Scroll back up to restore default view.NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump circulated a fake image on Monday depicting congressional Democrats’ top-ranked leaders in traditional Muslim attire in front of the Iranian flag, drawing criticism that he was promoting Islamophobic tropes.The manipulated photo retweeted by Trump showed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in Muslim garb with the caption: “The corrupted Dems trying their best to come to the Ayatollah’s rescue #NancyPelosiFakeNews.” Trump, a Republican, had previously faulted Democrats for criticizing his administration’s targeted killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, but his use of Muslim imagery as part of that effort drew pushback from Muslim American advocates.“The image is a hodgepodge of anti-Muslim tropes and garb from many traditions including some that are frequently used to stereotype and attack Muslims,” Madihha Ahussain, special counsel at the nonprofit group Muslim Advocates, said in a statement. “It’s disappointing but not surprising that the president would use his massive Twitter platform to spread this kind of harmful, ignorant, anti-Muslim bigotry.”  Wa’el Alzayat, CEO of the Muslim American group Emgage Action — named for its mission to engage Muslim Americans — also criticized Trump’s decision to amplify the doctored photo of Pelosi and Schumer. “There’s no place for it, irrespective of political differences,” he said in an interview.Schumer tweeted his own pushback to Trump, asking: “How low can you go?”The image that Trump retweeted has been circulating on the internet for a few days. The Twitter account that Trump got it from has a history of tweeting in both English and Persian about Iranian issues, promoting pro-Trump content and criticizing U.S. Democrats.White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham defended Trump’s retweet of the image, telling Fox News on Monday that the tweet was intended to show Democrats “have been parroting Iranian talking points, and almost taking the side of terrorists and those who were out to kill the Americans.”Democrats have raised questions about the Trump administration’s rationale for ordering the Soleimani killing, warning about the resulting heightened tensions with Iran. But no Democrats have praised Soleimani, and Pelosi herself described him last week as a “terrible person” who “did bad things.”_Associated Press writer Amanda Seitz in New York contributed to this report.

Democratic candidates debate who should be next commander in chief — and attack the current one by Dylan Stableford Senior Writer,Yahoo News•January 15, 2020Former Vice President Joe Biden, left, watches as Sen. Bernie Sanders answers a question during Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary debate in Des Moines. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)Foreign and military policy, mostly absent from the Democratic debates so far, were on the minds of the moderators — and candidates — Tuesday night in Des Moines, Iowa. Six candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination spent the first 30 minutes of the debate defending their positions on foreign policy and explaining to voters why they are best qualified to be the next commander in chief.Mostly, they sought to differentiate themselves from President Trump.Sen. Bernie Sanders began by highlighting his 2002 vote against the war in Iraq — which former Vice President Joe Biden, then a senator, supported.The Vermont senator called it „the worst foreign policy blunder” in modern U.S. history.”As Joe well knows, we lost 4,500 brave troops. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died,” Sanders said. „We have spent trillions on this endless war — money that should’ve gone into health care and education.”Biden acknowledged that his vote was a mistake, but also said he led the effort to end the war as vice president.”I know what it’s like to send a son or daughter to war, like our colleague on this stage,” Biden said, nodding to South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve in Afghanistan.Sanders and Biden both attacked President Trump over his decision to authorize the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. The White House initially said that there was an imminent threat to American lives, but the administration has not publicly disclosed intelligence supporting that assertion. Over the weekend, Trump claimed that Soleimani was planning to attack four U.S. embassies, but Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Sunday that he had not seen such evidence.Biden said that Trump „flat out lied” about the threat to U.S. embassies. Sanders compared it to the events that led to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq.”Both of those wars were based on lies,” Sanders said. „Right now, what I fear very much, is we have a president who is lying again and could drag us into a war that is even worse.”Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she believes the United States should pull its troops out of the Middle East.”We have to stop this mindset that we can do everything with combat troops,” she said.Buttigieg criticized Trump, who campaigned on ending „endless wars,” over his decision to send nearly 3,000 more troops to the Middle East in the wake of Soleimani’s killing. And he put it in personal terms.”Whenever I see that happen, I think about the day we shipped out and the time that was set aside to say goodbye to family members,” Buttigieg said. I remember walking with a friend of mine, another lieutenant I trained with, as we walked away and his 1 1/2-year-old boy was toddling after him, not understanding why his father wasn’t turning back to scoop him up. And it took all the strength he had not to turn around and look at his boy one more time.”Tom Steyer, the billionaire activist and long-shot presidential candidate, was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, one of the co-moderators, under what circumstances a President Steyer would take military action.”I would take military action to protect the lives and safety of American citizens,” Steyer said. „But what we can see in the Middle East and what this conversation shows is that there is no real strategy in what we’re trying to accomplish in the Middle East. Obviously Mr. Trump has no strategy.”In the same answer, Steyer pivoted from the conflict in the Middle East to wildfires in Australia.”We’re confronted by this issue everyone’s talking about,” Steyer said. „But at the same time there’s the gigantic climate issue in Australia which also requires the same kind of value-driven colation buildig that we actually should be using in the Middle East.”

