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      Behind the Tactical Gains Against Iran, a Longer-Term Worry

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      Experts inside and outside the Biden administration fear that Iran may conclude it has only one defense left: racing for an atomic weapon.When Israeli fighter jets roared off the runways on Friday night, on a thousand-mile run to Iran, they headed for two major sets of targets: the air defenses that protect Tehran, including Iran’s leadership, and the giant fuel mixers that make propellant for Iran’s missile fleet.Israel’s military leaders, in calls with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and other senior American officials, had concluded that taking out the air defenses would make Iran’s leaders fearful that Tehran itself could not be defended. That feeling of vulnerability was already high, after Israel decimated the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, Tehran’s proxy forces that could strike Israel, over the past month.The surprise element for the Iranians was a set of strikes that hit a dozen or so fuel mixers, and took out the air defenses that protected several critical oil and petrochemical refineries, according to a senior U.S. official and two Israeli defense officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.Without the capability to mix fuel, Iran cannot produce more of the type of ballistic missiles that its forces fired on Israel on Oct. 1, the immediate provocation for Israel’s strike. And it could take more than a year to replace them from Chinese and other suppliers.By Saturday, American and Israeli officials were claiming a major success, but lurking behind the satisfaction with the tactical gains lies a longer-term worry. With Iran’s Russian-produced air defenses in smoldering piles, many fear the Iranian leaders may conclude they have only one defense left: racing for an atomic weapon.That is just what American strategists have been desperately trying to avoid for a quarter-century, using sabotage, cyberattacks and diplomacy to keep Tehran from crossing the threshold to become a full nuclear-armed power.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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      U.S. Aims to Revive Failed U.N. Plan for Lebanon War

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      At the heart of the frantic diplomatic efforts to halt Israel’s invasion of southern Lebanon is a decades-old United Nations resolution that was intended to demilitarize the area and protect Israel from cross-border attacks by Hezbollah.All parties agree that the measure, Security Council Resolution 1701, has been a complete failure. They also agree that reviving it may be the only way out of Israel’s widening war to its north.“The outcome that we want to see is the full implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701,” the State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Monday, speaking of Israel’s continuing assault in Lebanon.Mr. Miller said that would mean the withdrawal of Hezbollah forces from the Israel-Lebanon border, and the deployment of U.N. and Lebanese army forces into the buffer zone in southern Lebanon that the resolution had sought to create.The U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1701 in August 2006 as part of a cease-fire that ended Israel’s last war with Lebanon. The resolution called for “an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of” Lebanon’s government and a U.N. peacekeeping force in the area known as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL.In recent days, the question of how to restore that resolution has consumed senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Amos Hochstein, a senior White House national security aide who has been working for months to broker an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah to restore calm along the Israel-Lebanon border. Mr. Blinken has also been working the phones with Arab officials to discuss Lebanon’s political future, in which U.S. officials hope the influence of Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, will be diminished.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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      Citing Gaza Help, Blinken Waives Human Rights Conditions on Aid to Egypt

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      Cairo will receive its full military aid allotment of $1.3 billion after the secretary of state also said it had made progress on releasing political prisoners and protecting Americans.For the first time under the Biden administration, the United States will send Egypt its full allotment of $1.3 billion in annual military aid, waiving human rights requirements on the spending mainly in recognition of Cairo’s efforts to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza, U.S. officials said.The decision, which the State Department notified Congress of on Wednesday, marks a striking shift for the administration. President Biden came into office promising “no blank checks” that would enable Egypt’s rights abuses, and in each of the past three years, his administration had withheld at least some of the congressionally mandated aid to Cairo, a close American ally.But the decision shows how the administration’s calculus has changed as Mr. Biden prioritizes trying to halt the violence in Gaza, one of the key goals he has set for himself in his final months in office.In response to longtime concerns about human rights abuses in Egypt, U.S. law places conditions on about a quarter of the military aid to Egypt each year. To release it, the secretary of state must certify that Cairo has complied with a range of human rights requirements.A State Department spokesman said the secretary, Antony J. Blinken, had found that Egypt had only partly met the human rights requirements but had overridden them, employing a legally permitted waiver “in the U.S. national security interest.”Mr. Blinken’s decision was based on Egypt’s monthslong role as an intermediary between Hamas and Israel as the two sides try to negotiate a cease-fire deal that would free Israeli hostages in Gaza and allow more humanitarian aid into the territory, which borders Egypt’s Sinai Desert, the spokesman 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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      House Republican Subpoenas Blinken Over Afghanistan Withdrawal

