Day: January 8, 2020

Iran’s missile attack on two American bases in Iraq in response the the U.S. strike that killed its top general is the culmination of nearly two years of steadily rising tensions since President Donald Trump withdrew from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The two countries are now engaged in their most serious confrontation since the 1979 Islamic revolution and takeover of the U.S. Embassy. Both sides have signaled restraint following the missile attack, but the threat of an all-out war remains.

A timeline of the main events leading up to this week’s hostilities:

-May 8, 2018: Trump announces that the U.S. is withdrawing from the nuclear deal signed by his predecessor, President Barack Obama, which had provided sanctions relief in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and stepped-up U.N. monitoring. Over the next several months, the U.S. ratchets up sanctions, exacerbating an economic crisis in Iran.

-Nov. 5, 2018: U.S. imposes tough sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, the lifeline of its economy, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announces a list of 12 demands it must meet for sanctions relief. Iran rejects the wide-ranging demands, which include ending its support for armed groups in the region, withdrawing from the Syrian civil war and halting its ballistic missile program.

-May 5, 2019: The U.S. announces the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force in response to “a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings,” without providing details. It threatens “unrelenting force” in response to any attack.

-May 8, 2019: Iran vows to enrich its uranium stockpile closer to weapons-grade levels if world powers fail to negotiate new terms for its nuclear deal. The European Union urges Iran to respect the nuclear deal and says it plans to continue trading with the country. Trump says he would like Iran’s leaders to “call me.”

-May 12, 2019: The United Arab Emirates says four commercial ships off its eastern coast “were subjected to sabotage operations.”. Trump warns that if Tehran does “anything” in the form of an attack, “they will suffer greatly.”

-June 13, 2019: Two oil tankers near the strategic Strait of Hormuz are hit in an alleged assault that leaves one ablaze and adrift as 44 sailors are evacuated from both vessels and the U.S. Navy rushes to assist. America later blames Iran for the attack, something Tehran denies.

-June 20, 2019: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shoots down a U.S. military surveillance drone. Trump says he called off a planned retaliatory strike on Iran over concerns about casualties.

-July 1, 2019: Iran follows through on a threat to exceed the limit set by the nuclear deal on its stockpile of low-enriched uranium, which is used for civilian applications and not for nuclear weapons.

-Sept. 14, 2019: A drone attack on Saudi oil facilities temporarily cuts off half the oil supplies of the world’s largest producer, causing a spike in prices. The U.S. says Iran carried out the attack directly, calling it an “act of war” against Saudi Arabia. Iran denies involvement, while the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen claim responsibility.

-October 2019: Massive anti-government protests erupt in Lebanon and Iraq. While the protests are primarily driven by economic grievances, they target governments that are closely allied to Iran. In Iraq, protesters openly decry Tehran’s influence and attack Iranian diplomatic facilities.

-November 2019: Protests break out in some 100 cities and towns in Iran after authorities raise the price of gasoline. The scale of the protests and the resulting crackdown are hard to determine as authorities shut down the internet for several days. Amnesty International later estimates that more than 300 people were killed.

-Dec. 27, 2019: A U.S. contractor is killed and several American and Iraqi troops are wounded in a rocket attack on a base in northern Iraq. The U.S. blames the attack on Kataeb Hezbollah, one of several Iran-backed militias operating in Iraq.

-Dec. 29, 2019: U.S. airstrikes hit Kataeb Hezbollah positions in Iraq and Syria, killing at least 25 fighters and bringing vows of revenge. Iraq calls the strikes a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty.

-Dec. 31, 2019: Hundreds of Iran-backed militiamen and their supporters barge through an outer barrier of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and hold two days of violent protests in which they smash windows, set fires and hurl rocks over the inner walls. U.S. Marines guarding the facility respond with tear gas. There are no casualties on either side.

-Jan. 3: A U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s international airport kills Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the mastermind of its regional military interventions. A senior commander of Iran-backed militias in Iraq is also killed in the strike. Iran vows “harsh retaliation.” Trump says he ordered the targeted killing to prevent a major attack. Congressional leaders and close U.S. allies say they were not consulted on the strike, which many fear could ignite a war.