World New protests as Iran makes first arrests over downed airliner

   AFP•January 14, 2020Iran makes first arrests for the shooting down of a Ukrainian airliner Tehran (AFP) – Iran announced Tuesday its first arrests over the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet, as protesters vented their anger over the catastrophic blunder for a fourth consecutive day.Nearly two weeks after the US killed a top Iranian commander in Iraq, tensions with the West increased further as EU countries on Tuesday launched an arbitration process charging Tehran with failing to observe commitments in the 2015 nuclear deal, prompting Iran to warn of unspecified „consequences”.The Ukraine International Airlines plane was brought down by a missile shortly after takeoff on Wednesday, killing all 176 passengers and crew on board.Iran has struggled to contain the fallout over its handling of the air disaster, after initially dismissing Western claims it was brought down by a missile before admitting it on Saturday.The tragedy has seen hundreds of angry protesters, most of them students, take to the streets, apparently chanting slogans against the Islamic republic.New videos circulating on social media purported to show fresh protests on Tuesday evening at universities in Tehran, along with clashes between students and Basij militia loyal to the establishment.It was not possible to immediately verify the videos.Earlier, AFP correspondents said around 200 mainly masked students gathered at Tehran University on Tuesday and were locked in a tense standoff with youths from the Basij.”Death to Britain,” women clad in black chadours chanted as Basij members burned a cardboard cutout of the British ambassador to Tehran, Rob Macaire, after his brief arrest for allegedly attending a demonstration Saturday.Kept apart by security forces, the groups eventually parted ways.AFP journalists said there appeared to be a lower police presence on Tuesday compared to preceding days.Internet connectivity was significantly lower than usual.- ‘Real rift’ -The protests have been much smaller than nationwide demonstrations against fuel price hikes that turned deadly in November.But one commentator said the latest rallies showed there was a „real rift between the people and the authorities”.”I hope that (police restraint) will continue and that no lives are lost, because this could be a catalyst for more protests,” Mehdi Rahmanian, director of reformist daily Shargh, told AFP.In another sign of growing dissent, a group of artists cancelled their participation in the Fajr festival, held each year on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, according to Hamshahri newspaper, which is owned by Tehran City Hall.Meanwhile, group of reformist journalists in Tehran published a statement denouncing the lack of freedom of the press and official media.”We are attending the burial of public trust”, said the statement, which the official IRNA news agency reported on.Even a key state TV personality, Elmira Sharifi, hit out at authorities on Twitter.”At a time when you should come and give your apologies and explanations, you stay quiet! Why are you bringing us shame in front of the public?”.Tehran had for days denied Western claims based on US intelligence that the Boeing 737 had been downed by a missile.It came clean on Saturday when Revolutionary Guards aerospace commander Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh acknowledged a missile operator had mistaken the plane for a cruise missile and opened fire independently.Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said the first arrests had been made over the air disaster, without naming them or specifying how many.”Extensive investigations have been carried out and some people have been arrested,” he said.Esmaili also said around 30 people had been arrested in the protests over the air disaster.- ‘World watching’ -The announcement came shortly after President Hassan Rouhani said — in relation to the air disaster — „anyone who should be punished must be punished”.”The judiciary must form a special court with a high-ranking judge and dozens of experts… The whole world will be watching,” he said.”It cannot be that only the person who pressed the button is at fault. There are others.”The Kiev-bound plane was shot down at a time when Iran’s armed forces were on heightened alert after launching a volley of missiles at Iraqi bases hosting US troops.Iran fired the missiles in retaliation for a US drone strike on January 3 that killed Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Guards’ Quds Force foreign operations arm.Addressing that issue, Rouhani said while „the root of all sorrows goes back to America… this cannot be a reason for us not to look into all the root causes” of the air disaster.The president also demanded officials explain why it took so long for authorities to announce the real cause of the air disaster.But Rouhani said that for him it would be more important that Iranians are „assured that this incident will not be repeated”.Iran has invited experts from Canada, France, Ukraine and the United States to take part in the probe.The office of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he spoke to Canada’s premier Justin Trudeau on Tuesday for a third time since the crash, with the latter asking for help from Kiev in liaising with Iranian authorities to help identify bodies of Canadian citizens.Also on the diplomatic front, Britain on Monday summoned Iran’s ambassador to lodge its „strong objections” after its Tehran envoy, Macaire, was temporarily arrested for allegedly attending a demonstration on Sunday night. Iran’s judiciary spokesman on Tuesday described Macaire as a „persona non grata” and said his „obligations under international treaties are clear”.

