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      Iran Debates Whether It Could Make a Deal With Trump

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      Some in Iran’s new, more moderate government think the result of the presidential election provides an opportunity to make a lasting deal with the United States.President Donald J. Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and world powers, imposed tough economic sanctions on Iran and ordered the killing of its top general. And Iran, federal prosecutors said on Friday, plotted to assassinate Mr. Trump before November’s election.Yet despite that charged history, many former officials, pundits and newspaper editorials in Iran have openly called for the government to engage with Mr. Trump in the week since his re-election. Shargh, the main reformist daily newspaper, said in a front-page editorial that Iran’s new, more moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, must “avoid past mistakes and assume a pragmatic and multidimensional policy.”And many in Mr. Pezeshkian’s government agree, according to five Iranian officials who asked that their names not be published because they were not authorized to discuss government policy. They say Mr. Trump loves to make deals where others have failed, and that his outsize dominance in the Republican Party could give any potential agreement more staying power. That might give an opening for some kind of lasting deal with the United States, they argue.“Do not lose this historic opportunity for change in Iran-U.S. relations,” wrote a prominent politician and former political adviser to Iran’s government, Hamid Aboutalebi, in an open letter to Iran’s president. He advised Mr. Pezeshkian to congratulate Mr. Trump on winning the election and set a new tone for a pragmatic and forward-looking policy.President Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran in September. Some in Mr. Masoud’s government are calling on him to engage President-elect Donald J. Trump.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesStill, critical decisions in Iran are made by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and he banned negotiations with Mr. Trump during his first term. In Iran’s factional politics, even if Mr. Pezeshkian wanted to negotiate with Mr. Trump, he would have to get Mr. Khamenei’s approval.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Iran and Trump Are Front of Mind at Saudi Summit

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      Leaders from across the Arab and Muslim world were in Riyadh for a meeting officially convened to discuss the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon.Leaders from across the Arab world gathered on Monday in the capital of Saudi Arabia for a summit that came at a delicate moment for the kingdom, which has signaled a rapprochement with Iran after a violent, decades-long rivalry.The meeting was officially convened to discuss the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel’s military is battling Iran-backed militant groups. It takes place amid heightened regional tensions and the prospect of a hawkish Trump administration on Iran.Saudi Arabia had been preparing to recognize Israel, but the wars in Gaza and Lebanon cooled that prospect. Now, the kingdom and its allies find themselves warming to Tehran. Last month, the foreign ministers of the Persian Gulf states met for the first time as a group with their Iranian counterpart. On Sunday, the chief of staff of Saudi Arabia’s armed forces met with his Iranian counterpart in Tehran — further signaling a thaw in relations as Iran considers a response to Israeli attacks on its territory.Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, emphasized the relationship in his opening remarks at the summit on Monday.“We call on the international community to compel Israel to respect Iran’s sovereignty and not to attack its territory,” he told the audience in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been locked in a long battle for regional dominance, a rivalry shaped by the competing branches of Islam each country embraces. Iran’s network of regional proxies — which includes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — has long been a particular source of concern for Saudi Arabia.While Hamas and Hezbollah have been weakened by the Israeli military’s operations in Gaza and Lebanon, Iran still arms and supports the Houthis in Yemen — a group that has been implicated in attacks on the kingdom.“The issue that we’ve had, and that was the basis for the divergence in our relationship, was Iran’s regional behavior, which from our perspective has not contributed to stability,” the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said last week. “We are having very, very clear and honest conversations with the Iranians.”Analysts said that Saudi Arabia could also be using the summit in Riyadh as an opportunity to send a message to the incoming Trump administration. President-elect Donald J. Trump has said he will “stop wars” when he takes office, noted Hasan Alhasan, a senior fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.“Saudi Arabia could be trying to position itself as an attractive and credible choice for the Trump administration to work with if Trump follows through with his pledge to broker a deal to end the war, especially given the fact that diplomatic efforts led by other regional mediators, notably Qatar and Egypt, have failed to bear fruit,” Mr. Alhasan said. More