-Jan. 5: Iran announces it will no longer abide by the nuclear deal and Iraq’s parliament holds a non-binding vote calling for the expulsion of all U.S. forces. Some 5,200 American troops are based in Iraq to help prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State group. Trump vows to impose sanctions on Iraq if it expels U.S. troops.

-Jan. 8: Iran launches several ballistic missiles on two bases in Iraq housing American troops in what it says is retaliation for the killing of Soleimani. There are no immediate reports of U.S. or Iraqi casualties. Trump tweets that “All is well!” and says he will deliver a statement Wednesday. Iran’s supreme leader says “we slapped them on the face” but that “military action is not enough.”

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Two Afghan pilots died in a military helicopter crash in Farah province in western Afghanistan Wednesday.

The Ministry of Defense (MoD) said the MI 35 gunship was on its way from the provincial capital to the Pur Chaman district in the east of the province.

MoD is citing technical reasons for the crash that occurred around 11 in the morning.

The ministry issued a statement saying more details would be shared after an investigation.

Last October another army helicopter had crashed in Farah killing 20 people including passengers and crew.

The Taliban had claimed downing the chopper but the government blamed it on bad weather.

Several members of the provincial council and a military commander had died in that crash.

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Many Puerto Ricans woke up on Wednesday to a second day without electricity after the island’s worst earthquake in over a century knocked out its biggest power plant, collapsed homes and killed at least one person.

Puerto Rico’s schools were closed on Wednesday and all public employees except police and health workers stayed home as engineers checked the safety of buildings after Tuesday’s 6.4 magnitude quake and powerful aftershocks.

Some Puerto Ricans in the hard-hit south of the island moved beds outside on Tuesday night and slept outdoors, fearful their homes would crumble if another earthquake hit after a week of tremors, governor Wanda Vázquez told reporters.

Nearly all of the island’s more than 3 million people lost power and only 100,000 customers had energy by late Tuesday night, according to the AEE electricity authority.

The agency scrambled to restart power plants that automatically shut down for safety during the quake. The large
Costa Sur plant suffered “severe damage” and was put out of service, Vázquez said after declaring a state of emergency.

Power should return to most of the island within 24 to 48 hours, so long as there are no more quakes, she said.
“All of Puerto Rico has seen the devastation of this earthquake,” said Vázquez, who took office in August after
Ricardo Rossello stepped down in the face of massive street protests against his administration.

Around 750 people spent the night in shelters in southern towns hit hardest by the earthquake, the government reported.

Television images showed flattened homes and apartment buildings with deep cracks running down their exteriors in communities like Guánica and Ponce.

Bottled water, batteries and flashlights ran low at supermarkets in the capital San Juan and long lines formed
outside gas stations. Backup generators kept the city’s international airport functioning.
Puerto Ricans are used to dealing with hurricanes but powerful quakes are rare on the island.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty, this is the first time this has happened to us,” said Patricia Alonso, 48, who lost power
and water at her home and headed to her mother’s apartment building with her 13-year-old son as it had a generator.

Puerto Rico is still recovering from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 that killed about 3,000 people and destroyed a significant amount of infrastructure. The island is also working through a bankruptcy process to restructure about $120 billion of debt and pension obligations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said on Tuesday that aid had been made available for earthquake response efforts.

Tuesday’s magnitude 6.4 quake struck at a depth of 6 miles (10 km) at 4:24 a.m. (0824 GMT) near Ponce, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

A 73-year-old man died after a wall fell on him, and a Costa Sur power plant worker was hospitalized after he was hit by debris, the governor said.

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The Philippine government has ordered the mandatory evacuation of Filipino workers from Iraq and Iran and is sending a coast guard vessel to the Middle East to ferry its citizens to safety in case hostilities between the United States and Iran worsen, officials said Wednesday.

The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said the government has raised the alert level in Iraq to the highest level, requiring Filipinos to leave the country due to escalating security risks. Filipinos can leave on their own or be escorted out with the help of their employers or the Philippine government, officials said.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said Filipino workers should also move out of Iran and Lebanon, adding that the government was indefinitely banning Filipino workers from traveling to the three countries amid fears of more hostilities.

The Philippines, one of the world’s leading labor providers, would face a gargantuan crisis if hostilities between the U.S. and Iran escalate and embroil other Middle Eastern countries that host large numbers of Filipino workers, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

 “It will be a nightmare, but we are not helpless,” Bello said at a news conference in Manila.

