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Flags of Israel and Iran on broken ground.
Well, now we know the answer to the question of how Israel planned to respond to Iran’s recent attack. Explosions were reported early on Friday near the northwestern Iranian city of Isfahan, in what several major outlets reported, citing US officials and local sources, as an apparent Israeli strike.
The blasts come just days after Iran launched its first-ever direct attacks on Israel, launching hundreds of missiles and drones, almost all of which were shot down by Israeli and US missile defenses. That salvo was itself seen as a response to Israel’s strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus early this month.
Syria and Iraq blasts reported as well. Blasts possibly related to the strikes on Iran were also reported around the same time at sites in Iraq and Syria. Both countries are home to sizable Iranian proxy forces and intelligence units.
So much for the Passover head fake. Earlier on Thursday, US officials had suggested anonymously that Israel would wait until after the Jewish holiday of Passover, which begins Monday, to retaliate.
No nuclear sites in the crosshairs, it seems. The full extent of the Israeli attack is not yet precisely clear, but the strike doesn't appear to have targeted the Natanz nuclear facility, a major component of Iran’s controversial nuclear program, which is located about 100 miles north of Isfahan. Israel has long made clear its desire to destroy Iran’s nuclear research. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, on Friday said there was "no damage" to Iran's nuclear sites.
Isfahan, meanwhile, is home to several military bases and airfields, which may have been the targets. Iranian officials told the New York Times that a strike hit a military air base near the city. Outside Iran, Isfahan is known chiefly for its rich history of Islamic architecture, which includes several UNESCO heritage sites.
Was this an escalation by Israel? “On the surface, it appears rather limited,” said Gregory Brew, lead Iran analyst at Eurasia Group, “beyond the symbolic significance of Israel hitting Iranian territory.”
Iran isn't blaming Israel. Tehran is claiming to have shot down several drones in the Isfahan area but is downplaying the significance of the incident and hasn't blamed Israel — instead pointing the finger at "infiltrators." Iran has not indicated any plans for retaliation, in a potential sign that it doesn't want to escalate the situation.
“It’s early,” Brew noted, “but the official regime line may be that this is not an action that requires immediate and public retaliation.”
That’s good news even in a bad situation, he says. “It would suggest that the Israeli effort to hit back without triggering further escalation has been successful.”
On the first day of the first criminal trial of a former US president, I couldn’t resist. The courthouse is 15 minutes from my desk here in New York, so I jumped on the 6 Train and headed out to the scrum of protesters, counterprotesters, journalists, police, and other gawkers in Lafayette Park outside the courthouse.
There was lots – lots – of yelling. Just as I arrived, a guy in a “Gays for Trump, You got a problem with that, Bitch!” T-shirt was at the center of a smartphone scrum screaming at a woman holding a “Trump is the Definition of Depravity” sign that she was a “pedophile.”
Before long, content creators from both sides of the national divide were on the scene, livestreaming and shouting at each other about Hunter Biden, about inflation, about child labor, about immigration. Even Triumph the Comic Insult Dog barked into the mix, asking one of several Proud Boys stalking the scene in wraparound shades: “If Trump is convicted, do you think he’ll be sentenced to four years … in the White House?”
The only people not screaming, as I recall, were four elderly Chinese-American ladies in huge sunglasses, sitting on a bench under a leafless sweetgum tree, holding hand-painted signs that read: “Kangaroo Court, Banana Republic.”
It was, in all, the usual performative mayhem about the usual subjects. But the one thing that almost no one was actually yelling about was the thing that was going on inside the building 100 feet away: the trial itself.
All that circus, and hardly a word about the elephant in the ring.
But isn’t that how a lot of us talk about Trump’s trials and titillations these days? We argue about the politics rather than look at the merits. And that’s a bad thing.
For Trump, the political cage matches keep the focus right where he wants it: on the narrative that he, as a popular threat to a corrupt establishment, is the victim of a political witch hunt. That the ruling party is using the justice system to silence a political rival. That those ladies with the big sunglasses under the sweetgum tree are right.
On the other side, people talk about the long-coming legal downfall of a demagogue seen as a threat to the Republic itself. The Capone of politics nabbed on his own kind 0f tax rap.
“People know what verdict they want in this case,” says Richard Klein, a professor of law at Touro Law School and a longtime trial criminal defense lawyer. “But few people are focusing on DA Bragg’s case against Trump. They're focusing on all the noise around it.”
To review, briefly. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg alleges that Trump falsified business records to conceal a payment that was made, in the fall of 2016, to a porn star who says she and Trump had a fling.
“Hush money” is bad, but that’s not actually what the trial is about. Paying someone to keep quiet isn’t necessarily a crime, and fiddling with business records in New York isn’t a felony.
