Iran retaliates

Iran fired hundreds of ballistic missiles on Friday in retaliation for Israel’s airstrikes. Those overnight raids, ordered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, killed top Iranian generals and are said to have badly damaged key military infrastructure. Iran’s state-controlled news agency said some 70 people were killed by the Israeli strikes, and hundreds more injured.

The latest escalation came amid indirect nuclear talks between the Islamic Republic and the US. President Donald Trump, who made a point of discarding an earlier nuclear accord with Iran sealed by President Barack Obama, urged Iran to accept a new deal with Washington despite the Israeli attacks. —David E. Rovella

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The immediate question to answer about the war that Israel has started with Iran, Marc Champion writes in Bloomberg Opinion, is can this achieve Israel’s stated goal of ensuring, once and for all, that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon? It’s more likely that Israel can do no more than delay Iran’s nuclear program by a few years. And if that’s the case, Champion writes, it becomes impossible to justify the certain bloodshed and unknowable consequences of starting the war, because it would at best gain no more than the diplomacy it displaced. So why now, Champion asks? The answer may have just as much to do with Iran’s current military condition as it does with Netanyahu’s political and legal future.

With federalized National Guard troops still on the streets of Los Angeles after the US Court of Appeals stayed a ruling giving them back to the state, demonstrations there and in cities across the country are scheduled for this weekend. The three-judge panel, which included two judges selected by Trump, put on hold a scathing federal court ruling assailing the administration for likely unconstitutional and illegal actions.
But with the ruling on hold, Trump escalated the crisis: US Marines arrived on Friday in America’s second-largest city. Republican-controlled states meanwhile activated their own National Guard troops to confront demonstrators in the coming days. Protestors decry Trump as an authoritarian and threat to the country, oppose his militarization of civilian law enforcement and potentially illegal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. So-called No Kings protests are reportedly planned for almost 2,000 locations around the country, according to the Associated Press.

Europe has a new plan to force Vladimir Putin to end his devastating war on Ukraine: lower the price cap on Russian oil sales to $45 per barrel from the current $60 as a way of squeezing the main source of funding for the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor. But there’s one thing standing between European nations and a tightening of the screws on Putin: America.

Trump, who has regularly praised Putin and recently expressed ambivalence about the war, comparing it to a hockey game, has refused to agree to the plan. The European Union and UK could explore lowering the cap without the US. Most of Russia’s oil is transported near European waters so going it alone might have some effect. But an accord involving all G-7 nations would be more effective as it would be able to rely on US enforcement.

In a year where crises have come in waves, traders from London to New York opted to hold their breath rather than flee en masse after Israel’s overnight attack on Iran. While gold climbed and stocks slid, there was no stampede in a world where ongoing wars in Europe, Gaza and Africa have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and the world’s biggest power is seen as coming apart at the seams. The S&P 500 finished the week down modestly and remains less than 3% below its record high, and crude gave back some of its early gains. That relative calm followed a familiar playbook: Markets are shocked, prices stumble, then the habitual dip-buyers swoop in. It helped that non-governmental readings on consumer sentiment came in better than estimated, along with the fourth-straight month of better-than-projected inflation data from the US Department of Labor.

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