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Israel

Reelected But Weakened, Israel's Netanyahu Must Seek Broad Coalition

JERUSALEM POST, HAARETZ (Israel), BBC NEWS (UK), CNN, NEW YORK TIMES (USA)

Worldcrunch

JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu"s narrow victory for a third term as Israel's prime minister will force him to reach out to the surprise centrist challenger as he now faces the complex task of forming a new coalition.

Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu right-wing alliance lost a quarter of its Parliamentary seats in the Knesset, a humbling rebuke for Netanyahu who himself called the early elections as an overwhelming favorite with no obvious challenger, according to the New York Times.

Still, the Likud-Beitenu lineup still remains the largest grouping with 31 to 33 of the 120 Knesset seats.

This election’s biggest surprise came from the Yesh Atid party, a new centrist movement founded by television celebrity and political novice Yair Lapid, which came in second with 19 seats, according to the exit polls.

BBC News expects President Shimon Peres will soon ask Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attempt to form a new government; coalition talks – notably with the Yesh Atid party -- may begin as early as next week.

"According to the exit polls, it is clear that Israelis decided that they want me to continue serving as prime minister, and that I form as broad a government as possible," Netanyahu is quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post.

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Newly reelected PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid - Wikimedia

Speaking shortly after his narrow reelection, Netanyahu cited a number of principles his new government will embrace: security, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, economic responsibility in the face of the global financial crisis, increasing equality in sharing burdens and lowering the cost of living, notably housing costs, CNN reports.

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Geopolitics

Why The Latin American Far Left Can't Stop Cozying Up To Iran's Regime

Among the Islamic Republic of Iran's very few diplomatic friends are too many from Latin America's left, who are always happy to milk their cash-rich allies for all they are worth.

Image of Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's embassy in Tehran/Facebook
Bahram Farrokhi

-OpEd-

The Latin American Left has an incurable anti-Yankee fever. It is a sickness seen in the baffling support given by the socialist regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which to many exemplifies clerical fascism. And all for a single, crass reason: together they hate the United States.

The Islamic Republic has so many of the traits the Left used to hate and fight in the 20th century: a religious (Islamic) vocation, medieval obscurantism, misogyny... Its kleptocratic economy has turned bog-standard class divisions into chasmic inequalities reminiscent of colonial times.

This support is, of course, cynical and in line with the mandates of realpolitik. The regional master in this regard is communist Cuba, which has peddled its anti-imperialist discourse for 60 years, even as it awaits another chance at détente with its ever wealthy neighbor.

I reflected on this on the back of recent remarks by Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, the 64-year-old Romina Pérez Ramos. She must be the busiest diplomat in Tehran right now, and not a day goes by without her going, appearing or speaking somewhere, with all the publicity she can expect from the regime's media.

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