A Ceasefire … or a Fig Leaf?
Despite some initial reports that a tenuous two-week ceasefire is holding in the Middle East, Kuwait, the UAE, and Qatar all claimed to have subsequently received incoming missile fire. For its part, Iran claimed that one of its oil refinery on a island in the Persian Gulf had come under attack since the ceasefire by unnamed “enemies.”
The ceasefire did not include Israel’s ongoing offensive in southern Lebanon, where it carried out the largest wave of strikes since the war began.
The real focus of the highly contingent ceasefire agreement was the Strait of Hormuz, which was free and open before President Trump’s elective war and is now throttled by Iran. Trump is declaring the strait open for his own political purposes, but the terms of the ceasefire give Iran more control over the vital waterway than it had before the war started:
- Iran and Oman will jointly charge newly imposed fees for passage through the strait. “The strait is in the territorial waters of both Oman and Iran,” the AP reports. “The world had considered the passage an international waterway and never paid tolls before.”
- The new fee is “roughly $2 million per ship,” the NYT reports.
- The White House and Trump reposted a statement from the Iranian foreign minister that showed the highly contingent nature of the agreement on the strait:
On the water, there were few signs that the ceasefire had created sufficient conditions for safe passage through the strait. While it was still early, Lloyd’s of London issued a statement that cautioned about the continuing peril: “Moving before new protocols are clarified could expose crews, ships and cargoes to heightened risk.”
The strategic catastrophe for the United States appears to extend beyond the narrow confines of the strait. Trump called Iran’s 10-point peace plan “a workable basis on which to negotiate.” Any long-term agreement along those lines would be a remarkable coup for the Iranians to have pulled off in the face of withering American firepower:
Yep
The New York Times’ Charlie Savage: Trump’s Iran Threats Look Like Self-Incrimination for Potential War Crimes
Quote of the Day
“Better TACO Tuesday than World War III.”—an unnamed European official told Politico
Abrego Garcia Case Goes Off the Rails Yet Again
Another bizarre development in the Trump administration’s never-ending brutalization of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
In what should have been a placid conference call to set a briefing schedule for the administration’s renewed effort to deport him to Liberia, a career DOJ attorney took the puzzling position that Abrego Garcia could self-deport to Costa Rica on his own at any time. That ignores entirely the pending criminal prosecution of him in Tennessee by the same Justice Department.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Maryland was confounded by the DOJ attorney’s position, and after scolding him at length that Abrego Garcia was legally barred in the criminal case from voluntarily leaving the country, he mostly retreated. “This is chimerical,” Xinis spit out at one point with such vigor that it sounded like a curse word. My full write up is here.
Mass Deportation Watch
- New ICE shooting: A man is in critical condition after being shot by ICE officers during a targeted traffic stop in California. Video of the incident shows a chaotic scene with agents surrounding the man’s car as he attempts to flee.
- Kseniia Petrova, the Russian-born Harvard researcher who allegedly smuggled frog embryos through Boston’s Logan Airport won a victory in court when U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss of Vermont ruled that her visa had been unlawfully cancelled.
- Annie Ramos, the undocumented wife of an Army sergeant who was detained by ICE at Ft. Polk as they were moving into base housing has been released from detention after five days.
The Retribution: Cassidy Hutchinson
In double whammy of abuse of power and corrupt retributive prosecutions, the Trump II DOJ is targeting Trump I White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson and bizarrely using its Civil Rights Division to do so, the NYT reports:
The move was a highly unusual one by Justice Department leadership, directing a criminal case that appears to involve accusations of lying to Congress to a specialized unit that normally focuses on systemic civil rights abuses like police misconduct and racial discrimination.
The new focus on Hutchinson, a star witness before the House Jan. 6 committee, appears to have been a last-gasp effort by then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce results in targeting President Trump’s political foes. Instead of being run by D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, as would be normal, the case was assigned to Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the Civil Rights Division. It’s another way for Dhillon, who is reportedly in line for a promotion to the No. 3 slot at DOJ, to burnish her reputation as a Trump loyalist.
The Retribution: Todd Blanche Edition
In his first press conference since Bondi was fired, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended President Trump’s retributive prosecutions against his political foes: “That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that.”
The Corruption: Mile High Edition
The White House has purchased — without congressional authorization — and taken control of the controversial $70 million luxury jet that then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was leasing for her own use, the WSJ reports. First lady Melania Trump and select cabinet secretaries will have access to the jet.
Hot tips? Juicy scuttlebutt? Keen insights? Let me know. For sensitive information, use the encrypted methods here.
