officials, embassy officials, and journalists. Franklin, the Pentagon Iran analyst, never gave Rosen or Weissman any actual documents, Weissman says, though he did try to get the support of AIPAC and a handful of neoconservative outsiders for the Pentagon’s battle with the State Department over policy toward Iran. [Continue reading…]

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