The accused Iranian hacking group who intercepted Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign emails have finally found some success in getting their stolen material published after initially failing to interest the mainstream media.
In recent weeks, the hackers began peddling Trump emails more widely to one Democratic political operative, who has posted a trove of material to the website of his political action committee, American Muckrakers, and to independent journalists, at least one of whom posted them on the writing platform Substack.
The latest material shows Trump campaign communications with external advisers and other allies, discussing a range of topics leading up to the 2024 election.
The hackers’ activities tracked by Reuters provide a rare glimpse into the operations of an election interference effort. They also demonstrate Iran remains determined to meddle in elections despite a September US Justice Department indictment accusing the leakers of working for Tehran and using a fake persona.
The indictment alleged that an Iranian-government linked hacking group, known as Mint Sandstorm or APT42, compromised multiple Trump campaign staffers between May and June by stealing their passwords.
In a Homeland Security advisory published earlier this month, the agency warned that the hackers continue to target campaign staff. If found guilty, they face prison time and fines.
The Department of Justice indictment said the leakers were three Iranian hackers working with Iran’s Basij paramilitary force whose voluntary members help the regime to enforce its strict rules and to project influence.
Attempts to reach the hackers identified by name in the indictment via email and text message were unsuccessful.
In conversations with Reuters, the leakers — who collectively use the fake persona “Robert” — did not directly address the US allegations, with one saying “Do you really expect me to answer?!”
“Robert” is the same fake persona referred to in the US indictment, according to FBI emails sent to journalists and reviewed by Reuters.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in a statement that reports of the country’s involvement in hacking against the US election were “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible,” adding that it “categorically repudiates such accusations”.
The FBI, which is investigating Iran’s hacking activity against both presidential campaigns in this election, declined to comment.
David Wheeler, the founder of American Muckrakers, said the documents he shared were authentic and in the public interest. Wheeler said his goal was to “expose how desperate the Trump campaign is to try to win” and to provide the public with factual information. He declined to discuss the material’s origin.
Without making any specific references, the Trump campaign said earlier this month that Iran’s hacking operation was “intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our democratic process,” adding any journalists reprinting the stolen documents “are doing the bidding of America’s enemies”.
In 2016, Trump took a different position when he encouraged Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton’s emails and provide them to the press.
Leak operation
The leak operation started around July when an anonymous email account, noswamp@aol.com , began communicating with reporters at several media outlets, using the Robert moniker, according to two people familiar with the matter.
They initially contacted Politico, The Washington Post and The New York Times, promising damning internal information about the Trump campaign.
In early September, the accused Iranian hackers used a second email address, bobibobi.007@aol.com , in a fresh round of overtures, including to Reuters and at least two other news outlets, the two people familiar with the matter, said.
At the time, they offered research compiled with public information by the Trump campaign into Republican politicians JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum, all of whom were under consideration as Trump’s running mate.
The vice presidential reports were authentic, a person familiar with the Trump campaign told Reuters. Neither Politico, The Washington Post, The New York Times, nor Reuters published stories based on the reports.
New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha, said the newspaper only published articles based on hacked material “if we find newsworthy information in the materials and can verify them”.
In an email, “The Washington Post” referred Reuters to past comments made by its executive editor, Matt Murray, who said the episode reflected the fact that news organizations “aren’t going to snap at any hack” provided to them.
A spokesperson for Politico said the origin of the documents was more newsworthy than the leaked material.
Reuters did not publish this material because the news agency did not believe it was newsworthy, a spokesperson said.
Both AOL email accounts identified by Reuters were taken offline in September by its owner Yahoo, which worked with the FBI before the indictment to trace them to the Iranian hacker group, according to two people familiar with the investigation.
Yahoo did not respond to a request for comment.
Before losing email access, Robert suggested reporters might need an alternate contact and offered a telephone number on the encrypted chat application Signal.
Signal, which is more difficult to monitor by law enforcement, did not return messages seeking comment.
Some senior US intelligence and law enforcement officials have said that Iran’s interference efforts this election cycle are focused on denigrating Trump as they hold him responsible for the 2020 American drone assassination of former Iranian military general Qassem Soleimani.
Thus far, the already-published leaks do not appear to have changed the public dynamics of the Trump campaign.
Muckrakers
On September 26, North Carolina-based American Muckrakers began publishing internal Trump campaign emails. Active since 2021, the PAC has a history of publicizing unflattering material about high-profile Republicans.
