More of Trump's pure evil!
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Report from Beirut: 1,000+ Dead, 1M+ Displaced, Many Fear Long-Term Occupation of Southern Lebanon
"As Israel continues to pummel Lebanon in its resumed war against the country and the Hezbollah paramilitary, we get an update from Associated Press reporter Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut. “If you compare this particular war to the last one, less than two years ago, what happened in the past three weeks is what happened in the past seven or eight months,” says Chehayeb, who describes masses of displaced people and fears of an imminent ground invasion. “There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country, and it doesn’t appear that these strikes will stop anytime soon.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
In Lebanon, there are reports of heavy fighting between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers backed by air and artillery fire as Israel pushes ahead with a ground invasion of South Lebanon. More than 1 million people have been displaced by Israeli strikes, evacuation orders, as well, across Lebanon. The Israeli military has also destroyed several bridges over the Litani River, which connects the south of Lebanon to the rest of the country.
Lebanese health officials report more than a thousand people have been killed and thousands injured since fighting began earlier this month. At least 40 medical workers are among the dead. There are over a hundred children who are dead.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights raised concerns of possible war crimes, writing, quote, “In many instances, Israeli airstrikes have destroyed entire residential buildings in dense urban environments, with multiple members of the same family, including women and children, often killed together. Such attacks raise serious concerns under international humanitarian law. People displaced by the fighting and living in tents along Beirut’s seafront have also been hit. … Deliberately attacking civilians or civilian objects amounts to a war crime. In addition, international law provides for specific protections for healthcare workers, as well as people at heightened risk, such as the elderly, women and displaced people,” unquote, said a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Fears are growing of a long-term occupation of southern Lebanon. Fighting began following the assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Lebanon, prompting Hezbollah to resume firing missiles into northern Israel.
For more on what’s happening in Lebanon, we go to Beirut, where we are joined by Kareem Chehayeb, correspondent for the Associated Press.
I know there’s a bit of a delay, Kareem. Just lay out what you’re experiencing and what you’re reporting on other people experiencing in Lebanon, in Beirut, in the south of Lebanon.
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Over the past three weeks, since this latest conflict or latest war began, things have escalated at such a rapid rate. If you compare this particular war to the last one, less than two years ago, what happened in the past three weeks is what happened in the past seven or eight months. There have been daily airstrikes in southern Lebanon, in southern suburbs, several overnight strikes in central Beirut, and a large displacement, which has really shocked the country.
The country at one point was hoping that it was going to restore its economy a bit, improve its regional standing with its relationship with the Gulf and so on. And it had hoped that it was going to, you know, not be involved in this regional conflict with the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran and, of course, Iran’s strikes on the Gulf and this whole regional mess. The Lebanese authorities have been trying their best to stay away from this. And there appear to have been some conversations with Hezbollah to avoid dragging Lebanon into this.
There’s a massive humanitarian crisis taking place now. Beirut is flooded with displaced people. Many are staying in public schools, which have turned into shelters, and many are still on the streets. The impact of the fuel crisis or the cost of petrol because of the energy — the strikes on energy facilities is worsening inflation in Lebanon.
And the Lebanese authorities are trying their best, it seems, to try and halt the fighting or bring a calm to the fighting through negotiations. They’ve offered direct negotiations with Israel. This is a move that France has supported, and France is trying to mediate between the sides. But it doesn’t appear that Hezbollah and Israel are interested in this at the moment. Hezbollah said they’re committing to fighting, no matter what the costs are at this point, while it doesn’t seem like Israel is going to turn back on this ground incursion, these series of ground operations, which looks like it will turn into a wider-scale ground invasion at one point or another. So, there is no diplomatic off-ramp. There is a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country, and it doesn’t appear that these strikes will stop anytime soon.
AMY GOODMAN: So, talk more about the possibility of direct negotiations, you reporting that Lebanon’s government has broken a taboo by proposing direct talks with Israel. What exactly is being proposed?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, the last time Lebanon and Israel had a series of direct negotiations goes back to the civil war. Now, since the end of the last war, the Lebanese and the Israelis have engaged in indirect negotiations through U.N., French and American mediation, largely on a military and technical level. Before the war in Iran began, there were efforts to bring about more civilian participation through diplomats. And there was a couple of meetings, and it appeared to have gone well. But these talks have largely broken down since the war in Iran, and then now here in Lebanon, as well.