Bragg’s case elevates the charges by arguing that this book-cooking was done with the intention of committing other felonious infractions – including, it seems, a conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 election and commit tax fraud.
To prove this intent, Bragg will bring various witnesses, including Trump’s former lawyer and fixer-in-chief Michael Cohen, who made the payments, as well their recipient, the actress known as “Stormy Daniels.”
Legal scholars like Klein say Bragg’s approach is something of a high-wire act. He is linking dozens of lower-level crimes – some of which Trump appears to have admitted publicly – to harder-to-prove felonious ones, and then asking a jury to decide that Trump did all of this to sway an upcoming election rather than, say, simply to save his marriage or protect his kids from scandal.
The key witnesses, moreover, aren’t exactly folks with an unblemished reputation for truthtelling. Cohen has already admitted to lying under oath previously.
How much does this matter? If Bragg fails to convince the jury, Trump will be vindicated – look, he’ll say, these kangaroo court prosecutors came at me and 12 very good people of New York saw through it. This will color the politics of the other three cases he faces.
If Trump is convicted, of course, it may not move the needle for the 35% of “you got a problem with that bitch!”Americans who are unwaveringly fanatically loyal to him.
But about half of Americans say if Trump is convicted he should not be president again. That includes 14% of Republicans and, perhaps more importantly, a third of independents who say a guilty verdict would sway their vote. In a tight election – and this one will be tight – that could certainly be the difference.
As I went to file this, news broke that the jury has been set for the trial. And so we’re off. I may not be able to resist heading down to Lafayette square for some good mayhem again in the coming weeks – but as a society it’s a mistake to let that political circus distract us from the real drama in the courtroom itself.
World Bank Group President Ajay Banga listens during the G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' Meetings at the IMF and World Bank’s 2024 annual Spring Meetings in Washington, U.S., April 18, 2024.
As the International Monetary Fund and World Bank spring meetings wrap up Friday in Washington, the two crucial global lenders face a few important challenges in the year ahead. GZERO has been on the ground to bring you the big takeaways.
A tale of two recoveries. The IMF’s global economic outlook is fairly rosy as a whole. Inflation is easing in the US and Europe, and 3.2% growth of global GDP is a respectable clip – especially given recent fears of a recession. The US and Chinese economies are both growing, even if Beijing is still struggling with persistent debt and property market woes.
But the recovery has yet to reach every corner of the globe. One-third of the lowest-income countries are poorer today than in 2019, before the pandemic. And because inflation has pushed up interest rates, the costs of servicing sovereign debt have skyrocketed, an especially heavy burden for lower-income countries. Bringing financial stability to these fragile situations is a key focus for the IMF and the World Bank.
Power up. The World Bank announced it is launching a massive $35 billion plan to connect 300 million people in Africa to electricity. It’s the kind of fundamental development work the World Bank excels at, and it will help put the continent on track to drive an increasing share of global growth in the coming decades.
But many of the African students who might benefit from lightbulbs to study by also lack access to basic medical care – in fact, more than half the population of the globe finds themselves shut out of formal healthcare, and another two billion struggle to afford it. The World Bank plans to bring quality care to some 1.5 billion people and bolster public health systems to create sustainable improvements.
A new approach. World Bank President Ajay Banga stepped into a delicate situation succeeding David Malpass, who courted controversy with his skepticism about climate change. Banga is the first president in over a decade coming in from the private sector and he's attempting to streamline processes and make the institution more agile and flexible, which may include merging the Bank’s keystone conferences into one.
We’ll keep you up to date on progress during the Annual Meetings this fall.
For more on the big takeaways from this year’s conference, watch Senior Writer Matthew Kendrick’s interview with Tony Maciulishere.
Hard Numbers: Trump jury formed, A 911 for 911, Croatia’s coalition crunch begins, New nets chop malaria in half, Netflix numbers soar
Former President Donald Trump speaks to reporters with attorney Todd Blanche at the end of the day at Manhattan criminal court as jury selection continues in New York, U.S., April 18, 2024.
12: And then there were twelve. A dozen jurors, plus one alternate, have been selected in Donald Trump’s criminal “hush money” trial in New York. This comes after two jurors were dismissed on Thursday – one of them resigned over fears she had been targeted publicly by a FOX news host, while the other was sent home over prosecutors’ suspicions he had lied on his juror questionnaire. Five more alternates will be selected on Friday.
4: Who do you call when the emergency is that 911 itself is out? People in four US states had to wrestle with that conundrum on Wednesday night after their emergency call systems went down. No cause was given for the outages in Nevada, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Texas, but federal officials have warned that the move to digital systems in recent years has raised the risk of cyberattacks.