Trudeau cites US ratcheting up tensions with Iran in plane’s downing

AFP•January 14, 2020

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the first major leader to publicly state Iran could be to blame for the plane crash Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the first major leader to publicly state Iran could be to blame for the plane crash (AFP Photo/Dave Chan)Ottawa (AFP) – Victims of an Iran-downed jetliner would still be alive if not for a recent escalation of tensions partly triggered by the United States, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday.”I think if there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” Trudeau said in an interview with Global television, according to a transcript shared with other media.He added that the international community has been „very, very clear about needing to have a non-nuclear Iran” but also in „managing the tensions in the region that are brought about by US actions as well.”The Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 was shot down by a missile shortly after taking off from Tehran before dawn last Wednesday, killing all 176 on board.By Ottawa’s count, 57 of the passengers were Canadian citizens, many of them dual Iranian nationals.Longstanding US-Iran tensions have soared since January 3 when missiles fired from a US drone killed a top Iranian commander, Qasem Soleimani, near Baghdad’s airport.Iran responded with a barrage of missiles at two US bases in Iraq, inflicting no casualties in what was seen as an attempt to prevent a spiral of escalation.But hours later, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard unit mistakenly shot down the Ukrainian passenger jet, in what Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called a „human error.”Trudeau also said he would have „obviously” liked a heads-up from Washington about the drone strike on Soleimani.- ‘Somebody’s responsible’ -Over the weekend, Trudeau demanded that Iran provide Canada with „full clarity” on the airliner shootdown.The prime minister said he made the demand in a call with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who admitted earlier Saturday that the airliner was mistakenly shot down by Iranian missiles.At a televised press conference on Saturday, Trudeau said he told Rouhani the admission was „an important step” but „many more steps must be taken.””A full and complete investigation must be conducted,” he said. „We need full clarity on how such a horrific tragedy could have occurred.”

„Iran must take full responsibility,” Trudeau said.

A Toronto law student who lost his mother in the crash echoed Trudeau’s statement in an interview with AFP.

„Once you start to cope with the sorrow a little bit, then came the tragic news that it was downed by a missile, and it was almost as if she died again,” Amirali Alavi said.

The 27-year-old said that „thinking how it could have been avoided, how somebody’s responsible for it” made him furious and inconsolable.

The accident was a deep blow to the Iranian community in Canada, which is home to North America’s largest Iranian diaspora. According to the last census, there were 210,000 Canadians of Iranian origin living in this country in 2016.

„I am, of course, outraged and furious that families across this country are grieving the loss of their loved ones, that the Iranian-Canadian community is suffering so greatly, that all Canadians are shocked and appalled at the senseless loss of life,” Trudeau said Saturday.

„It’s a huge tragedy for the entire country and not just for the Iranian community.”

Asked whether Ottawa would demand that Tehran pay financial compensation to the families of Canadian victims, Trudeau indicated that it would.

The prime minister also said he insisted to Rouhani that Canada be allowed to participate in the investigation.

Three members of a Canadian rapid deployment team flying to Tehran will have access to the plane’s wreckage and blackboxes, Iranian officials confirmed Monday.

World As Iran missiles battered Iraq base, US lost eyes in sky

AFP•January 15, 2020US military bases in the Middle East Ain al-Asad Air Base (Iraq) (AFP) – Moments after volleys of Iranian missiles began to batter Iraq’s Ain al-Asad airbase, US soldiers at the desert facility lost contact with their ultra-powerful — and expensive — eyes in the sky.At the time the attack was launched at 1:35 am on January 8, the US army was flying seven unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over Iraq to monitor bases where US-led coalition forces are deployed.They included MQ-1C Gray Eagles, advanced surveillance drones that can fly for as long as 27 hours and carry a payload of up to four Hellfire missiles.”We thought it may lead to a ground assault, so we kept the aircraft up,” said one of the pilots, 26-year-old Staff Sergeant Costin Herwig.Herwig was flying a Gray Eagle when the first Iranian missile struck the base, retaliation for the January 3 killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad.Most of the other 1,500 US soldiers had been tucked away in bunkers for two hours, after advance warning from superiors.But 14 pilots had stayed in dark containers-turned-cockpits to remotely fly the „birds” and monitor essential feeds from their high-powered cameras.