As Israel announced the evacuation notice for the Beirut southern suburbs, the entirety of it, and as it appeared that there’s going to be more ground operations in southern Lebanon, President Joseph Aoun one night called President Emmanuel Macron and urged for France to start some sort of diplomatic initiative. Now, usually it’s Washington that comes in, but this time they seem preoccupied with what’s happening in Iran at the moment. And he later — or, soon after, rather — offered direct negotiations.
But the problem that he is facing and the Lebanese government is facing is that they are offering these negotiations as a way to stop the ongoing fighting, that they want a cessation of hostilities, and then negotiate. And in these negotiations, this would reaffirm Lebanon’s commitment to disarming Hezbollah and more — and to bring in more financial support to the Lebanese army so it could deploy across all of Lebanon and make sure that Lebanon’s entire geography is under the control of the Lebanese state and security forces.
Now, it appears that the Israelis, based on officials that I’ve spoken to here and the United States and elsewhere, are not saying no just yet to these talks. But it appears that the difference is that whether or not talks should happen while the fighting is going on or not, that appears to be the sticking point at the moment. Hezbollah, at the same time, do not support talks until the fighting stops and until Israel withdraws from Lebanese territory. So the Lebanese government is unable to get the parties that are involved in this conflict, that are directly engaged in this conflict, to have these talks. Now, that might change, but so far that’s not the case. And while it appears that Israel is keen on talks, the goal of the talks appear to be very different at the moment. That could change. But for the time being, the Lebanese government is sort of caught between a rock and a hard place and is essentially acting as a humanitarian agency.
AMY GOODMAN: Does Israel’s massive bombing campaign and dislocation of a million Lebanese — tens of thousands of Syrian refugees have gone back into Syria — does it strengthen Hezbollah’s domestic support in Lebanon?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: Hezbollah has always been a very divisive entity in Lebanon. You know, they are considered by some to be freedom fighters that protect southern Lebanon, the only viable armed entity that can protect southern Lebanon from Israel or any sort of foreign invasion, at a time where Lebanon’s army is very cash-strapped and does not necessarily have the same caliber to do so. But others see Hezbollah’s power, involvement in wars in the region, and ability to make these kinds of decisions related to war and peace — are seen as an entity that ultimately serves Iran’s regional interests and violates Lebanese sovereignty by, you know, going beyond the state or setting the state aside.
Now, what we’re seeing here in Lebanon at the moment, that it is worsening internal tensions that have definitely simmered since the last war, where Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel in solidarity with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where their intent, so they say, at the time was to put pressure on Israel to stop its war in the Gaza Strip. And they are accusing Hezbollah, their critics, of doing the same, but for Iran. But Hezbollah supporters say that since the end of the last war, Israel has not left five hilltop points in southern Lebanon, that Israel continue with near-daily strikes every day on Lebanon, and therefore, they weren’t doing their end of the ceasefire.
There are people who are very loyal to Hezbollah. They still are, despite the displacement. I spoke with people on the streets, in shelters and elsewhere, saying that, “No, Hezbollah have the right to fight, even if they don’t have the same, perhaps, military capabilities it did last time. But in principle, they have to fight. They can’t just tolerate watching, you know, Israel’s ongoing strikes over the past 15 months.”
But there are people who are quite frustrated, saying that, you know, joining this regional war, which the rocket fire was ultimately sparked by the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, was not something that they needed to deal with, that they’re already dealing with the repercussions of the last war, you know, an estimated $11 billion in damages. A lot of people have taken out loans to rebuild their homes. Some of them have barely been able to spend some time, you know, picking up the pieces from the last war.
It’s hard to, obviously, quantify public opinion in Lebanon, but certainly, if there was ever a time where divisions in Lebanon internally over Hezbollah and basically the identity of the country and where it’s going and where their place is in the region, this is probably the most intense and hostile it’s been internally in well over a decade.
