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- Trump 2024 campaign attorney Christina Bobb, and, uh…
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Fresh chaos erupted in the Middle East on Wednesday with a deadly terrorist attack in Iran.
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More than 100 people were killed in two explosions on Wednesday at a ceremony in the city of Kerman to commemorate the death of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by an American drone strike in 2020. Over 200 more were wounded, according to Iranian officials, who blamed unspecified “terrorists.”
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Many Iranians were outraged that domestic authorities had failed to provide adequate security for the event, which was attended by thousands. Some government officials pointed fingers at Israel and the United States, as both countries have long been cast as enemies to Tehran. But international intelligence analysts said the attack had featured typical calling cards of terrorist groups, not Israel.
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No one has yet claimed responsibility for the blasts, but a senior Biden administration official said that they appeared to represent the kind of attack carried out in the past by Islamic State militants. The country’s top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, vowed revenge, and said that those responsible “must know that they will be strongly dealt with…and undoubtedly there will be a harsh response.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the attack as a “heinous and inhumane crime,” in remarks that were even more pointed than those of the Ayatollah, saying, “We tell the criminal America and Zionist regime that you will pay a very high price for the crimes that you have committed and you will regret it.” Yowza!
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It’s important to place Wednesday’s explosions within the context of the controversial life of the late Major General Soleimani himself.
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Major General Soleimani was the most powerful commander in Iran, and head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, which specialized in unconventional warfare abroad. Some in Iran and across the Middle East considered him a hero for building an axis of allied militias to defend Iran’s interest in the region as a counter to the United States and Israel. He was also credited for helping to defeat the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. He joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in his early 20s after the 1979 Iranian Revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah.
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In the United States, Soleimani was designated as a terrorist and regarded as a force behind international terrorism campaigns. Disgraced former president Donald Trump said in 2020 that his killing was ordered “to stop a war” because he alleged that the general had been plotting attacks on American diplomats and military personnel. Trump made the call without Congressional authorization.
Following Wednesday’s attacks, Iran declared a national day of mourning for Thursday. Emergency response officials called for blood donations.
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Conservative activists were in celebration mode following the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay on Tuesday, in the midst of plagiarism accusations and a scandal over her remarks in Congressional testimony last month about antisemitism on campus. Gay was the second woman and the first Black person to ever hold the post, and her tenure lasted just six months. In early December, Gay and former University of Pennsylvania President, Liz Magill, came under fire for giving evasive answers when conservative Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) posed the intentionally-inflammatory and misleading question of whether or not “calling for the genocide of Jews” would violate their schools’ codes of conduct (there have been no reported instances of such language being used by campus protesters). Although both issued statements later saying they should have clearly condemned speech like that, conservatives seized on scrutiny of Gay’s academic writing, after which Harvard said an “independent review” found instances when Gay failed to provide adequate citations. After both Magill and Gay resigned, Stefanik, who went to Harvard, crowed on social media: “Two down.” And Stefanik was hardly alone. Other conservatives saw Gay’s resignation as a key victory in their spiraling battle over higher education.
Gay’s supporters argued conservatives will now be encouraged to stage attacks on academic freedom. “This is a terrible moment,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told The New York Times. “Republican congressional leaders have declared war on the independence of colleges and universities, just as Governor DeSantis has done in Florida. They will only be emboldened by Gay’s resignation.” And let’s face it: Stefanik’s triumphant “two down” remark gives the game away (as if we needed a hint). This was never really about antisemitism or plagiarism (paging Justice Neil Gorsuch!) any more than the fight against affirmative action was ever about “fairness.” It was a coordinated right-wing assault on their constantly-invoked boogeyman: “wokeness in higher education." It's a mass-scale fight against any attempt to allow people of marginalized identity groups greater access to, and potentially influence over, the nation’s most prestigious institutions, which conservatives would rather see go back to being run by White men who got where they are the old-fashioned way: nepotism.
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The deputy leader of the terrorist group Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in Beirut on Tuesday. Al-Arouri was said to be one of the group’s most skilled tacticians, but as of Wednesday it remains unclear what his death will mean for the fate of the organization, which has been able to successfully rebuild itself again and again after the assassination of countless Hamas leaders. Lebanon and the United States have ascribed the attack that killed al-Arouri to Israel, but the nation’s leaders have not taken responsibility for it. The head of Lebanese militant group and Hamas ally Hezbollah said on Wednesday that it “cannot be silent” following the killing in Beirut, and warned that its forces would engage in the war “to the end” should Israel choose to extend the war from Gaza to Lebanon. Israel and Lebanon last faced off in a major war in 2006, ending in a defacto stalemate.
The killing in Lebanon appeared to mark a shift in Israel’s strategy, after months of a full-scale assault on Gaza that has left over 20,000 dead. Now, Israel appears to be making good on its pledge to target Hamas leaders “wherever they are.” And the news follows the sale of fresh supplies to Israel that will help the country continue fighting. On December 29, the Biden administration sidestepped Congress for the second time that month to provide another emergency arms sale to Israel, to the tune of $147.5 million in equipment. Earlier in the month, Israel purchased nearly 14,000 rounds of 155 mm shells from the United States. A spokesperson for the State Department justified the decision because of “the urgency of Israel’s defensive needs.”
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