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Geopolitics

Trump And The Ayatollah

With the choice of controversial retired Gen. Michael Flynn to be White House National Security Advisor comes a new flurry of anticipation (and worry) that American foreign policy will be turned on its head with the election of Donald Trump.

Take the Iranian nuclear accord negotiated by the Obama Administration, which Trump has called "the worst deal ever" in, well, the entire history of dealmaking. Tehran is watching the coming changes in Washington, with conservative Fars news agency this week quoting past remarks by the hawkish diplomat John C. Bolton, touted as a possible Secretary of State, urging support for Iranian opponents intent on toppling the regime. The more moderate ISNA agency preferred to cite, hopefully perhaps, comments by another Trump ally, Rudolph Giuliani, saying that the nuclear deal with Iran could not be ignored completely.

The conflicting reports reflect unease in Tehran over the best- and worst-case scenarios of a Trump presidency. A commentator in the conservative daily Resalat, Hamed Hajiheidari, wrote Thursday that at least America's "mischief" would now become more evident. Democrats were always "more destructive," he argues, as they "tricked" many governments into trusting the United States as benign.

In his first comments on Trump's election, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered what can only be described as a yawn. He told a crowd Wednesday that "we have no judgment" on Trump's election, because "this is the same America that has brought us no good whichever party is in power" the reformist paper Shargh cited him as saying.

If Trump's foreign policy turns into nothing more and nothing less than an extension of his "Art of the Deal," we can safely say that Tehran will be like no other re-negotiation he has ever faced.


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Migrant Lives

The Damning Proof Of Migrants Tortured In Libya — And Italy's Complicity

The Refugees in Libya movement has posted shocking images to awaken our consciences. But here, all is silent, and the hope for humanity is entrusted to a Europe that is reborn from the bottom up.

Aereal photograph of Staff members of the desert patrols of the Libyan Illegal Immigration Control Department and some stranded African migrants at the Libya-Tunisia border

Staff members of the desert patrols of the Libyan Illegal Immigration Control Department and some stranded African migrants are seen at the Libya-Tunisia border

Xinhua/ZUMA
Mattia Ferrari

-OpEd-

TURIN — "Let me die."

These were the desperate words of yet another migrant tortured by the Libyan mafia. Like many others from sub-Saharan Africa, this teenager had to leave his homeland wrecked by global apathy and injustice. And like many others, he ended up in the hands of a local criminal organization, who imprisoned him in one of the notorious camps in the Libyan town of Bani Walid.

We know of his fate from videos of his torture, which were shot in order to extort ransom from his family back home. A social movement led by the migrants, "Refugees in Libya," has been sharing this footage in hopes of awakening Europe's conscience.

But on this side of the Mediterranean, all is silent.

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