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      Russia Says It Shot Down Waves of Drones Above Moscow

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      Officials said that more than 30 drones had been intercepted over suburban areas of the Russian capital in what was the biggest such attack since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Russia said its air defenses had shot down waves of Ukrainian drones over Moscow’s suburbs on Sunday morning, responding to what it called a “massive” attack that wounded at least one person and temporarily halted flights at three regional airports.Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said on Telegram that 32 drones had been shot down over the suburbs of Domodedovo, Ramenskoye and Kolomna in the largest such attack on the capital since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Russian Defense Ministry said 34 drones were shot down above Moscow in the attack.The governor of the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, described the attack as “massive” and said that a 52-year-old woman was hospitalized with “burns to her face, neck and hands.”Flights at three regional airports, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky, were halted on Sunday morning for several hours because of the drone attack, which was also directed at other regions in western Russia.In total, the Defense Ministry said it had shot down 70 Ukrainian drones over six Russian regions on Sunday, including the ones in Moscow. The Ukrainian military did not immediately make any announcements on the attacks reported by Russia.Also in the attacks early Sunday, local officials said a total of 23 drones had been shot down in the Russian border regions of Belgorod, Bryansk and Kursk, where drone strikes occur more regularly. Drones also struck the western Kaluga and Tula regions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      50,000 Russian and North Korean Troops Mass Ahead of Attack, U.S. Says

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      Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces.The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.A new U.S. assessment concludes that Russia has massed the force without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine’s east — its main battlefield priority — allowing Moscow to press on multiple fronts simultaneously.Russian troops have been clawing back some of the territory that Ukraine captured in Kursk this year. They have been attacking Ukrainian positions with missile strikes and artillery fire, but they have not yet begun a major assault there, U.S. officials said.Ukrainian officials say they expect such an attack involving the North Korean troops in the coming days.For now, the North Koreans are training with Russian forces in the far western part of Kursk.The Russian-North Korean offensive looms as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to re-enter office with a stated goal of ending the war quickly. Mr. Trump has said little about how he would settle the conflict, but Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized in Ukraine.Some U.S. military and intelligence officials have grown more pessimistic about Ukraine’s overall prospects, noting that Russia has steadily gained ground, both in Kursk and in eastern Ukraine. Officials say the setbacks are partly a result of Ukraine’s failure to solve critical shortfalls in troop strength.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Should Not Let Putin Claim Victory in Ukraine, Says NATO Official

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      Adm. Rob Bauer warned against any peace deal that was too favorable to Russia, arguing that it could undermine American interests.A senior NATO military official suggested on Saturday that any peace deal negotiated by President-elect Donald J. Trump that allowed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to claim victory in Ukraine would undermine the interests of the United States.In a wide-ranging interview on the sidelines of a European defense summit in Prague, Adm. Rob Bauer, the Dutch chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, said: “If you allow a nation like Russia to win, to come out of this as the victor, then what does it mean for other autocratic states in the world where the U.S. has also interests?”He added: “It’s important enough to talk about Ukraine on its own, but there is more at stake than just Ukraine.”Mr. Trump has said repeatedly that he could end the war in Ukraine in a day, without saying how. A settlement outlined by Vice President-elect JD Vance in September echoes what people close to the Kremlin say Mr. Putin wants: allowing Russia to keep the territory it has captured and guaranteeing that Ukraine will not join NATO.A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s transition team, Karoline Leavitt, said he was re-elected because the American people “trust him to lead our country and restore peace through strength around the world.”“When he returns to the White House, he will take the necessary actions to do just that,” Ms. Leavitt said on Saturday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Long Global Trail of Resentment Behind Trump’s Resurrection