Other Asian nations with large populations of expatriate labor may weigh similar decisions after Iran fired missiles at two Iraqi bases housing U.S. forces in a major escalation of hostilities. The strikes were retaliation for last week’s killing of Iran’s top general in a U.S. drone attack in Baghdad.

India, which has a large number of workers in the Middle East, advised its citizens to avoid non-essential travel to Iraq. It also urged its nationals living in Iraq to remain alert and avoid travel within the country.

There are an estimated 15,000-17,000 Indians now in Iraq, mostly in the Kurdistan region, Basra, Najaf and Karbala. About 30,000-40,000 Indians visit Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf and Samarrah each year for pilgrimages.

Philippine officials have reported differing numbers of Filipinos in Iraq and Iran. The problem has been compounded by the huge numbers of Filipinos who have entered the countries illegally and avoided reporting their presence to Philippine Embassy officials.

Department of Labor records show that 2,191 Filipinos work in Iraq, some in U.S. facilities, while more than 1,180 others are based in Iran, including Filipino women married to Iranians.

There could be more than 2.1 million Filipinos across the Middle East, including many illegal workers, Bello said.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and top officials have been holding emergency meetings since the weekend to discuss evacuation plans.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the plans include the possible deployment of one battalion each from the army and marines to secure and evacuate Filipinos in case of a major flareup of violence anywhere. Navy ships and three air force cargo aircraft were also being readied for possible deployment, the military said.

Duterte said late Tuesday that he has deployed a special envoy to get assurance from the leaders of Iraq and Iran that Filipinos would be spared in case of any major outbreak of violence.
“Just to get the assurance that my countrymen will have the egress just in case hell breaks loose,” Duterte told reporters.

While evacuation plans were being finalized, Manila’s coast guard said a new patrol vessel en route to the Philippines from France has instead been ordered to head to the Middle East in case Filipino workers need to be immediately extricated from any danger. The vessel can ferry up to 500 people at a time.

 “In case of conflict, overseas Filipino workers will be brought to safer ports where they may be airlifted, as the need arises,” the coast guard said, adding that an initial plan was for the Philippine vessel to temporarily stand by in Oman or Dubai.

About a tenth of the Philippines’ more than 100 million people have worked abroad for decades, mostly as household help, construction workers, sailors and professionals, to escape grinding poverty and unemployment at home. They are hailed as heroes for sending huge incomes that keep Manila’s economy afloat. Many have risked staying in Middle Eastern nations, where they face abuse and even death and often get caught up in violent turmoil, to provide for impoverished families back home.

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Increasingly alarmed that Bernie Sanders could become their party’s presidential nominee, establishment-minded Democrats are warning primary voters that the self-described democratic socialist would struggle to defeat President Donald Trump and hurt the party’s chances in premier House, Senate and governors’ races.

The urgent warnings come as Sanders shows new signs of strength on the ground in the first two states on the presidential primary calendar, Iowa and New Hampshire, backed by a dominant fundraising operation. The Vermont senator has largely escaped close scrutiny over the last year as his rivals doubted the quirky 78-year-old’s ability to win the nomination. But less than a month before Iowa’s kickoff caucuses, the doubters are being forced to take Sanders seriously.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, previously a senior aide to President Barack Obama, warned Democrats that Sanders’ status as a democratic socialist and his unwavering support for “Medicare for All” won’t play well among swing voters in the states that matter most in 2020.

 “You need a candidate with a message that can help us win swing voters in battleground states,” Emanuel said in an interview. “The degree of difficulty dramatically increases under a Bernie Sanders candidacy. It just gets a lot harder.”

The increasingly vocal concerns are coming from a number of political veterans tied to the Obama administration and the 2020 field’s moderate wing, including those backing former Vice President Joe Biden, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet.

In some ways, the criticism is not surprising.

Sanders has spent decades fighting to transform the nation’s political and economic systems, creating a long list of political adversaries along the way. Many people connected to Hillary Clinton, for example, still blame Sanders for not working hard enough to support her after their long and bitter presidential primary feud in 2016. Some Democrats still accuse him of not being enough of a team player.