AMY GOODMAN: And the reaction to the far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatening to demolish the southern suburbs of Beirut and turn it into another Gaza Strip, and Arab and Muslim nations condemning recent remarks by the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, after he claimed that Israel has a right to expand into most of the Middle East? Your response?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: There’s no doubt that even among people in Lebanon that are critical of Hezbollah, that they do feel horrified by this ongoing war, whether it’s this one or the last one, the evacuation warnings before strikes, the strikes that come without warning at all. And it does — it does frighten a lot of people. And I remember in the last war, for example, speaking to lots of people saying that this is eerily similar to what they witnessed take place in the Gaza Strip among the Palestinians there. So, they are obviously horrified that this is going to be a long war. And a lot of people are indeed worried that with this ground incursion, with the way things are looking in southern Lebanon, that there could be another long-term occupation, perhaps similar to the one that was in southern Lebanon until the year 2000. The difference is whether or not they blame Hezbollah or not for provoking Israel in this sense.
But people are certainly horrified, and they feel that there’s a sense of restlessness in this war compared to the last one. I think the last one, people were able to kind of manage things, for the most part. They were able to navigate themselves. But people feel this is an unpredictable war, that this one has no limits, and they don’t know how to — you know, they don’t feel like anywhere is safe. Some of these strikes in central Beirut, for example, are happening really in the heart of the capital, and they’re happening overnight in hotels where displaced people are staying or in random apartment buildings where, you know, suspected members of Hezbollah or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are. But even if people, you know, survive these attacks, it brings in a lot of horror. And you can definitely tell that the atmosphere is tense and people are really scared for their lives, because they do not feel like anywhere is safe, and that this is a very unpredictable war this time around.
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but I wanted to ask you about the bombing of the Lebanese journalist’s home, Mohammed Sherri,, killing him and his wife, injuring his children and his grandchildren, press freedom groups condemning this as a war crime. In a separate strike, this video that’s gone viral, an Israeli missile dropping right behind RT journalist Steve Sweeney as he was reporting to camera, wearing clearly a marked blue press vest. Both Sweeney and his cameraman are reportedly in the hospital. This is just that clip.
STEVE SWEENEY: Further rocket attacks were reported against Nahariya. And a minute —
AMY GOODMAN: Kareem Chehayeb, we just have 30 seconds, but your response?
KAREEM CHEHAYEB: So, journalists in this war have been victims, just like the last one, as well. There were several journalists that were killed in the last war, including Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah, most notably. And this is something that the Lebanese authorities have clearly condemned. It’s unclear how this will unfold. But there has been these two cases already — three, rather, as a videographer with Sweeney was also wounded in that strike. Lebanon, unfortunately, during these conflicts, there have been journalists who have been wounded and killed, and there are concerns that news agencies are trying to deal with, given the unpredictability of the strikes and the nature of this dangerous job.
AMY GOODMAN: Kareem Chehayeb, I want to thank you so much for being with us. Please be safe. We’re speaking to you in Beirut, journalist reporting on Lebanon, Syria and Iraq for the Associated Press.
Coming up, President Trump’s push for the so-called SAVE Act, which could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. Back in 15 seconds.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Greed” by Sweet Honey in the Rock when we were in our firehouse studio. On Monday, March 23rd, we’re celebrating our 30th anniversary at Riverside Church. The live stream will be at democracynow.org, with Patti Smith and Michael Stipe and Angela Davis and many others. So do tune in."
This is the White House Oval Office wall. This is so tacky. It is incredibly embarassing for us as Americans.
This is the White House Oval Office wall. This is so tacky. It is incredibly embarassing for us as Americans.
Surprise, unease in Japan after Trump uses Pearl Harbor to defend Iran war | AP News
Surprise, embarrassment, unease in Japan after Trump uses Pearl Harbor to defend Iran war
"TOKYO (AP) — Senior U.S. and Japanese officials tend to shy away from anything but very careful public comments about Japan’s 1941 sneak attack on U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor. So there was embarrassment, confusion and unease on Saturday in Japan after President Donald Trump casually used the World War II attack to justify his secrecy before launching the war against Iran.
The Japanese discomfort was compounded by the fact that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was sitting awkwardly at Trump’s side as he spoke.
Partly, the reaction is linked to the crucial security and economic role that the U.S. plays for Japan, its top ally in the region. Put simply, Japan needs to make sure the U.S. relationship thrives. That’s why Takaichi was in Washington.
But it’s also a reflection of just how fresh the political debate about Japan’s role in World War II remains here, even 80 years after its end.
