From the moment American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower, the U.S. and much of the Western world were set on a course toward a nebulous conflict at home and abroad, called the War on Terror. The two main military engagements, Afghanistan, and later, Iraq, would sap the West’s resources, prestige and credibility on […]
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The United States conducted a new round of airstrikes — the second in roughly a day — in Iraq early Wednesday, hitting facilities used by Iranian proxies that had been targeting American and coalition troops, U.S. defense officials said. The latest rounds in the tit-for-tat attacks between the United States and Iranian-backed fighters took place […]
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For the second time in two weeks, the United States has carried out airstrikes against a facility used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its proxies in eastern Syria, ratcheting up retaliation for a steady stream of rocket and drone attacks against American forces in Iraq and Syria. The strikes by Air Force F-15E […]
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Human-made climate change is driving a yearslong extreme drought in Iran, Iraq and Syria, an area that encompasses a region known as the Fertile Crescent and a cradle of civilization, scientists said on Wednesday. The scientists stressed that years of conflict and political instability combined with the challenges of rapid urbanization in the region have […]
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Israeli officials say they have no choice: Hamas fighters, numbering perhaps 30,000 by Israeli estimates, embed within Gaza’s population of 2.2 million and store weapons in or under civilian sites, daring Israel to launch strikes that fuel outrage. The officials also say Hamas is clearly guilty of intentionally murdering Israeli civilians. President Biden and his […]
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The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists […]
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As tensions from the Gaza conflict echoed across the region, Mr. Blinken and Mr. Abbas also discussed efforts to restore calm in the West Bank and to stop extremist violence against Palestinians, according to a statement from the State Department. Strikes by the Israeli military and deadly attacks by armed Israeli settlers in the West […]
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When Javier Ortiz came home from a secret mission in Syria, the ghost of a dead girl appeared to him in his kitchen. She was pale and covered in chalky dust, as if hit by an explosion, and her eyes stared at him with a glare as dark and heavy as oil. The 21-year-old Marine […]
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When President Biden landed in Tel Aviv days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of more than 1,400 people, he told an audience of Israelis that this was not just Israel’s Sept. 11, that “it was like 15 9/11s.” The comparison, which emerged widely and immediately, seemed apt on the surface: a brutal attack that shocked […]
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The United States carried out two airstrikes against facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its proxies in eastern Syria early Friday in retaliation for a flurry of recent rocket and drone attacks against American forces in Iraq and Syria. The strikes were intended to send a strong signal to Iran to rein […]
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I’ve moved back to the United States twice since my birth. Once as a child, after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Then again for graduate school. I’d had the privilege of a youth — adolescence and young adulthood — in countries where being Palestinian was fairly common. The identity could be heavy, but it wasn’t […]
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And then there is the Russo-Ukrainian War, the conflict with the most potential to escalate into a nuclear exchange. In The Clash, Huntington argued specifically that the future relationship between Russia and Ukraine would serve as a test of his theory. He rebutted John Mearsheimer’s claim that the two countries were headed for conflict because […]
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I headed postwar Iraq planning for the U.S. State Department in 2002 and 2003. Once the White House decided in 2002 to remove Saddam Hussein by force, I cautioned my superiors that there needed to be serious planning for what would follow. The study I led — the Future of Iraq Project, only some of […]
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Days after Palestinian gunmen from Gaza launched brazen attacks on southern Israel, killing more than 1,300 people in the broadest assault on the country in decades, the conflict is threatening to ripple across the Middle East. In the Gaza Strip, while the Israeli military pummels the blockaded territory with airstrikes and demands that more than […]
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Twenty-one years ago, in the shadow of the Sept. 11 attacks, George W. Bush warned of an “axis of evil,” encompassing the authoritarian and anti-American regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. He did not claim that they were actually allies or partners in the style of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. What made them […]
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The sounds of mourning have coursed through the small Christian town of Qaraqosh in northern Iraq since late Tuesday, when a fire destroyed a wedding hall in the middle of a reception, touching not only this village, but Iraq’s entire Christian community. As of Friday night, at least 119 people were dead and an unknown […]
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A fire swept through a wedding hall late Tuesday in a predominantly Christian area of northern Iraq, killing at least 100 people and leaving more than 150 others injured with severe burns or difficulty breathing from smoke inhalation, according to Iraqi officials. The fire broke out during a wedding in the district of Hamdaniya, southeast […]
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NINEVEH, Iraq — At least 100 people were killed and 150 more injured in a fire at a wedding celebration in the district of Hamdaniya in Iraq’s Nineveh Province, Iraqi state media reported early on Wednesday, with local sources saying the toll was expected to rise. The fire ripped through a large events hall in […]
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“I’ve still got my head on my shoulders,” the Ukrainian soldier told me shortly before I operated on him. “I’ll be all right.” He had volunteered to defuse mines, and a Russian drone had dropped a bomb over his position. The blast had obliterated one of his legs below the knee. Then there was the […]
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When Iraq’s prime minister addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, he is hoping to persuade the world that he is the leader who can finally solve his country’s persistent problems of corruption and political instability — and make it a reliable partner for the region. He asserts that as the […]
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