Listen to this articleAudio Review: Trump administration plans “flood” of sanctions on Iran by Jan. 20 |U.S. Tried a More Aggressive Cyberstrategy, and the Feared Attacks Never Came | Armenia Accepts a Deal in Nagorno-Karabakh War | Opinion | The Joe Biden I Knew Has Been Humbled – The New York Times| Trump shows transition will be as turbulent as his presidency – CNNPolitics | FDA Allows Emergency Use of Antibody Drug to Fight COVID-19
New York Times Review – 11:18 AM 11/10/2020 | News-Links – news-links.org
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The Trump administration, in coordination with Israel and several Gulf states, is pushing a plan to slap a long string of new sanctions on Iran in the 10 weeks left until Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, two Israeli sources briefed on the effort told me.
Driving the news: The Trump administration’s envoy for Iran Elliott Abrams arrived in Israel on Sunday and met Prime Minister Netanyahu and National Security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat to discuss the sanctions plan.
- Abrams will meet on Monday with Minister of Defense Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi to brief them on the plan.
- Abrams didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Why it matters: The Trump administration believes such a “flood” of sanctions will increase pressure on the Iranians and make it harder for the Biden administration to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, the Israeli sources told me.
Behind the scenes: In the last several weeks, the Trump administration — with the encouragement and assistance of part of the Israeli diplomatic and security establishment — has prepared a “target bank” of Iranian entities that will be sanctioned.
- Abrams said in a closed briefing several days ago that the Trump administration wants to announce a new set of sanctions on Iran every week until Jan. 20, a source who was privy to the briefing told me.
- The Israeli sources told me the planned sanctions are not connected to the Iranian nuclear program — such sanctions are more likely to be canceled by a Biden administration and open the door to reviving the 2015 nuclear deal.
- Instead, the goal is to impose sanctions on Iran that are connected to its ballistic missile program, Iranian assistance to terror organizations and Iranian human rights violations.
What they’re saying: “The goal is to slap as many sanctions as possible on Iran until Jan. 20,” an Israeli source briefed on the plan told me.
What’s next: Abrams will travel from Israel to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh to discuss the sanctions plan.
- The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are the two main allies the Trump administration and the Israeli government have against Iran, and both are very concerned by the Biden administration’s future Iran policy.
- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is arriving in Israel on Nov. 18, Israeli and U.S. officials tell me. Pompeo will likely visit other countries in the region as well. His trip is also going to focus on the Trump administration’s last-ditch effort to increase pressure on Iran.
Go deeper: How Biden might tackle the Iran deal
TVER, Russia — Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia signed on Monday a Russian-brokered settlement to end the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, surrendering disputed territory and bowing to other demands as he faced a battlefield defeat.
The agreement signed by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Mr. Pashinyan calls for Armenia’s army to withdraw from the Nagorno-Karabakh region and to be replaced by Russian peacekeepers.
Under the deal, the warring sides were to halt fighting and prepare for the peacekeepers’ arrival. Three earlier cease-fires, negotiated by Russia, France and the United States, have collapsed.
But the agreement Monday suggested a more permanent, sweeping redrawing of the security map of the southern Caucasus, a volatile region wedged between Turkey, Russia and Iran. The settlement sealed a role in the region for an increasingly assertive Turkey, which backed Azerbaijan in the war that began in September.
“I personally made a very hard decision for me and all of us,” Mr. Pashinyan wrote in a statement announcing the agreement. “It’s not a victory, but there’s no defeat.”
Indeed, the agreement ends a quarter century of Armenian military control over the remote, mountainous region that is a touchstone of Armenian national identity. Russia will now guard the borders.
The Nagorno-Karabakh region has a mostly Armenian population but it fell within the Soviet-drawn borders of Azerbaijan. The enclave declared independence before the Soviet breakup.
For the Azerbaijanis, the settlement opens the prospect that at least some of the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people who lost their homes in a separatist war that ended in 1994 could return to the region. That war ended with the shoe on the other foot: a cease-fire seen as catastrophic but inevitable for Azerbaijan after Armenian military victories.
Mr. Putin said the new agreement requires both the Armenian and Azerbaijani armies to stop at their currently occupied positions. That cements in place the Azerbaijani capture on Sunday of a strategic town, known as Shusha to Azerbaijanis and Shushi to Armenians. It is the second-largest town in the region and overlooks the separatist capital of Stepanakert, just about 6 miles away.
Armenia has also lost control of the access road needed for military supplies to reach the mountain enclave, starving its defenders of hope of holding out if the fighting continued.
“I made the decision as a result of a deep analysis of the military situation,” Mr. Pashinyan wrote. He said the deal was “the best solution in the situation.”
Within hours of the announcement, protests broke out in Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. A crowd broke into the government building and ripped Mr. Pashinyan’s nameplate off the door of the prime minister’s office, Russian television news showed.
“Where is Nikol? Where is that traitor?” the intruders screamed.