Senior leaders, including Takaichi, have argued that Japan has apologized enough for what happened in the war. Takaichi herself has recently hinted at visiting Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese war criminals are honored among the 2.5 million war dead.
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AP AUDIO:Surprise, embarrassment, unease in Japan after Trump uses Pearl Harbor to defend Iran war
Surprise, embarrassment, unease in Japan after Trump uses Pearl Harbor to defend Iran war. AP correspondent Julie Walker reports.
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It is, however, somewhat startling for Japan to see these history questions spill over into a White House summit.
On Thursday, when asked by a Japanese reporter why he didn’t tell allies in Europe and Asia ahead of the U.S. attack on Iran, Trump cited Pearl Harbor to defend his decision, saying, ‘Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?”
The liberal leaning Asahi newspaper said in an editorial Saturday that Trump’s comments “should not be overlooked.”
“Making such a remark to justify a sneak attack and boast about its outcome is a piece of nonsense that ignores lessons from history,” Asahi said.
Claims of rudeness
Social media reaction has ranged from accusations of ignorance and rudeness by the U.S. president to claims that he didn’t see Japan as an equal partner. There were calls for Japan to protest what Trump said.
Tsuneo Watanabe, a senior fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, said in an online opinion piece published in the Nikkei newspaper Saturday that the comment signaled that Trump was “not bound by existing American common sense.”
“I get the impression that the comment was intended to bring the Japanese reporter (who asked the question) or Ms. Takaichi into complicity in order to justify his ‘sneak attack’ on Iran during diplomatic negotiations and without telling allied countries,” Watanabe said.
There’s also a feeling that an unspoken understanding exists between U.S. and Japanese leaders to tread carefully on the subject. Both sides need each other, with Washington relying on Japan to host 50,000 troops and an array of powerful hi-tech weapons, and Japan relying on the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter hostile, nuclear-armed neighbors.
Japan’s post-World War II constitution bans the use of force except for its self-defense, but Takaichi and other officials are now seeking to expand the military’s role.
When it comes to U.S.-Japan reconciliation, many here look to the example of former leaders Barack Obama and Shinzo Abe, who in 2016 paid tribute together at the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and at the Hiroshima Peace Park.
Mixed reaction for Japan’s leader
Takaichi, a hard-line conservative, was praised for not reacting to the comments by Trump, letting them pass with a roll of her eyes and a glance at her ministers seated nearby.
After all, the goal of her summit was to deepen ties with her most important ally, not debate World War II. She arrived shortly after Trump suggested that Japan was among the nations that did not quickly join his call to help protect the Strait of Hormuz.
Some, however, criticized Takaichi for not speaking up.
Hitoshi Tanaka, a former diplomat and a special adviser at the Japan Research Institute think tank, wrote on X that he felt embarrassed to see Takaichi flattering Trump.
“As national leaders, they are equals. … To make an equal relationship is not to flatter,” he said. “Just doing what pleases Trump and calling it a success if you are not hurt is too sad.”
Reporter criticized
There was initial blame on social media of the Japanese reporter who asked the question that prompted Trump’s Pearl Harbor comment.
The reporter, Morio Chijiiwa with TV Asahi, later said on a talk show that he asked the question to represent the feelings of Japanese who are not happy about Trump’s one-sided attack on Iran, and because other countries, including Japan, are being asked to help out.
“So that’s why I asked the question. I was meaning to say, Why didn’t you tell us, why are you troubling us?” he said. “Then President Trump hit back with the Pearl Harbor attack. … I found it extremely awkward for him to change the subject.”
Junji Miyako, 53, said Takaichi flattering Trump felt more condescending to him than the President’s Pearl Harbor remark.
“I was so frustrated to see Takaichi didn’t even say anything to Trump to stop the war,” he said. “I think Trump’s Pearl Harbor comment was stupid, but to me the war he started is a much bigger problem.”
___
This story has been corrected to state that Trump spoke on Thursday, not Friday.
Klug is the AP’s news director for the Koreas, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. He’s covered Asia since 2005 and has reported from across the region, including multiple trips to North Korea.
Yamaguchi is based in Tokyo and covers Japanese politics, security, nuclear energy and social issues for The Associated Press."