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      As the Cold War wound down almost four decades ago, a top adviser to the reformist Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, warned the West that “we are going to do the most terrible thing to you. We are going to deprive you of an enemy.”In the celebrations of the triumph of Western liberal democracy, of free trade and open societies, few considered how disorienting the end of a binary world of good and evil would be.But when the spread of democracy in newly freed societies looked more like the spread of divisive global capitalism, when social fracture grew and shared truth died, when hope collapsed in the communities technology left behind, a yearning for the certainties of the providential authoritarian leader set in.“In the absence of a shared reality, or shared facts, or a shared threat, reason had no weight beside emotion,” said Nicole Bacharan, a French political scientist. “And so a dislocated world of danger has produced a hunger for the strongman.”A different Russia, briefly imagined as a partner of the West, eventually became an enemy once more. But by the time it invaded Ukraine in 2022, disillusionment with Western liberalism had gone so far that President Vladimir V. Putin’s tirades against the supposed decadence of the West enjoyed wide support among far-right nationalist movements across Europe, in the United States and elsewhere. Western allies stood firm in defense of Ukrainian democracy, but even that commitment is wobbling.The curious resurrection and resounding victory of Donald J. Trump amounted to the apotheosis of a long-gathering revolt against the established order. No warning of the fragility of democracy or freedom, no allusion to 20th-century cataclysm or Mr. Trump’s attraction to dictators, could hold back the tide.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gazan Rescue Service Has Stopped Operating in the North

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      Residents had to dig through rubble in search of their neighbors after the main emergency service in Gaza said it had stopped operations in the north because it had come under Israeli attacks.When an Israeli airstrike hit a home in northern Gaza early Thursday, residents said, there were no paramedics or first responders around to help pull out people trapped in the rubble.Instead, Mazen Ahmed, said he and other neighbors in Beit Lahia had to dig through the debris by themselves. They found at least one body.“We went out to try to rescue on our own to the extent of our abilities,” Mr. Ahmed said on Thursday, speaking by voice message from a cemetery where those killed in the latest Israeli airstrikes were being buried. “There were no stretchers, there were no rescuers, there were no emergency responders.”More than two weeks ago, Gaza’s Civil Defense, the main emergency service in the Palestinian territory, said it was forced to cease rescue operations in the north because of attacks by the Israeli military on its members and destruction of its equipment.Israel stepped up a military offensive in northern Gaza over the last month and ordered widespread evacuations of the area, saying it was trying to eliminate a regrouped Hamas presence there. Troops, tanks and armed drones have bombarded the area almost daily, sending tens of thousands of residents fleeing.On Thursday, the Israeli military said it was operating against what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in Beit Lahia, an agricultural and residential area on the Israeli border where the Israeli military has been fighting for the last four weeks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      North Korea, in the Spotlight Over Ukraine, Launches a Long-Range Missile

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      The launch, into waters west of Japan, came shortly after the United States and South Korea criticized the North for sending troops to join Russia’s war. North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile off its east coast on Thursday, South Korean defense officials said, shortly after the United States and South Korea condemned the country for deploying troops near Ukraine to join Russia’s war effort.The missile was fired from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, at a deliberately steep angle so that it reached an unusually high altitude but did not fly over Japan, the South Korean military said in a brief statement. The missile landed in waters between North Korea and Japan.The military said it was analyzing data to learn more about the missile, but that it believed it was an ICBM. North Korea last tested a long-range missile​ in December, when it test-fired its solid-fueled Hwasong-18 ICBM.The launch on Thursday was the North’s first major weapons test since September, when it fired a new type of Hwasong-11 short-range ballistic missile, which it said could carry a “super-large” conventional warhead weighing 4.5 tons.On Wednesday, South Korean defense intelligence officials told lawmakers that North Korea might conduct long-range missile tests before the American presidential election next week. They also said that the North was preparing to conduct its seventh underground nuclear test, in a bid to raise tensions and gain diplomatic leverage with the next U.S. president. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in 2017.In recent weeks, North Korea has posed a fresh security challenge to Washington and its allies by sending an estimated 11,000 troops to Russia to fight in its war against Ukraine. Thousands of them, outfitted with Russian uniforms and equipment, have moved closer to the front lines, preparing themselves for possible battle against Ukrainian troops, South Korean and American officials said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More