A US soldier walks past a drone at the Ain al-Asad airbase in the western Iraqi province of Anbar (AFP Photo/Ayman Henna)The first missile blasted dust into their shelter but the pilots stayed put, Herwig told AFP during a press tour of the base organised by the coalition.The next rounds came closer and closer, and the light-haired soldier recalled that he had „accepted fate”.”We thought we were basically done,” he said.- ‘There was no control’ -But the real crisis was yet to come.The volleys of missiles, which soldiers said lasted about three hours, slammed into sleeping quarters directly adjacent to the pilots’ operations rooms.”No more than a minute after the last round hit, I was heading over to the bunkers on the far back side and saw the fire was burning all through our fibre lines,” said First Sergeant Wesley Kilpatrick.

Extensive damage at Ain al-Asad military airbase used by US and other foreign troops in the western Iraqi province of Anbar after Iran last week launched a wave of missiles at the sprawling desert facility (AFP Photo/Ayman HENNA)Those lines link the virtual cockpits to antennas then satellites that send signals to the Gray Eagles and pull the cameras’ feeds back onto the screens at Ain al-Asad.”With the fibre lines burnt, there was no control,” said Kilpatrick.

The soldiers could no longer locate the drones and were left blind to events in the air — and on the ground.

If a drone had been shot down, for example, the besieged teams at Ain al-Asad could not have known.

„It’s a pretty big deal, because it’s so expensive and there’s a lot of stuff on them that we don’t want other people to have or the enemy to get,” said Herwig.

A single Gray Eagle costs around $7 million, according to 2019 army budget estimates.

They have been used in Iraq since at least 2017 by the coalition to help fight the Islamic State jihadist group.

The coalition is required to get a green light from the Iraqi government to fly drones and planes, but those permissions had expired several days before the Iran attacks.

The US army had kept the drones in the air anyway, a senior American defence official told reporters, after months of rocket attacks on Iraqi bases where their forces are based.

– Beat the clock –

As the bombs crashed closer on January 8 and with the drones unaccounted for, the pilots finally clambered into bunkers.

But as soon as the blasts stopped, they rushed back out, now facing a race against time to get their signals up and running so they could find — and land — the Gray Eagles.

As dawn started to break, soldiers scrambled to replace 500 metres (yards) of melted fibre cables and reprogramme satellites so they could reconnect to the UAVs.

Last step? Land the „birds.”

The Iranian ballistic missiles had punched holes across Ain al-Asad’s airfield and the control tower was empty.

„The airfield was shut down so we had to land without talking to anybody. We didn’t know where any (other) aircraft was. That part was pretty stressful,” said Herwig.

The priority was one Grey Eagle that had been scheduled to land just as the missile attack began, and which stayed flying throughout until it was worryingly low on fuel.

The pilots worked for hours to land each drone one by one, their adrenaline pumping even as other soldiers were recovering, showering and assessing the damage.

At around 9:00 am, the final drone was brought down to earth.

„We landed all our own birds back on site,” said Kilpatrick, smiling in relief and pride.

„It was quite a feat.”