60: As expected, Croatia’s governing center-right HDZ party won the most votes in the election, securing 60 seats out of 151, but it will not be able to govern alone, heralding difficult coalition talks ahead. The vote followed a bitter campaign between the HDZ and a center-left coalition led by President Zoran Milanović.
50: New insecticides applied to mosquito nets cut malaria transmissions by up to 50% in trials. Mosquito nets treated with insecticides are the most effective way to stop the spread of malaria, which infects hundreds of millions around the globe and kills some 600,000 people annually. But as mosquitos develop immunity to long-used insecticides, it becomes necessary to develop new ones.
9.3 million: Netflix’s recent un-chill crackdown on password-sharing appears to have worked, as the global streaming behemoth added 9.3 million subscribers worldwide in the first quarter of 2024, and saw its operating income soar by 54%. The company says it still plans to stop reporting subscriber numbers altogether next year, as it focuses more on “engagement” than account numbers.
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro leads the celebration of the 22nd anniversary of late President Hugo Chavez's return to power after a failed coup attempt in 2002, in Caracas, Venezuela April 13, 2024
The Biden administrationannounced this week it will reimpose oil sector sanctions on Venezuela because President Nicolas Maduro’s government has backed away from a commitment to hold a free and fair presidential election this year.
The US lifted sanctions six months ago, but Maduro’s government has since banned opposition leader Maria Corina Machado from running for president and blocked her chosen replacement from running too.
Now for the asterisk: US oil giant Chevron will be permitted to keep a joint venture with Venezuela’s national oil company. Why? Look at the calendar. Biden’s got an election to win in seven months. Venezuela is a major oil producer, and the US wants to avoid giving oil markets any more reason to worry.
After all, the threat of a wider war in the Middle East is creating oil supply jitters while a rapidly recovering Chinese economy is expected to start guzzling more crude again this year.
So while Joe Biden can no longer pretend Venezuela’s people will have a real choice in their election, with US inflation still stubbornly high, he’s got to make some hard choices about his own — and this is one of them.
Signs stand outside a Volkswagen plant during a vote among local workers over whether or not to be represented by the United Auto Workers union in Chattanooga, Tennessee, June 13, 2019.
Workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., have until 8 pm Friday to choose whether to join the United Auto Workers union, a vote that could determine the trajectory of labor unions across the American South.
After the UAW’s historic strike last year against the Big Three automakers in Detroit earned big successes at the bargaining table, the union launched a $40 million campaign to win over nonunion auto factories, particularly those in the South. A victory in Chattanooga — Volkswagen’s only plant in the world with no labor representation — will gun the UAW’s engines ahead of an upcoming vote at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama.
Pro-union workers at the plant believe the UAW will help them negotiate better pay, benefits, and more flexible time off. Republican governors in Tennessee, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama, meanwhile, say unionizing could hurt local economies. After all, they argue, part of the reason foreign automakers set up shop in the South, creating lots of well-paying jobs, was to avoid union stronghold states like Michigan.
Two previous votes to unionize at the plant have failed, but about 70% of workers pledged to cast “yes” ballots this time.
Members of the Iranian Army's land force are marching in a military parade to mark the anniversary of Iran's Army Day at an Army military base in Tehran, Iran, on April 17, 2024.
The world is waiting to see how Israel retaliates against Tehran’s recent air attacks. But, according to new reports, nothing is likely until after Passover, a holiday celebrating the liberation of Israelites from Egypt thousands of years ago. Passover begins on Monday and ends on April 30.
The news comes as Israel continues to weigh the extent and timing of any response to Iran’s drone-and-missile salvo from last weekend, with the US urging restraint for fear of igniting a wider regional war. Iran says it will respond to any Israeli strikes, and on Thursday warned it could pursue nuclear weapons if any of its nuclear facilities are targeted — a prospect that Israel and its Western allies have worked against for years.
Meanwhile, talks on a cease-fire in Gaza – a surefire way to cool things down – are at an impasse, with Qatar, an indispensable interlocutor between Israel and Hamas, now saying it will reevaluate its role in the discussions following US criticism of its ties to the group. But would Qatar really walk away entirely? Doubtful – the tiny Gulf state views its mediator role as a key means of boosting its global clout.
“Qatar is frustrated by the criticisms emerging from some American politicians,” says Sofia Meranto, a Middle East analyst at Eurasia Group. And while “Doha may try to distance itself from the talks,” she says it “is unlikely to abandon its role.”
Latest
Israel hits Iran directly – what next?
What the Trump trial circus is missing
The big challenges facing the IMF and World Bank
Biden reimposes sanctions on Venezuela*
Tennessee VW vote tests future of unions in the South