According to public disclosure reports, it is funded through individual, small-dollar donors from around the country.
On its website, American Muckrakers said the leaks came from “a source,” but, ahead of the publication last month, the group publicly asked Robert to get in touch. “HACKER ROBERT, WHY THE F DO YOU KEEP SENDING THE TRUMP INFORMATION TO CORPORATE MEDIA?” the group said in a post to X.
“Send it to us and we’ll get it out.”
When asked whether his source was the alleged Iranian persona Robert, Wheeler said “that is confidential” and that he had “no confirmation of the source’s location.”
He also declined to comment on whether the FBI had warned him that the communication was the product of a foreign influence operation.
In one example, Muckrakers published material on October 4 purporting to show an unspecified financial arrangement with lawyers representing former Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr and Trump. RFK Jr’s attorney Scott Street, said in an email to Reuters he could not speak publicly about the incident.
Reuters confirmed the authenticity of the material.
Muckrakers subsequently published documents from Robert about two high-profile races. It included alleged campaign communication about North Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson and Florida Republican representative Anna Paulina Luna, both of whom were endorsed by Trump.
The exchange about Robinson concerned an attempt by Republican adviser W Kirk Bell, to seek guidance from the Trump camp after the scandal over comments attributed to Robinson on a pornographic forum. Robinson has previously denied the comments.
The other message came from a Republican adviser sharing information with the campaign about Luna’s personal life.
Robinson and Luna’s campaigns did not return messages seeking comment.
One of the few journalists contacted by Robert who did publish material was independent national security reporter Ken Klippenstein, who posted the vice presidential research documents to Substack late last month.
Robert confirmed to Reuters that they gave the material to Klippenstein.
Substack did not respond to a question about its policies concerning hacked material.
After the story, Klippenstein said FBI agents contacted him over his communication with Robert, warning that they were part of a “foreign malign influence operation”.
In a post, Klippenstein said the material was newsworthy and he chose to publish it because he believed the news media should not be a “gatekeeper of what the public should know.”
A spokesperson for Reuters, which received similar notifications from the FBI, said, “We cannot comment on our interactions, if any, with law enforcement.” An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on its media notification effort.
Wheeler said he had new leaks in store “soon” and that he would continue to publish similar documents as long as they were “authentic and relevant.”
As the US presidential election approaches, the most recent polls show former President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris in the race, with the economy playing a role in voters’ decisions.
A poll released on Thursday by CNBC’sAll-America Economic Survey showed that Trump leading Harris 48 per cent to 46pc nationally, with a margin of error of 3.1pc.
In the seven battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Trump leads Harris 48pc to 47pc, with a margin of error of 4pc for that portion of the poll.
This survey highlighted that many voters view the economy as the most important issue, with a significant number trusting Trump to handle it better than Harris.
According to the CNBC survey, 42pc of voters believe they would be better off financially if Trump is elected, compared to 24pc for Harris.
Around 29pc felt their financial situation would remain the same no matter who wins.
Similarly, a poll conducted by The Financial Times in collaboration with the University of Michigan Ross School of Business yielded similar findings. It revealed that 44pc of voters trusted Trump more on economic issues, while 43pc supported Harris.
According to the poll, when asked who would help them financially, 45pc chose Trump, while 37pc picked Harris.
Meanwhile, RealClearPolitics, which tracks national and regional polls, found Harris leading by 0.3 percentage points nationwide. But, Trump holds a 0.9-point lead in the seven swing states.
Another recent Wall Street Journal survey, released on Wednesday, found Trump two percentage points ahead of Harris nationally. The poll showed Trump with 47pc and Harris with 45pc.
NOT so long ago, America’s president effectively enjoyed the mantle of world leadership. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 had elevated the US to the status of sole global superpower, a position it enjoyed for the best part of two decades.
Today, as China and many other countries openly challenge US-led Western hegemony, the US presidential election reads like a cautionary tale about the deep crisis of liberal politics and the so-called ‘rules-based international order’.
Four years ago, Joe Biden’s defeat of Donald Trump was hailed as a return to ‘normal’ and the terminal demise of the far right. In 2024, Trumpism is not only alive and well but the man himself is poised to make yet another victorious bid for the White House.
