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President Trump is confronting a crisis that is not bending to his narrative of a "pretty reasonable" new regime in Iran and all-but-assured victory for the United States.
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(Second column, 16th story, link)
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Democratic Congressmember Eric Swalwell of California and Republican Tony Gonzales of Texas resigned Tuesday. Both of them faced potential expulsion votes after they were accused of sexual misconduct involving former staffers.
Swalwell's resignation came just days after CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle reported multiple allegations against him, including twice raping a former staffer. Swalwell denied the allegations. He dropped out of the California gubernatorial race on Sunday. Gonzales had been facing calls to resign since February, when the San Antonio Express-News revealed he had an affair with a staffer who later took her own life, and also sent explicit text messages to another staffer.
"Congress itself shouldn't see these resignations as the end of the story here," says Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women's Law Center. "They actually should see it as the beginning of investigating not only what happened with these two individuals, but they need to understand whether or not they have a problem that is more of a pattern."
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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the first direct talks between Israel and Lebanon in decades on Tuesday in Washington. Hezbollah, which was not a party to the talks, made clear it will not abide by any agreement that results from their negotiations.
Israel's demand that Hezbollah be disarmed is "anything but reasonable," says Daniel Levy, former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. "What [Israel] is doing here is trying to put something that sounds reasonable on the table, but with the intention of embarrassing and humiliating the Lebanese government," which Levy says does not have the capacity to disarm Hezbollah.
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(Second column, 17th story, link)
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But without the Iranian proxy group's involvement, implementing a cease-fire will be difficult.
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Ship traffic has been halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the U.S. military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Iran denounced Trump's move as an illegal act amounting to "piracy" and has threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation. Trump ordered the blockade after the U.S. and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan. Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade.
Ervand Abrahamian, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, predicts "the U.S. will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf oil installations, gas installations. The oil prices then could really zoom up. Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel." Abrahamian warns that soaring energy prices will have long-term implications for the world economy.
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