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      Iran and U.S. Held Secret Talks on Proxy Attacks and Cease-Fire

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      Diplomats gathered in Oman in January, with the U.S. side seeking to stop attacks on Red Sea shipping and American bases, and Iran looking for a Gaza cease-fire.Iran and the United States held secret, indirect talks in Oman in January, addressing the escalating threat posed to Red Sea shipping by the Houthis in Yemen, as well as the attacks on American bases by Iran-backed militias in Iraq, according to Iranian and U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.The secret talks were held on Jan. 10 in Muscat, the capital of Oman, with Omani officials shuffling messages back and forth between delegations of Iranians and Americans sitting in separate rooms. The delegations were led by Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s deputy foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, and Brett McGurk, President Biden’s coordinator for the Middle East.The meeting, first reported by The Financial Times this week, was the first time Iranian and American officials had held in-person negotiations — albeit indirectly — in nearly eight months. American officials said Iran requested the meeting in January and the Omanis strongly recommended that the United States accept.Since the beginning of the war in Gaza after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the United States and Iran have reassured each other that neither was seeking a direct confrontation, a stance conveyed in messages they passed through intermediaries.But in Oman, each side had a clear request of the other, according to U.S. and Iranian officials.Washington wanted Iran to rein in its proxies to stop the Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea and the targeting of American bases in Iraq and Syria. Tehran, in turn, wanted the Biden administration to deliver a cease-fire in Gaza.President Biden at Dover Air Force Base last month, watching as one of the three American soldiers killed in a drone strike by an Iran-backed militia was brought home. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWe 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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      Macron and Scholz Meet, Looking to Patch Up Differences on Ukraine

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      The leaders of France and Germany will try to heal an increasingly public rift over their approach to the war, and hold talks alongside Poland’s prime minister on support for Kyiv.Chancellor Olaf Scholz and President Emmanuel Macron of France met in Berlin on Friday looking to smooth over their differences on how to support Ukraine in its war with Russia and allay concerns that the Franco-German “engine of Europe” is sputtering.Mr. Scholz hosted Mr. Macron alongside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, as Europe struggles to maintain unity at a critical moment, with U.S. support for Kyiv in question and Russian forces having made gains on the battlefield.In recent weeks, the differences between the allies have become unusually public and bitter, even as all agree that support for Ukraine is crucial to preventing further Russian aggression in Europe.Mr. Macron, eager to stake out a tougher stance toward President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, chided allies not to be “cowards” after they strongly rebuffed his suggestion that NATO countries should not rule out putting troops in Ukraine. From being Europe’s dove on Russia, the French leader, feeling humiliated over his initial outreach to Mr. Putin, has been transformed over the past two years into its hawk.The way he has made the switch has rankled some allies. Mr. Macron’s remark was interpreted as a jab at Mr. Scholz’s government, which in turn retorted that Mr. Macron ought to put up more money or weapons to back his words.Mr. Scholz, who has made Germany the largest military supporter of Ukraine after Washington, feels he has offered the material backing necessary and is resistant to doing more. But to the chagrin of even his own coalition partners, he has drawn a line against sending long-range Taurus missiles.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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      A Chance for Hope in Haiti’s Latest Crisis

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      Dead bodies are rotting on the streets of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Clean drinking water is scarce, and a cholera outbreak threatens. Hunger looms. The outgunned police force has all but disappeared.Armed groups have seized control of ports and major roads in the capital and freed inmates from jails. They shut down the airport, preventing the country’s deeply unpopular prime minister, Ariel Henry, from returning from a trip abroad, and have threatened to overrun the presidential palace. Under intense pressure from the United States and other regional powers to speed the transition to a new government, Henry agreed to resign late Monday.And now comes the hardest part: determining who will govern Haiti. Will a transitional government manage to lead that fragile nation back to stability and democracy? Or will the armed men who roam the streets and murder, kidnap and rape with impunity, along with the political and business leaders aligned with them, seize control and set off a fresh cycle of violence and criminality?I want to be hopeful and see this as a rare moment of possibility for self-determination for the Haitian people, whose country has long been a plaything of foreign powers and avaricious local elites. Much of my hope comes from having closely followed the work a collection of political, civic, business and religious groups that for the past two years have been frantically trying to forge a path for Haiti out of its disaster, demanding that Henry step aside and hand power to a transitional government that could, with help from abroad, stabilize the country and lead it back to democracy through new elections.“This is too much of a good crisis to waste,” Fritz Alphonse Jean, a former central banker who has played a pivotal role in that effort and would serve in the proposed transitional government, told me.But I am equally fearful, having seen armed groups, some of them aligned with political and business power brokers in Haiti, gathering strength as Henry clung to power with the tacit support of the United States and other regional powers. These brutal gangs have succeeded where civilians have failed: They physically blocked Henry from returning and forced his resignation. Now they threaten to seize momentum from the leaders who seek the restoration of Haitian democracy.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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      Who Are the Top Hamas Leaders in Gaza?