‘I’ve learned first-hand how evil is tolerated’: Colm TóibÃn on living in the US under Trump | Colm TóibÃn | The Guardian
‘I’ve learned first-hand how evil is tolerated’: Colm TóibÃn on living in the US under Trump
"The Brooklyn author on immigration and the inspiration behind his latest collection of stories
I often write the first paragraph of a story in a notebook, add to it every so often or leave it there to see if something might emerge from it. In 2008, in San Francisco, I went with three friends on a hike near Muir Woods overlooking the Pacific Ocean. At the summit, there was a kind of lodge where you could get a bed for the night and use the kitchen to make your own dinner. The view was spectacular.
As we climbed, I began to imagine a character, an Irish guy who had made up his mind to go home. This was his last big outing in the landscape. He had been working as a plumber. Dotted in the Bay Area were houses where he had repaired pipes and installed new sinks and toilets and washing machines. This was his legacy in America. He was someone who could be depended on in an emergency. But he was illegal and he was going home.
Over the next few years, the story became more solid. If my character left America, he knew that he would never be allowed back. He had a daughter from a marriage that had ended. He was crazy about her. If he left, he would lose the connection with her. I imagined him having one last day out with his daughter in that beautiful place. I wrote some more of the story and then I left it aside.
Sixteen years later, the story came back into my mind. It occurred to me that the election of Donald Trump for the second term and the prospect of him taking it out on illegal immigrants would be the actual spur to make my character really decide that he had to go home. He would leave on Monday 20 January 2025, the precise date of Trump’s inauguration. The hike with his daughter, almost a teenager, would take place on Saturday 18 January.
I worked it so that I would write the story of the hike on the very day it took place. I was in the same time zone. The inauguration was looming. ICE was coming towards us. Trump was getting louder and more ominous. As my protagonist and his daughter set out from the city, I was writing what they might say and do at the same time of the morning in question. They didn’t know (as I didn’t know) how they would find a parking space. But then it became easier than they (or I) had imagined. The aim was to finish this section that day. I could make changes, but they would be small. I would try to make it stick, so that I would not have to rewrite it on another day, a day when Trump had already taken over. I wanted the story done by then. And I wanted to publish it soon afterwards. It was superstitious; it felt serious at the time.
Sometimes, a glimpse is enough to start with, or a small detail from a much larger story. In his preface to The Spoils of Poynton, Henry James talks about this idea of a “germ”, what he called “a mere floating particle in the stream of talk”, something that “has the virus of suggestion”. Life, as James would have it, is “all inclusion and confusion”, just as art is “all discrimination and selection”. If you are seeking the inspiration for a story, then very little is more than enough. Something hinted – a clue, a suggestion – can do more in the imagination than something spelled out.
About 20 years ago, I interviewed a historian in the area of the Catalan Pyrenees called the Pallars. Because the Pallars is sparsely populated and remote, the historian had been able to account for every single death there in the Spanish civil war. And he was also able to collect many small details about injuries, bombardments and movements of troops.
What was strange, he said, was that in the summer of 1938 the town of Pobla de Segur in the Pallars was almost quiet. The real action was elsewhere. Thus, the fascist soldiers could hold parties at night down by the river, play guitar and drink plenty.
The historian invited a general who had been a young officer in Franco’s army in 1938 to return to the Pallars more than half a century later and show him where certain things had happened. As the general, now in his 70s, was walking through the town, he met a local woman who was out shopping, and, with surprise and a kind of delight, the two recognised one another immediately. They had known each other in that summer, the summer of 1938. She was from a world that was vehemently anti-Franco; no one wanted to remember those parties by the river.
That was all I needed. I almost asked the historian to tell me nothing more beyond that single encounter on the street. From that, I could start imagining those nights by the river in that summer of the civil war. And then conjure up the woman years later being told that the young soldier she had fallen in love with, whom she hadn’t seen for more than 50 years, was coming on a visit – he was a retired general now – and he remembered her name and he would like to see her.
It is important to be ready not to write the drama. At first, I tried to see what that meeting would be like. And then it struck me that it would be more powerful if the woman and the soldier didn’t meet all those years later. He had invited her to lunch but she didn’t go. The story would centre on how she spent those hours, knowing he was so close by, not meeting him.