Mr. Putin said the agreement was “in the interests of the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
For decades, Armenia had drawn support for its defense of the Nagorno-Karabakh region from a large diaspora in Southern California, France and Russia. Azerbaijan has relied on backing from Turkey, an ominous turn of events to Armenians who say the Turks have never accepted responsibility for atrocities committed during and after World War I. Distracted by the presidential election, the United States played only a limited role in the diplomacy over the past month.
The separatist government in Nagorno-Karabakh had for more than 25 years presided over seven occupied Azerbaijani districts outside the Soviet-era borders of the enclave. These were eerie, depopulated regions of deserted villages and ruined stone houses. Armenia defied United Nations resolutions calling for the return of the residents; holding, it seemed, the military advantage, the country had steadfastly refused any settlement allowing their return.
Now, the deal signed on Monday delivers to Azerbaijan much of what the country has sought for years in negotiations, including the return of internally displaced people.
Along with withdrawing its army from the enclave, Armenia agreed to surrender control of small ethnic Armenian areas inside Azerbaijan but not in Nagorno-Karabakh; to open a transport corridor for Azerbaijan through Armenia to the Azerbaijani region of Nakhichevan; and to allow the United Nations to oversee the return of the internally displaced people.
The capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert, was saved from what appeared to be imminent military attack but will rely on Russian peacekeepers for its defense.
The peacekeepers will deploy for five years and also guard the access road over a mountain pass known as the Lachin Corridor, and an approximately three-mile-wide buffer zone along its length, according to the agreement. Underscoring the loss of Shusha, or Shushi, the agreement calls for a new section of access road to be built around the now Azerbaijani-controlled town, a dramatic loss for the ethnic Armenian cause in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Another big change in strategy this year was a willingness to expose adversaries publicly. It is something the Obama administration was also reluctant to do in 2016, when it avoided naming China as the country that stole 22 million files on government employees, or Russia as the source of attacks on the Pentagon, the White House and the State Department.
This year, William R. Evanina, the official put in charge of election security by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, called out Russia, China and Iran for their efforts to interfere in the elections.
Though criticized by Democrats for not being specific enough, and appearing to equate Iran with much more talented cyberadversaries, Mr. Evanina’s releases put both the public and America’s rivals on notice about what was afoot, including warning that Russia was again trying to assist Mr. Trump.
Mr. Evanina’s announcements in July and August were followed by an announcement in October by John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, that Russian groups had probed state and local networks and that Iran had tried to influence the election by sending spoofed emails as part of a campaign he said was intended to hurt Mr. Trump.
“Naming and shaming the bad actors that are trying to mess with us is a key part of a coherent deterrence strategy,” said Representative Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who along with Mr. King led the Cybersecurity Solarium Commission.
Mr. Ratcliffe’s announcement was followed by Cyber Command’s secret operations to interfere with the operations of the Russian group and take down, at least temporarily, the Iranian hacking group tied to Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
American officials said that while Iran opposed Mr. Trump’s re-election, its hackers were hardly playing at Russia’s level. The emails and text messages they tried to send to Americans contained so many spelling, syntax and grammatical errors that they seemed unlikely to fool their targets. Even had they not been taken offline, they posed no threat to turn the result of the elections.
You no doubt saw or heard at least some of Joe Biden’s pitch-perfect victory speech last weekend, but what about the victory video that his campaign released hours earlier, just after CNN and other networks declared him the president-elect?
It’s a gorgeous two minutes of music (a rendition of “America the Beautiful” by Ray Charles) and images, precisely none of which show Biden. He cedes the frame and the moment entirely to Americans themselves — to Black Americans, white Americans, Native Americans, disabled Americans, young Americans, old Americans — and to the landscapes in the lyrics of the song.
The video made clear that we, not he, were the focus, the story, the point of all of this. His speech hours later similarly elevated the first person plural over the first person singular, which was singularly transcendent under Donald Trump.
Largely to draw a contrast with Trump, Biden ran one of the humblest presidential campaigns I can recall. He claimed victory in the presidential race last weekend with the same radical humility. And that tonic of a tone could be crucial to his agenda.
(CNN)The question is not whether President Donald Trump is leaving. It’s how much destruction, revenge and chaos he will wreak on the way out the door.
По мере того, как Реджеп Эрдоган обращает свой взор на Южный Кавказ, Россия пытается сдержать растущие неоосманские амбиции Турции. По мнению автора, конфликт говорит о более широкой модели турецкого проецирования власти на Южном Кавказе — той, которая будет представлять каскадную угрозу интересам безопасности России.
«Москве удалось вбить очередной гвоздь в гроб ОБСЕ – бессмысленной организации, обслуживающей интересы противников России, и свести роль Запада в Закавказье к нулю», – заявил политолог Тимофей Бордачев, комментируя подписание главами России, Армении и Азербайджана соглашения о прекращении войны в Карабахе«То, что произошло сегодня ночью – это очень хорошая новость. Во-первых, наступил мир между двумя народами, с которыми Россию связывают дружественные и добрососедские отношения. Во-вторых, ликвидируется один из реликтов эпохи, когда внешнеполитические позиции Москвы были очень слабыми – Минская группа с участием двух лидеров стран Запада – США и Франции», – написал на своей странице в Facebook программный директор международного дискуссионного клуба «Валдай» Тимофей Бордачев.
