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The slow-moving A-10 "Warthog" is a so-called close-air support plane that could be used to help U.S. ground forces seize territory near the Strait of Hormuz.
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As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Easter Sunday, we go to Palestine to speak to Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor of the Lutheran Church in Ramallah and director of the Bethlehem Institute for Peace and Justice, located in the city of Jesus Christ's birth. This year's Easter preparations come against the backdrop of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, which many Christian nationalists in the U.S., including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, are framing in extremist religious terms. Reverend Isaac calls the Christian Zionism espoused by Hegseth and others "a theology of war, of violence" and highlights the efforts of Pope Leo XIV, the U.S.-born head of the Catholic Church who has come out stridently against both the war and Hegseth's rhetoric, to promote peace in the region.
Isaac also comments on Israeli authorities' recent attempt to prevent the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday due to Israel's ban on gatherings at religious sites during the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quickly granted access to the church following global backlash. But, "do we really need permission from an occupying authority?" asks Isaac. "Israel does not have sovereignty over, should not have sovereignty over Jerusalem. … We have been worshiping here for centuries, uninterrupted."
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We take a look at how war in the Middle East is impacting the environment in "one of the most water-stressed regions in the world," with Kaveh Madani, the renowned U.N. scientist, former Iranian politician and recipient of the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize. Madani discusses threats to civil water infrastructure in the Gulf region, how the Strait of Hormuz crisis highlights consumer countries' overreliance on oil and gas, and his prize-winning work on the global effects of "water bankruptcy." Madani ties the antiwar and climate struggles together and calls for wider popular resistance to the long-term environmental harms of global warfare. "All the weapons that have been produced have had carbon footprints — the missiles that fly, the jets, the tanks that are burned, the oil fields that are being attacked and the gas fields that are being burned. All of these are producing a lot of greenhouse gas emissions," he says. "They are going to impact us in the long term."
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After resisting calls for public hearings for weeks, House Republicans have called the secretary of defense to testify at a budget hearing in late April for the first time since the attacks on Iran began.
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