The confrontation that does not occur is often more dramatic than the one that does. At the very end of another story, A Sum of Money, the young man who has been sent home from boarding school for stealing money has to face his parents. I sat gazing at a blank page for a long time as I worked out how this fraught encounter might be written until I realised that it didn’t have to be written at all. In the finished story, no one says anything. They almost do and then think better of it.
But something happens that makes a difference. The lack of open drama is a way to allow a shift to take place in someone’s sensibility. My job is to give it as much nuance and ambiguity as I can and also make it matter, make the arrow hit its mark.
James wrote about a fellow novelist who had published a much praised work of fiction about French Protestant youth. When someone asked her how she knew so much about French Protestant youth, she replied that once she was walking down a stairway in Paris and looked in through a doorway and saw a group of French Protestant youth. That is where her knowledge came from, just that. What James appreciated was the ability “to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern”.
In spring 1988 I decided to find a small apartment in Barcelona. One day, as I waited to be shown around a possible rental, three women in their 60s joined the queue. We spoke for just two or three minutes, but enough for me to discover they were sisters, they were Catalans, they had come back from living in Argentina for many years, they found prices in Barcelona very high. They finished one another’s sentences.
I waited 30 years to write The Catalan Girls. It is, at 30,000 words, the longest story in my latest collection. I imagined the lives of those three women I had fleetingly encountered. I dreamed up how and why they went to Argentina, how each of them lived there, and then how they came back to Catalonia. I made the middle one lesbian, the youngest dreamy and the eldest bossy. I gave them lovers and husbands. I imagined that the bossy one bossed her two younger sisters into getting the same hairdo as she had before they travelled back to Spain.
I moved closer also to what I knew. I imagined the three sisters attending the same festival in the village of TÃrvia in the Pallars as I attended in July 2017. I could easily have seen them if I had looked over. I knew what music the band was playing.
Other elements in the story came from memory. The house where the middle sister lives in the outskirts of Buenos Aires is precisely where I lodged in the spring and early summer of 1985. Her room is my room. The apartment where the youngest sister lives, paid for by her lover, is where I also lived in the spring of 2013.
In writing stories, I get energy from rooms I knew but no longer live in, from things that have gone, from spaces that seem oddly haunted and have lodged in the memory or could come back in dreams. In A Sum of Money, much of the action takes place in the dormitory known as The Attic at St Peter’s College, Wexford. I have not been in that dormitory since 1971.
In the early years of this century, I worked for a semester at various American universities in cities where I will not live again. Thus, in a story called Barton Springs, I could conjure up Austin in Texas, and in Five Bridges, the city of San Francisco. In Sleep, I could venture into an apartment I sublet near Columbia University in 2012 and 2013. I could put my hero in my bed. I could have him watch from the same window as I watched from, with a view of the George Washington Bridge. When I take him back to Dublin, I have him spend time in the long living room in Ranelagh that belonged to the feminist writer June Levine and her husband the psychiatrist Ivor Browne. The bar in Barcelona in A Free Man is a place I once knew well. The story The News from Dublin opens in the back room of the house where I was raised, a house that has long been sold. I won’t go back there.
By the time I wrote those stories, those spaces could only be visited in my memory or in my imagination. Other spaces, such as the room where I am now in New York, have not been written about. Not yet. They have not been lost yet. I do not regret them or miss them. They are not part of a world that I can imagine, a world that has somehow been completed and is ready to be framed or entered stealthily, as a ghost might come and haunt a story.
In the future, if I live long enough, I will be able to see this room as though framed, as though completed. It will be part of memory, part of history. I will be able to write about it. This is the room where I learned first‑hand not only what evil is like but how evil is tolerated. What is strange about being in America in the time of Trump is how ordinary it is, how what was unimaginable just over a year ago is suddenly, shockingly no longer a surprise.
For Five Bridges, I imagined an Irishman, illegal in San Francisco, realising the danger if he stayed. A year after it was published, elements of the story came true. On 9 February, the Guardian reported on the case of Seamus Culleton, from County Kilkenny in Ireland, who came to the United States on precisely the same visa as my character in Five Bridges, and who also built a life over decades.