Эксперт уверен, что вместе с этим «роль Запада в Закавказье сводится к нулю». «Вбит очередной гвоздь в гроб ОБСЕ – бессмысленной организации, обслуживающей интересы противников России. Существенно усиливается российское военное присутствие в Закавказье. Азербайджан получает обратно большую часть отторгнутых 30 лет назад территорий, а Армения – гарантии российских миротворцев и шанс на более благоразумное правительство», – отмечает эксперт.
Он также отметил, что «Турция, если этого захочет Азербайджан, получит доступ к мониторингу исполнения договоренностей, которые были достигнуты под решающим влиянием России». «Но именно сейчас это не имеет значения. За эту чистую победу Россия заплатила жизнями двух своих солдат, но не вступила в боевые действия непосредственно», – заключил политолог.
Напомним, во вторник ночью премьер Армении сообщил, что вместе с президентами Азербайджана и России подписал заявление о прекращении карабахской войны. При этом президент Армении Армен Саркисян узнал об этом из СМИ.
Пресс-секретарь президента России Дмитрий Песков подтвердил, что лидеры России, Армении и Азербайджана подписали заявление о прекращении военных действий в Карабахе. Позже российский лидер Владимир Путин раскрыл детали договоренностей между сторонами конфликта.
Сразу же после этого началась операция по переброске российских миротворцев в Нагорный Карабах. При этом президент Азербайджана уточнил, что миротворцев в Карабахе разместят Россия и Турция. Позже в МИД России уточнили, что на линии соприкосновения в Нагорном Карабахе будут размещены только российские миротворцы.
Смотрите ещё больше видео на YouTube-канале ВЗГЛЯД
Из России в Нагорный Карабах вылетели 12 самолетов военно-транспортной авиации для выполнения миротворческой миссии после вступления в силу заявления о перемирии прекращении военных действий.
Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan yesterday adopted a joint statement on a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh and paved the way for a peacekeeping mission in the embattled region. The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier in the day emphasised that only Russian peacekeepers would be deployed to Karabakh.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. health officials have allowed emergency use of the first antibody drug to help the immune system fight COVID-19, an experimental approach against the virus that has killed more than 238,000 Americans.
The Food and Drug Administration on Monday cleared the experimental drug from Eli Lilly for people 12 and older with mild or moderate COVID-19 not requiring hospitalization. It’s a one-time treatment given through an IV.
The therapy is still undergoing additional testing to establish its safety and effectiveness. It is similar to a treatment President Donald Trump received after contracting the virus last month.
Early results suggest the drug, called bamlanivimab, may help clear the coronavirus sooner and possibly cut hospitalizations in people with mild to moderate COVID-19. A study of it in hospitalized patients was stopped when independent monitors saw the drug did not seem to be helping in that situation.
The government previously reached an agreement to buy and supply much of the early production of Lilly’s drug.
Only one drug — Gilead Sciences’ remdesivir — has full FDA approval for treating COVID-19. Government treatment guidelines also back using dexamethasone and other steroids for certain severely ill, hospitalized patients.
One other treatment has an emergency use designation now — convalescent plasma, or the blood of COVID-19 survivors. No large studies have shown it to be more effective than usual care alone, however.
The new drug is part of an emerging family of biologic therapies that offer a promising new approach to preventing serious disease and death from COVID-19. Experts say the infused drugs could serve as a therapeutic bridge to help manage the virus until vaccines are widely available.
The drugs are laboratory-made versions of antibodies, blood proteins which the body creates to help target and eliminate foreign infections. The new therapies are concentrated versions of the antibodies that proved most effective against the virus in patient studies.
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. also has asked for emergency authorization for an antibody drug it is testing, the one Trump received.
FDA regulators authorized the Lilly drug using their emergency powers to quickly speed the availability of experimental drugs and other medical products during public health crises.
In normal times the FDA requires “substantial evidence” to show that a drug is safe and effective, usually through one or more large, rigorously controlled patient studies. But during public health emergencies the agency can lower those standards and require only that an experimental treatment’s potential benefits outweigh its risks.
The emergency authorization functions like a temporary approval for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. To win full approval, Lilly will have to submit additional research to fully define the drug’s safety and benefit for patients.
The government has signed an agreement with Lilly to spend $375 million to buy 300,000 vials of the drug. How many doses that would provide is unclear. Each vial contains 700 milligrams and that dose proved ineffective in the early results. It took four times that amount — 2,800 milligrams — to show any effect.
The Lilly drug is authorized for people 12 and older who weigh at least 40 kilograms (about 88 pounds), and who are at high risk for progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization. This includes those who are 65 years of age or older, or who have certain chronic medical conditions.
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AP chief medical writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this report.
В ночь на 10 ноября Армения, Азербайджан и Россия подписали соглашение о прекращении войны в Нагорном Карабахе.
Celebrations begin following the signing of a deal to end the military conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Tuesday.