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      Marwan Issa, who was the target of an Israeli strike in central Gaza over the weekend, is one of three leaders of Hamas in Gaza who Israel says were the main planners of the Oct. 7 attack, which killed over 1,200 people and led to the kidnapping of about 240 others, according to Israeli officials. It remained unclear on Tuesday whether the strike had hit him.Here is what to know about the most senior Hamas leaders in Gaza:Marwan IssaMr. Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing, would be the highest ranking Hamas military official to be killed by Israel in recent years. Like many other senior Hamas military leaders in Gaza, Mr. Issa has kept a low profile, rarely appearing in public, in part to avoid targeted strikes like the one over the weekend that Israel’s military said hit an underground space he had used.An Israeli army spokesman described Mr. Issa as having helped plan the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7. In addition to his military role, Mr. Issa served as a negotiator in talks that led to a cease-fire following a nearly two-week flare-up with Israel in 2021, as well as a deal in 2011, when one captive Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, was exchanged for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.Yahya SinwarYahya Sinwar at a rally in Gaza City last year.Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp, which was set up after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and has since become a permanent community, part of the wider city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. He founded a precursor to Hamas’s military wing, called Al Majd, and helped establish Hamas in 1987. At the time, he was responsible for identifying and punishing Palestinians suspected of infringing “morality” codes or collaborating with Israel.In 1988, Mr. Sinwar was arrested by Israeli forces and sentenced to four life sentences for his role in killing four Palestinians suspected of working with Israel, according to Israeli court records.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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      Ukraine Faces Losses Without More U.S. Aid, Officials Say

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      William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, and Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, described an increasingly dire situation.Senior intelligence officials warned on Monday that without additional American aid, Ukraine faced the prospect of continued battlefield losses as Russia relies on a network of critical arms suppliers and drastically increases its supply of technology from China.In public testimony during the annual survey of worldwide threats facing the United States, the officials predicted that any continued delay of U.S. aid to Ukraine would lead to additional territorial gains by Russia over the next year, the consequences of which would be felt not only in Europe but also in the Pacific.“If we’re seen to be walking away from support for Ukraine, not only is that going to feed doubts amongst our allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific; it’s going to stoke the ambitions of the Chinese leadership in contingencies ranging from Taiwan to the South China Sea,” William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, told Congress.The assessment marked a sharp turn from just a year ago, when Ukraine’s military appeared on the march and the Russians seemed to be in retreat.Over the course of just over two hours of testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Burns and the director of national intelligence, Avril D. Haines, described an increasingly dire situation for Ukraine, one in which Russia is producing far more artillery shells and has worked out a steady supply of drones, shells and other military goods from two key suppliers.“It is hard to imagine how Ukraine will be able to maintain the extremely hard-fought advances it has made against the Russians, especially given the sustained surge in Russian ammunition production and purchases from North Korea and Iran,” Ms. Haines 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

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      Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine

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      For a few weeks in October 2022, the White House was consumed in a crisis whose depths were not publicly acknowledged at the time. It was a glimpse of what seemed like a terrifying new era.President Biden was standing in an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to come hear optimistic talk about the Biden agenda for the next few years.It was Oct. 6, 2022, but what they heard instead that evening was a disturbing message that — though Mr. Biden didn’t say so — came straight from highly classified intercepted communications he had recently been briefed about, suggesting that President Vladimir V. Putin’s threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine might be turning into an operational plan.For the “first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” he told the group, as they gathered amid Mr. Murdoch’s art collection, “we have a direct threat of the use of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they’ve been going.” The gravity of his tone began to sink in: The president was talking about the prospect of the first wartime use of a nuclear weapon since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.And not at some vague moment in the future. He meant in the next few weeks.The commander of a Ukrainian assault unit, standing by an abandoned Russian tank in October 2022. That period appears to have been the high-water mark of Ukraine’s military performance over the past two years.Ivor Prickett for The New York TimesThe intercepts revealed that for the first time since the war in Ukraine had broken out, there were frequent conversations within the Russian military about reaching into the nuclear arsenal. Some were just “various forms of chatter,” one official said. But others involved the units that would be responsible for moving or deploying the weapons. The most alarming of the intercepts revealed that one of the most senior Russian military commanders was explicitly discussing the logistics of detonating a weapon on the battlefield.Fortunately, Mr. Biden was told in his briefings, there was no evidence of weapons being moved. But soon the C.I.A. was warning that, under a singular scenario in which Ukrainian forces decimated Russian defensive lines and looked as if they might try to retake Crimea — a possibility that seemed imaginable that fall — the likelihood of nuclear use might rise to 50 percent or even higher. That “got everyone’s attention fast,” said an official involved in the discussions.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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      Russia’s Advance Around Avdiivka Loses Momentum After Quick Gains

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      Ukraine has committed significant forces to defending the area, and Russian troops are now attacking across open fields with little cover.When the eastern city of Avdiivka, a Ukrainian stronghold, fell to Russian forces three weeks ago, Kyiv and its allies feared that Moscow’s troops could build on their momentum and quickly press ahead toward strategic military hubs and population centers.But after making rapid gains in the subsequent days, Russian assaults have stalled around three contested nearby villages. Military experts cite several factors, including terrain that does not favor offensive operations, Russian troops exhausted by months of fighting and a Ukrainian army that has committed significant forces to defending the area.Russia seems to be maintaining its initiative on the battlefield, and military analysts say its forces could still break through Ukrainian lines in the near future, especially since Kyiv’s defensive efforts are increasingly curtailed by the absence of further American military aid.Yet for now, they say the fighting appears to have reverted to the kind of inconclusive back-and-forth battles that have characterized much of the war’s front line combat this past year.“The capture of Avdiivka has not led to the collapse of Ukrainian lines, the possibility for the Russians to move onto open ground or even to make major gains,” said Thibault Fouillet, the deputy director of the Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies, a French research center. “There’s no decisive action or breakthrough.”It’s a contrast to the situation that emerged from the fall of Avdiivka in mid-February. At that time, as Ukraine’s forces retreated, Russia advanced rapidly, aided in part by the absence of strong Ukrainian defensive positions. Russian troops captured three settlements and took control of nine square miles of land, according to open-source maps of the battlefield.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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      ICC Issues Arrest Warrants for 2 Russian Officers in Ukraine

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      Arrest warrants were issued by the International Criminal Court for two military officials, a general and an admiral, both accused of targeting civilians and destroying crucial energy infrastructure.The International Criminal Court on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for two top Russian military officers, accusing them of war crimes in Ukraine for targeting civilians and destroying crucial energy infrastructure.The two officers — Lt. Gen. Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash and Adm. Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov — are accused in a court statement of being personally responsible for numerous missile strikes by their forces on electrical power plants and substations in multiple locations between October 2022 and March 2023.The wintertime strikes were defined as war crimes because they were largely directed against civilian targets, causing “excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” the court said.General Kobylash is a senior Russian Air Force officer who commanded the country’s long-range aviation forces during that time period, while Admiral Sokolov was then commander of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.Lt. Gen. Sergei Ivanovich Kobylas commanded Russia’s long-range aviation forces.Sergei Chirikov/EPA, via ShutterstockAdm. Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov as commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in 2022.Alexey Pavlishak/ReutersThe two are also accused of crimes against humanity because of “intentionally causing great suffering” and serious physical or mental injuries in the general population.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