Culleton was arrested by ICE in September while buying supplies at the hardware store in Massachusetts. After being held in ICE facilities near Boston and in Buffalo, he was flown to El Paso, where he was in a cell with more than 70 men. Culleton told the Irish Times that the detention centre was cold, damp and squalid, and there were fights over insufficient food – “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”.
This is a fate my character in Five Bridges managed to avoid. In the stories of the future, such characters will not be so lucky.
U.S. eases Iranian oil sanctions in scramble to contain energy prices, handing Tehran a boost
U.S. eases Iranian oil sanctions in scramble to contain energy prices, handing Tehran a boost
"Experts say the U.S. risks "funding a war against itself" as sanctions against Iranian oil are lifted, but the step may not do much to contain the conflict's economic ripple effects.
In a twist of wartime irony, the United States has moved to ease sanctions on Iranian oil to cool surging energy prices, a potential boon for Tehran as Washington scrambles to contain the economic shockwaves of its military campaign.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday the easing of sanctions, first imposed after Iran's 1979 revolution, would be “narrowly tailored” and only temporary, “permitting the sale of Iranian oil currently stranded at sea.”
“By temporarily unlocking this existing supply for the world, the United States will quickly bring approximately 140 million barrels of oil to global markets, expanding the amount of worldwide energy and helping to relieve the temporary pressures on supply caused by Iran,” Bessent added.
About 20% of the oil that the world consumes every day travels via the Strait of Hormuz, which runs along part of Iran’s coast. But since the war began at the end of February, shipping in the channel has come to a halt.
Retail gas prices have risen 93 cents per gallon and U.S. crude oil has soared more than 70% since the start of the year, as geopolitical strategy and economic reality collide.
At current prices, the amount of oil Bessent said the measures would bring to market would be worth more than $14 billion for Tehran.
Experts say his decision shines a light on a lack of strategic planning and warn that such measures are unlikely to make a difference to the wider economic pressures.
“The U.S. is funding a war against itself,” Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies, which is affiliated with Tel Aviv University in Israel, told NBC News.
Three things Richard Engel is watching as Iran war develops
“What we are seeing is really a flawed campaign, not in terms of operational size, but from the strategic preparation for the campaign itself,” he said. “The oil price is becoming much more important than eliminating this regime in Iran.”
Moritz Brake, a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies, said the decision to ease sanctions on Iranian oil “points in the direction of an underestimation of how well Iran would be able to resist the assault and the repercussions on the global economy.”
“The risks have been underestimated,” he told NBC News.
The U.S. has already undertaken other efforts to boost supply, including the release of millions of barrels of oil reserves, part of a global effort from International Energy Agency member countries. Since the beginning of the month, the administration has also lifted the Jones Act, easing some shipping regulations, and has temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil as well.
Brake noted that the war in Iran was having a “double effect” on Russia’s war on Ukraine.
“On the one hand, drone attacks have gone down in Ukraine because of Iranian drones no longer being shipped to Russia.” he said. “At the same time, the Russian war machine gets fueled with additional money because of rising oil prices and lifted sanctions.”
Stocks sold off sharply Friday as headlines about the war weighed heavily on market sentiment, delivering the worst four-week trading period since April 2025, when the Trump administration’s trade tariffs dominated the news.
Oil prices rose once again, with international (Brent) oil trading around $111, ending Friday up 8.3% for the week and 84% for the year.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in an email to employees Friday that the company will be canceling some flights as it prepares for higher oil prices because of the war with Iran.
“Our plans assume oil goes to $175/barrel and doesn’t get back down to $100/barrel until the end of 2027,” Kirby wrote. “Honestly, I think there’s a good chance it won’t be that bad,” he added, but “there isn’t much downside for us to preparing for that outcome.”
Kirby wrote that some less profitable flights are expected to be cut in the short term because of oil prices, like off-peak and red-eye flights. He made the comments in a message in which he said that jet fuel prices have more than doubled in the last three weeks.
“If prices stayed at this level, it would mean an extra $11B in annual expense just for jet fuel,” he said. “For perspective, in United’s best year ever, we made less than $5B.”
Citrinowicz said that measures to ease sanctions were unlikely to change the economic reality.
“Everybody knows that as long as Iran is controlling the straits, nothing will change in terms of the ability to take out the oil,” he said. “You cannot beat geography.”
