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@ISIDEWITH submitted…3wks3W
Donald Trump’s new administration will revive its “maximum pressure” policy to “bankrupt” Iran’s ability to fund regional proxies and develop nuclear weapons, according to people familiar with the transition.Trump’s foreign policy team will seek to ratchet up sanctions on Tehran, including vital oil exports, as soon as the president-elect re-enters the White House in January, people familiar with the transition said.“He’s determined to reinstitute a maximum pressure strategy to bankrupt Iran as soon as possible,” said a national security expert familiar with the Trump transition. The plan will mark a shift in US foreign policy at a time of turmoil in the Middle East after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack triggered a wave of regional hostilities and thrust Israel’s shadow war with Iran into the open.Trump signalled during his election campaign that he wants a deal with Iran. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal,” he said in September.People familiar with Trump’s thinking said the maximum pressure tactic would be used to try to force Iran into talks with the US — although experts believe this is a long shot. The president-elect mounted a campaign of “maximum pressure” in his first term after abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal Iran signed with world powers, and imposing hundreds of sanctions on the Islamic republic.In response, Tehran ramped up its nuclear activity and it is enriching uranium close to weapons-grade level.The sanctions remained in place during the Biden administration, but analysts say it did not implement them as strictly as it sought to revive the nuclear accord with Iran and ease the crisis.Iran’s crude oil exports have more than trebled in the past four years, from a low of 400,000 barrels a day in 2020 to more than 1.5mn b/d so far in 2024, with nearly all shipments going to China, according to the US Energy Information Agency.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…1wk1W
Many factors fed into Benjamin Netanyahu’s eventual decision to take up a US-brokered ceasefire and stop Israel’s offensive in Lebanon. His war aims against Hizbollah were also always more modest than the “total victory” he has sought against Hamas in Gaza.But in confronting the many domestic critics of the deal — including far-right government ministers, northern Israeli mayors and opposition figures — Netanyahu calculated that his goals had been largely met, while the risks of pushing on were mounting.“Hizbollah is not Hamas. We cannot totally destroy it. It was not on the cards,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu who now works at Washington think-tank Jinsa. “Lebanon is too big. Hizbollah is too strong.”This ceasefire deal “is not the dream that many Israelis had”, he said. But Amidror highlighted Israel’s dwindling munition stockpiles and the “pressure” on military reservists who had been fighting for months. “Israel cannot afford another year of war” at its current scale in the north, he said.Israeli officials consistently said their goal was the safe return to their homes of the tens of thousands of northern residents evacuated after Hizbollah began firing on Israel following Hamas’s October 7 attack last year.Officials said this would require pushing Hizbollah fighters back from the Israel-Lebanon frontier and changing the “security reality” along the border.After months of relatively limited exchanges of cross-border fire with Hizbollah, Israel escalated in September, setting off thousands of explosive pagers and walkie-talkies in an audacious covert operation, launching waves of air strikes across Lebanon, and initiating a punishing land invasion of its northern neighbour for the first time in almost two decades.In the span of a few weeks, most of Hizbollah’s leaders, including chief Hassan Nasrallah, were killed, and much of the group’s vast missile and rocket arsenal was destroyed. Israeli warplanes struck Beirut at will, and ground troops ranged across southern Lebanon.
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President-elect Trump announced on Tuesday that he will nominate Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator in January."America is facing a Healthcare Crisis, and there may be no Physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to Make America Healthy Again," Trump said in a statement. "He is an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades.""Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake," the statement added. "Our broken Healthcare System harms everyday Americans, and crushes our Country’s budget."
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…5 days5D
Mexican immigration authorities have broken up two small migrant caravans headed to the U.S. border, activists said Saturday.Some migrants were bused to cities in southern Mexico, and others were offered transit papers.The action comes a week after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump threatened to slap 25% tariffs on Mexican products unless the country does more to stem the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.On Wednesday, Trump wrote that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had agreed to stop unauthorized migration across the border into the United States. Sheinbaum wrote on her social media accounts the same day that “migrants and caravans are taken care of before they reach the border.”Migrant rights activist Luis García Villagrán said the breaking-up of the two caravans appeared to be part of “an agreement between the president of Mexico and the president of the United States.”The first of the caravans started out from the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, on Nov. 5, the day Trump was elected. At its height it had about 2,500 people. In almost four weeks of walking, it had gone about 270 miles (430 kilometers) to Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca.In Tehuantepec, Mexican immigration officials offered the tired migrants free bus rides to other cities in southern or central Mexico.“They took some of us to Acapulco, others to Morelia, and others from our group to Oaxaca city,” said Bárbara Rodríguez, an opposition supporter who left her native Venezuela after that country's contested presidential elections earlier this year.Rodríguez said by telephone she later caught a bus on her own to Mexico City.In a statement Saturday, the National Immigration Institute said the migrants voluntary accepted bus rides “to various areas where there is medical assistance and where their migratory status will be reviewed,” and said “upon accepting (the rides), they said they no longer wanted to face the risks along their way.”
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2wks2W
Israel approved a cease-fire with Lebanon that is intended to bring a halt to more than a year of fighting with the Hezbollah militia and could help defuse a broader regional crisis that has threatened to ensnare the U.S. and other world powers.“I have some good news to report from the Middle East,” President Biden said on Tuesday, announcing a cease-fire that he said would begin at 4 a.m. local time on Wednesday.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed the agreement earlier in the day, saying it would let Israel focus on the threat from Iran, allow the Israeli military to rest and rearm, and isolate Hamas.“The continuation of the cease-fire will be dependent on what happens in Lebanon. We will enforce the agreement and respond forcefully to every violation,” Netanyahu said.Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, welcomed the agreement, saying it would bring “calm and stability in Lebanon and the return of the displaced to their homes and cities.”The Lebanese cabinet is expected to meet on Wednesday to approve steps to enforce the cease-fire, including sending government security forces to areas of southern Lebanon near the border with Israel.Hezbollah has indicated openness to a deal in recent days. “What concerns us are Lebanese national measures and the protection of sovereignty,” Hassan Fadlallah, a member of Parliament affiliated with the group, told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.The announcements came after a day of heavy bombardment of Beirut while Israeli ground forces advanced deeper into Lebanese territory. Minutes after Biden spoke, a series of explosions thundered in Beirut. Northern Israel also came under renewed rocket fire.There was no immediate public comment from Hezbollah on the announced cease-fire.If implemented, the agreement would be a diplomatic success for Biden in the twilight of his administration, after more than a year in which the White House has tried to fend off the possibility of a wider regional war. It could also change the landscape that President-elect Donald Trump will face when he takes office in January.