Sanders’ chief strategist Jeff Weaver dismissed the growing criticism as a reflection of the strength of his candidacy.

He raised more money than any other Democratic candidate in the last quarter — virtually all of it from small-dollar donors — and he’s considered a legitimate contender to win Iowa and New Hampshire next month.]

“People in establishment Washington are terrified of Bernie Sanders,” Weaver said. “The truth of the matter is their centrist tacking over the years has led us to the place where someone like Donald Trump can get elected.”

Less than four weeks before Iowa’s Feb. 3 caucuses, Sanders’ critics are making a concerted effort to turn up the volume.

The ranks of the concerned include many Democrats tasked with preserving the party’s majority in the House and expanding its minority in the Senate and governors’ mansions across the country.

California Rep. Ami Bera, a leader in the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s “frontline” program to protect vulnerable House members this fall, warned that a Sanders nomination would force more than 40 Democratic candidates in competitive districts — most of which were carried by Trump four years ago — “to run away from the nominee.”

Specifically, Bera cited Sanders’ signature health care plan, which would replace the nation’s private insurance system with a government-run Medicare for All system.

“You have to take Sen. Sanders seriously,” said Bera, who has endorsed Biden. “Those are going to be tough positions for our members to run on.”

Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who led the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm the last time Trump was on the ballot, warned that Republicans “are really good at making elections about who’s at the top of the ticket.”

“I come from a state that’s pretty damn red. There is no doubt that having ‘socialist’ ahead of ‘Democrat’ is not a positive thing in the state of Montana,” Tester, who has not endorsed any 2020 candidate, said of Sanders. “He can overcome that, but I think it’s something he’s going to have to do.”

Several Sanders critics noted that he has largely escaped intense scrutiny throughout the campaign, in part because some assumed that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another progressive firebrand, was a stronger candidate who would cannibalize his support. With Warren’s candidacy struggling to maintain momentum, however, those assumptions are now being questioned.

 “He has now emerged as somebody who’s got the ability to win the nomination,” said former Obama aide Ben LaBolt, who isn’t aligned with any 2020 campaign but opposes Sanders.

LaBolt seized on Sanders’ short list of accomplishments over three decades in Congress. Over that time, the senator wrote just a handful of bills that ultimately became law, though Sanders’ camp insists he’s effected meaningful change in and out of Washington.

“He’s more concerned about shouting in the wilderness to make an ideological point than getting things done,” LaBolt said.

Sanders is also facing lingering questions about his age, having suffered a heart attack late last year. He is the oldest candidate in the race, and, if elected, he would be the oldest president in U.S. history.

Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who is supporting Bennet’s underdog bid, was reluctant to single out any of the candidates for criticism. But he said Sanders wouldn’t be the strongest nominee and suggested it was fair to take Sanders’ age into account.

“I think health has become an issue, whether we like it or not,” Hart, 83, said in an interview. “I’m older than Sen. Sanders, so I can say things like that. I think it’s time for generational change.”

Marshall Matz, who was a policy adviser for Sen. George McGovern’s failed 1972 bid for president, was more direct in his warning for Democrats. If they nominate Sanders, he said, the party should expect the same landslide loss that McGovern suffered decades ago to President Richard Nixon.
 “I think he would not just lose but would lose badly — and I don’t think the country can afford that,” Matz said, noting that McGovern generated large crowds and enthusiasm just as Sanders has.

Indeed, on the ground in Iowa, there are signs that Sanders is in a strong position as caucus day approaches.

Josh Kennedy, a 36-year-old Sanders supporter from West Branch, Iowa, said he had previously been curious about Warren but hadn’t been impressed by her on the campaign trail. He’s back on board with Sanders.

 “You know exactly what you get with him,” Kennedy said.

Sanders drew consistently large crowds as he crisscrossed the state over the New Year holiday. His campaign said he spoke to nearly 6,000 supporters across 16 events, with more than 1,300 people gathered for a Des Moines party on New Year’s Eve.

The supporters turned out in rural areas as well.

Tracy Freese, chair of the Grundy County Democratic Party and a Sanders supporter, said she counted around 250 people at the Grundy Center Community Hall for Sanders last weekend, a number she called “incredible.”

“To put that many people in a room, in a small red county, for Bernie was crazy on a Saturday,” she said.

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