Opinion | Trump Is Hiding the Truth About the War in Iran - The New York Times
Trump Is Hiding the Truth About the War in Iran
"The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
From his first announcement of the attack on Iran on Feb. 28, President Trump has issued a stream of falsehoods about the war. He has said Iran wants to engage in negotiations, though its government shows no sign of it. He has claimed that the United States “destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability” when Tehran continues to inflict damage throughout the region. He has said the war is almost complete even as he calls in reinforcements from around the globe.
Lying is standard behavior for Mr. Trump, of course. His political career began with a lie about Barack Obama’s birthplace, and he has lied about his business, his wealth, his inauguration crowd size, his defeat in the 2020 election and so much more. A CNN tally of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods during one part of his first term found that he averaged eight false claims per day. Many people are so accustomed to his lies that they hardly notice them anymore.
Yet lying about war is uniquely corrosive. When a president signals that the truth does not matter in wartime, he encourages his cabinet and his generals to mislead the country and one another about how the war is going. He creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common. He makes it harder to win by hiding the realities of conflict and by making allies wary of joining the fight. Ultimately, he undermines American values and interests.
There is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war. Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat — to its own people, to its region and to global stability. Mr. Trump could make a fact-based argument for confronting the regime now, especially to prevent it from menacing its neighbors and, above all, from developing a nuclear weapon. We are skeptical, but we acknowledge that there is a case to be made.
Mr. Trump is not making it. Instead, he has lied about the reasons for the war and about its progress, in an apparent attempt to disguise his poor planning and the war’s questionable basis.
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The president was only a few minutes into his Feb. 28 announcement of the start of the conflict when he offered an obviously contradictory rationale for it. He repeated his claim that American attacks last June “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program while also citing that program as a reason to go to war. The claim of obliteration is false: Iran retains about 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium, potentially enough for 10 warheads.
The lies have continued since then. Days later, Mr. Trump said the U.S. military had a “virtually unlimited supply” of high-end munitions. The Pentagon nevertheless has had to withdraw weapons from South Korea to sustain its efforts in the Middle East. He has also asserted that “nobody” believed Iran would retaliate by attacking Arab countries. On Monday, he said that “no, the greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit” neighboring countries. In truth, some experts had warned of precisely this scenario.
In another instance, Mr. Trump has used false information to continue his alarming penchant to portray people who contradict him as un-American. Last weekend, he posted an allegation that “Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media” had spread fake videos of an American aircraft burning in the ocean. The White House has offered no examples of American media outlets having done so. Instead, several debunked fake online videos, CNN reported. Nonetheless, Mr. Trump wrote that “you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!”
A shocking falsehood came on March 7, when Mr. Trump claimed in his typically offhand way that a strike on an elementary school in the town of Minab during the first hours of the war “was done by Iran.” The attack killed at least 175 people, most of them children. The U.S. military has conducted an investigation and preliminarily concludedthat an American missile mistakenly hit the school. The military deserves credit for its honesty. The commander in chief, however, still has not retracted his statement.
This pattern is an echo of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, when small lies grew into a bigger ones, such as the covered-up massacres in My Lai and Haditha. The consequences of those untruths were long-lasting. Americans’ faith in government never recovered from the deceptions of Vietnam. And the second Iraq war, which George W. Bush’s administration sold on the grounds of fictitious weapons of mass destruction, represents the start of our cynical modern political era. Since that war began in 2003, every Gallup poll asking about the country’s direction has shown that most Americans are dissatisfied with it.
Lies about war also make it harder to achieve victory: The more one spreads falsehoods, the less one feels obliged to face reality. In retrospect, Americans understand that their leaders’ refusal to confront the truth in Iraq and Vietnam led to strategic errors. The pattern is repeating. Before Mr. Trump began this war, he brushed aside warnings from his top military adviser that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz to traffic it does not approve. The global economy is now dealing with the consequences of his overconfidence.
He may yet learn a more personal lesson about lying in war. Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush will forever be remembered as having misled Americans about U.S. military action. They learned that falsehoods can boomerang on the leaders who tell them.
Starting a war is the most serious action that a political leader can take. It ends lives and can change history. The decisions that guide war must be based in reality, and presidents owe American service members and their families the truth about why they are being asked to fight. Whatever short-term gain Mr. Trump thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world.
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom."
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