Politics Parnas Associate Tracked Ousted Ambassador’s Movements in Kyiv: Docs

by The Daily Beast•January 15, 2020Stephanie Keith/Getty On the eve of a Senate trial to remove President Trump, House Democratic investigators have released a trove of documents obtained from the phone of Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani’s who was tasked with carrying out key parts of the plot to pressure the new president of Ukraine to do political favors for Trump.The evidence released includes eye-popping new details about several parts of the story pieced together during the impeachment inquiry—particularly Giuliani’s campaign to remove Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who testified that she was ousted after being targeted in what she described as a smear campaign by Trump and his allies.  Lev Parnas Pushes to Share His Info With House IntelIn one exchange from March 2019, Robert F. Hyde, a Trump donor and Republican Congressional candidate whose involvement in the Ukraine saga has not been previously detailed, sent a series of texts to Parnas that implied he had access to people tracking Yovanovitch’s movements in Kyiv, according to the newly released documents.“They know she’s a political puppet,” Hyde texted. “They will let me know when she’s on the move… They are willing to help if you/we would like a price.”“Guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money… what I was told,” Hyde messaged. Parnas responded: “LOL.”Shortly after the text exchanges were released Tuesday, a lawyer for Yovanovitch called for an investigation into the “disturbing” claim that she was being stalked while serving in Ukraine.“Needless to say, the notion that American citizens and others were monitoring Ambassador Yovanovitch’s movements for unknown purposes is disturbing,” Lawrence Robbins said in a statement. “We trust that the appropriate authorities will conduct an investigation to determine what happened.”A photo of Hyde on Parnas’ phone matches that of the Connecticut-based Republican running for U.S. House, and Parnas’ attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, confirmed to The Daily Beast that it is indeed the same Hyde. Up until this point, Hyde was best-known for an offensive tweet about Sen. Kamala Harris that drew widespread condemnation. Reached for comment on the text messages by The Daily Beast on Tuesday night, Hyde texted, “Bull Schiff is a giant b*tch.” Meet the Trump Donor Who Allegedly Stalked America’s Ambassador in Ukraine The documents also include new information about the push for a Ukrainian-led investigation explicitly focused on the Biden family. Parnas turned over a photo of a note, written on stationary from the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Vienna, that includes an instruction to “get” Zelensky to announce that “the Biden case will be investigated.”The note, whose authenticity was confirmed by Parnas’ counsel, also reads “start” communicating with Zelensky without Victor Pinchuk and Ihor Kolomoisky, two influential Ukrainian oligarchs. Additionally, Parnas texted with Yuriy Lutsenko, the former Ukrainian prosecutor who pushed discredited theories about Yovanovich’s supposed hostility toward Trump. According to one March 2019 text message, Lutsenko appeared to link Yovanovitch’s removal to a probe into the Bidens.  „It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about madam, you are bringing into question all my announcements, including about B,” Lutsenko wrote to Parnas. The exchange came around the time Lutsenko announced the reopening of an investigation into Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company linked to Hunter Biden that Trump and his allies like Rudy Giuliani have portrayed as the epicenter of supposed corruption by the Biden family. Lutsenko later reversed course and said there was no basis for a case against the Bidens.Additionally, the messages between Parnas and Giuliani suggest that Giuliani believed he had Trump’s support in reversing a decision to deny a U.S. visa for Viktor Shokin, the former top Ukrainian prosecutor who then-vice president Biden and others had called to remove.“I can revive it,” Giuliani purportedly said. “It’s going to work I have no 1 in it,” an apparent reference to Trump. The materials also indicated that Parnas and his pals plotted to get indicted Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash to fire Lanny Davis–a longtime Democratic lawyer–from his legal team. A photo of a notepad from the Ritz Carlton in Vienna, where Firtash lives as he fights extradition to the U.S., showed a T-chart with “Joe/Victoria” on one side and “Lanny Davis” on the other. Under the Davis column, it read “get rid of Lanny Davis (nicely).” Davis told The Daily Beast that his firing was, in fact, nice.“The departure was done nicely, but I’ve never met Parnas in my life,” he said. “I do want to add that my role was limited to serving as a criminal defense lawyer correcting the public record, having nothing to do with politics. That was my red line, and I’m sad what’s happened to Mr. Firtash since.”The “Joe/Victoria” column of the notepad said the husband-wife duo would “cut deal or get dismissed”–apparently referring to efforts to end the Justice Department’s long-running criminal prosecution of Firtash for charges related to bribery. House Democrats’ document dump comes a day before Speaker Nancy Pelosi is set to formally send the two articles of impeachment against Trump, passed on Dec. 19, to the Senate so it can begin its trial. In a statement accompanying the release of new information, the House Democratic committee chairs who led the impeachment inquiry said the evidence “confirms what we already know: the President and his associates pressured Ukrainian officials to announce investigations that would benefit the President politically.” The chairs—some of whom, such as Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, are likely to prosecute the case against Trump in the Senate—wrote that the information on Parnas’ phone alone suggested the administration is hiding far more damning evidence. The administration has blocked subpoenas to hand over much of the documents subpoenaed by Congress for its inquiry. “There cannot be a full and fair trial in the Senate without the documents that President Trump is refusing to provide to Congress,” they said. In October, Parnas was arrested by federal authorities while attempting to leave the U.S.; a subpoena was issued shortly thereafter for records in his possession related to the Ukraine matter. Later that month, he told House investigators his desire to comply with their inquiry.Five Cellphones, Trump Straws, a Lot of Cash—What This Giuliani Crony Was Carrying When the FBI Arrested Him