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      The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee summoned the secretary of state for testimony just days before an expected report on the U.S. exit, in which 13 American service members were killed.The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday issued a subpoena for Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s testimony, threatening to hold him in contempt if he failed to address the panel later this month about the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.In his letter subpoenaing Mr. Blinken, the chairman, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, wrote that receiving the testimony was important for committee members as they prepared “potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal,” after the expected release of an investigative report into the subject next week.“You served as the final decision maker for the department on the withdrawal and evacuation,” Mr. McCaul wrote in the letter, demanding that Mr. Blinken appear before the panel on Sept. 19 to speak about his role, and complaining that he had missed previous deadlines to comply.In a statement, Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said Mr. Blinken would not be available on that date and criticized the committee’s refusal to accept what he called “reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing.”“It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena,” Mr. Miller wrote, noting that Mr. Blinken had testified before Congress 14 times, including four appearances before Mr. McCaul’s panel.The summons comes amid fresh political squabbling over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as the presidential race enters its final weeks. Democrats denounced former President Donald J. Trump for shooting video for his campaign last week at Arlington National Cemetery, where he appeared for a wreath-laying ceremony to honor service members killed during the evacuation. Mr. Trump has stepped up his attacks on President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, maintaining that they mismanaged the U.S. exit from Afghanistan and blaming them personally for failing to prevent the deaths of 13 Americans at Abbey Gate, outside the Kabul airport.Mr. McCaul’s report, the culmination of nearly three years of investigative work, is expected to lay similar blame at the feet of Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris.“It will serve as an indictment on the administration’s reckless refusal to properly prepare for the withdrawal,” Mr. McCaul said in a statement last week announcing the release of the report. “President Biden and Vice President Harris can no longer sweep their unmitigated disaster of epic proportions that they created under the rug.”In a statement last week, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, dismissed Mr. McCaul’s threats to subpoena Mr. Blinken as “political stunts that show the Republican Party’s desperation to score headlines during an election season.”Tuesday’s subpoena is the third that Mr. McCaul has issued to Mr. Blinken in conjunction with the panel’s Afghanistan investigation. The previous two sought documents related to the inquiry. More

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      Behind the Deal: Spies, a Killer, Secret Messages and Unseen Diplomacy

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      The negotiations that led to the prisoner swap and the freeing of Americans wrongfully held in Russia required patience and creativity, but gave both sides what they wanted most.A turning point came on June 25, when a group of C.I.A. officers sat across from their Russian counterparts during a secret meeting in a Middle Eastern capital.The Americans floated a proposal: an exchange of two dozen prisoners sitting in jails in Russia, the United States and scattered across Europe, a far bigger and more complex deal than either side had previously contemplated but one that would give both Moscow and Western nations more reasons to say yes.Quiet negotiations between the United States and Russia over a possible prisoner swap had dragged on for more than a year. They were punctuated by only occasional glimpses of hope for the families of the American prisoners — including Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Paul Whelan, an American security contractor — growing increasingly impatient for their ordeal to end. Those hopes were always dashed when one of the two sides balked.But the June meeting changed things, according to accounts from American and Western officials and other people familiar with the long process of bringing the deal to fruition.The Russian spies took the proposal back to Moscow, and only days later the C.I.A. director was on the phone with a Russian spy chief agreeing to the broad parameters of a massive prisoner swap. On Thursday, seven different planes touched down in Ankara, Turkey, and exchanged passengers, bringing to a successful close an intensive diplomatic effort that took place almost entirely out of public view.The deal between longtime adversaries — negotiated mostly by spies and sometimes through secret messages hand-delivered by couriers — secured the release of Mr. Gershkovich, Mr. Whelan and 14 other Americans, Russians and Europeans imprisoned in Russia.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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      Elecciones en Venezuela: mandatarios del mundo exigen más transparencia a Maduro

