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Geopolitics

Tunisia Political Crisis Deepens After Prime Minister Resigns

FRANCE 24 (France), AL JAZEERA (Qatar), REUTERS

Worldcrunch

TUNIS - Tunisia's political turmoil continued on Wednesday following Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali’s resignation, after he failed to appoint a non-partisan cabinet of technocrats.

Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki is meeting Wednesday with Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the country's leading party Ennahda to ask him to nominate a new prime minister, according to Al Jazeera.

Although Ghannouchi has said he wants to see Jebali head a new coalition, Jebali said he refused to lead another government without fresh elections and a new constitution, France 24 reports.

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Jebali seated to the left of Marzouki file photo: Samir Abdelmoumen

The ongoing crisis led Standard & Poor's international ratings agency to downgrade Tunisia's credit rating late Tuesday, although Reuters reports that negotiations between Tunisia and the International Monetary Fund on a $1.78 billion loan are continuing.

The political stalemate was sparked two weeks ago by the assassination of opposition leader Chokri Belaid in Tunis. Jebali had said he would quit if his own moderate Islamist Ennahda party did not back the new coalition he was trying to form in a bid to restore calm after the killing.

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FOCUS: Israel-Palestine War

How Biden's Mideast Stance Weakens Israel And Emboldens Iran

The West's decision to pressure Israel over Gaza, and indulge Iran's violent and troublesome regime, follows the U.S. Democrats' line with the Middle East: just keep us out of your murderous affairs.

Photo of demonstration against U.S President Joe Biden in Iran

Demonstration against U.S President Joe Biden in Iran.

Bahram Farrokhi

-OpEd-

The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is weak both structurally and for its dismal popularity level, which has made it take some contradictory, or erratic, decisions in its war against Hamas in Gaza.

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Other factors influencing its decisions include the pressures of the families of Hamas hostages, and the U.S. administration's lukewarm support for this government and entirely reactive response to the military provocations and "hit-and-run" incidents orchestrated by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its allies, which include Hamas. Israel has also failed to mobilize international opinion behind its war on regional terrorism, in what might be termed a full-blown public relations disaster.

The administration led by President Joe Biden has, by repeating the Democrats' favored, and some might say feeble, policy of appeasing Iran's revolutionary regime, duly nullified the effects of Western sanctions imposed on that regime. By delisting its proxies, the Houthis of Yemen, as terrorists, the administration has allowed them to devote their energies to firing drones and missiles across the Red Sea and even indulging in piracy. The general picture is of a moment of pitiful weakness for the West, in which Iran and other members of the Axis - of Evil or Resistance, take your pick - are daily cocking a snook at the Western powers.

You wonder: how could the United States, given its military and technological resources, fail to spot tankers smuggling out banned Iranian oil through the Persian Gulf to finance the regime's foreign entanglements, while Iran is able to track Israeli-owned ships as far aways as the Indian Ocean? The answer, rather simply, lies in the Biden administration's decision to indulge the ayatollahs and hope for the best.

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