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      Los manifestantes salieron a las calles de Caracas cuando Nicolás Maduro se proclamó vencedor, mientras que la oposición señaló que el recuento de votos mostraba que su candidato había ganado.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Las protestas estallaron el lunes en Caracas, la capital de Venezuela. Cientos de jóvenes marcharon por las calles indignados por los resultados de unas elecciones presidenciales en las que el presidente en funciones, Nicolás Maduro, se declaró ganador a pesar de las acusaciones generalizadas de fraude y proclamó de manera oficial que las elecciones estaban decididas sin hacer público el recuento completo de votos.Estados Unidos y países de todo el mundo denunciaron los resultados oficiales de la votación del domingo, que no parecían coincidir con las proyecciones estadísticas sustentados en recuentos parciales y otros datos que mostraban que el presidente perdía por un margen amplio.El lunes por la tarde, el gobierno venezolano anunció que había expulsado a las misiones diplomáticas de siete países latinoamericanos que habían condenado los resultados electorales oficiales.La líder de la oposición, María Corina Machado, anunció el lunes por la noche que su movimiento había recibido las actas del 73 por ciento de las mesas electorales del país y refutó las afirmaciones del gobierno. Estos resultados apuntaban a que el oponente de Maduro, Edmundo González, había recibido 3,5 millones de votos más que el presidente.González calificó el margen de “matemáticamente irreversible”.La decisión de la autoridad electoral de declarar la victoria pero no hacer públicos los resultados detallados de la votación, como había hecho habitualmente en elecciones anteriores, intensificó la sensación entre muchos venezolanos y observadores internacionales de que las elecciones habían sido, en efecto, robadas.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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      As Trump Looms, Blinken Aims to Reassure Allies on U.S. Commitment to Asia

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      Asian officials will press Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken about the former president and about Kamala Harris as he visits the region.For three and a half years, President Biden and his aides have insisted that the United States is a Pacific power, and that its allies and partners in the region need not worry about Washington’s commitments.For U.S. officials, underscoring that message has become increasingly important as China’s power has grown. Now Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken plans to deliver assurances in person across six nations, his most ambitious trip in the region.When Mr. Blinken lands in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, on Saturday, he will face a barrage of questions about what dramatic shifts in U.S. policy might or might not occur next year, given the upcoming change in the presidency.Mr. Biden’s announcement last Sunday that he is no longer running for re-election sent shock waves around the world. Many of America’s allies are especially concerned about a second Trump presidency, given that former President Donald J. Trump has constantly declared that those allies are conning the United States into providing military support. They are uncertain if Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee, can beat him in November.Regardless, Mr. Blinken’s core message will be one of American resolve.“I think the message that the secretary is going to be conveying to the region is that America is all in on the Indo-Pacific,” Daniel J. Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, told reporters on Monday. “I think from Day 1 of this administration, we have significantly and dramatically stepped up our engagement.”But the talking point does not answer in concrete terms the main question from allies: Starting next year, will the United States invest significantly in Asia — in both economic and military terms? Mr. Blinken could argue that Ms. Harris’s foreign policy would be a continuation of Mr. Biden’s, but in no way can he speak for Mr. Trump.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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      Wayne S. Smith, a Leading Critic of the Embargo on Cuba, Dies at 91

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      A former State Department official, he resigned in protest in 1982 over Cuba policy, then spent decades trying to rebuild relations with the island nation.Wayne S. Smith, a veteran Cuba expert at the State Department who, after resigning in protest over America’s embargo against the island nation in 1982, spent nearly four decades leading efforts to rebuild relations between Washington and Havana, died on June 28 at his home in New Orleans. He was 91.His daughter, Melinda Smith Ulloa, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.For more than 24 years after he joined the Foreign Service in 1958, Mr. Smith was America’s man in Havana, whether he was physically in the Cuban capital or dealing with it from a desk in Washington.Later, after leaving the State Department, he used his extensive experience to carry out a sustained campaign against America’s strategy of isolating Cuba, while also leading private and congressional delegations to the island in an attempt to build avenues of dialogue.“He was one of the foremost spokespeople in favor of normalizing relations,” William LeoGrande, an expert on Cuba affairs at American University in Washington, said in an interview.A witty and nimble writer, Mr. Smith turned out scores of opinion pieces, journal essays and books, including a memoir-cum-history, “The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957,” published in 1987.“Cuba seems to have the same effect on U.S. administrations,” he liked to say, “as the full moon once had on werewolves.”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