Trump may still lose, of course, but only someone living in a fool’s paradise can argue that the liberal order is thriving. Whilst global capitalism continues to generate huge inequalities, ecological devastation and imperialist wars, the liberal centre protects the elephant in the room, thus creating the conditions for the far right to thrive by directing the rage of disillusioned masses towards paper tigers.
Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, only came into the race three months ago. Her boss Biden, unable to contain the Trumpian wave, had focused, instead, on backing Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, thus earning the moniker ‘Genocide Joe’. Harris has made it clear that her foreign policy vision is largely the same as Biden’s, and while the ongoing carnage in Palestine and Lebanon will not determine the election, it is already clear that large numbers of traditionally Democratic voters will either abstain or even cast their vote for Trump to punish Biden and Harris.
The downward spiral will intensify no matter who wins the US polls.
On the domestic front, America’s economy, like most so-called advanced capitalist countries, continues to be mired in a low-growth trap, which can be traced back to the global financial crisis of 2007-09, and even further to the 1970s. Those at the top of the tree, especially Wall Street, munitions, agribusiness and a host of other global monopolies, continue to make a killing, but the majority of working people have been seeing their living standards stagnate or drop for decades.
Trump explains all of this by blaming immigrants and all sorts of governmental welfare programmes. His contemporaries across the Western world do the same. But even as the far right spews relentless hate, Harris and mainstream liberals in the US and beyond will not cut big capital down to size.
The downward spiral will intensify no matter who wins the upcoming US presidential election, mainstream politics in many countries effectively reduced to a battle between the liberal centre (read: centre right) and far right. This crisis of liberal politics is indeed global, and while there is some distinctiveness to what is happening in non-Western postcolonial countries like ours, the broad trajectories are quite similar.
Here also entrenched bourgeois parties like the PML-N and PPP have demonstrated time and again that they are unwilling to break with the establishment-dominated status quo. The PTI too acquired power at the behest of the establishment but it is telling that so many young people continued to support it even after things soured between Imran Khan and the army top brass. The PML-N, PPP and other usual suspects offer no respite from the ravages of the system, and in fact, are reinforcing Pakistan’s militarised political economy. The PTI possesses only a mythical hero with a notional magic wand, but for many, this is much better than accepting the mediocrity and collaborationism of the Sharifs and Bhuttos.
In America, Pakistan and beyond, there is only one way out of this cul de sac — to acknowledge that global capitalism and various related manifestations of (liberal) imperialism are exacerbating material deprivations and hateful ideologies. Only a left-wing politics with a genuinely popular social base can break the cycle. It is cruel irony that Trump (and prominent supporters of his like Elon Musk) call Harris and the Democrats ‘radical leftists’, even though the latter are anything but.
Around the time that Trump first came to prominence, mainstream politicians with a genuinely leftist pedigree like Bernie Sanders were also contending to win over the support of working people. In a similar vein, Jeremy Corbyn was staking a claim to moving the British Labour Party meaningfully towards the left. The Sanders-Corbyn wave, and many others like it, was decisively defeated.
Both in the Western world and here at home, left-progressive forces must regroup and try again. Else we will remain at the mercy of military establishments, plutocrats and the far right.
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump admires German dictator Adolf Hitler and would like to rule like an authoritarian if he returned to the White House, his former White House chief of staff said in a series of interviews with the New York Times.
In interviews published on Tuesday, John Kelly quoted the former US president as having told him Hitler “did some good things”.
Kelly has made critical comments about Trump in previous interviews. He is not privy to internal discussions inside Trump’s orbit and so cannot speak with certainty about how Trump will govern.
“Donald Trump meets the definition of a fascist and prefers the dictator approach to government,” the former aide said.
Kelly told the Times that Trump had no understanding of the US constitution or the concept of the rule of law. Trump’s team denied the accounts.
Democratic presidential candidate says the reported remarks are troubling
“He certainly prefers the dictator approach to government,” Kelly said, according to the newspaper.
“Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”
John Kelly, a retired US Marine Corps general, served as Trump’s White House chief of staff between 2017 and 2019. Since Kelly left the White House, the two men’s relationship has soured and both are open about their disdain for each other.
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said in a statement that Kelly “has totally beclowned himself with these debunked stories”.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, said on Wednesday that the reported remarks were troubling.
“It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who is responsible for the deaths of six million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Americans,” she told reporters outside her official residence.
“In a second term, people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guard rails against his (Trump’s) propensities and his actions,” Kamala Harris said.
Harris has seized on comments Trump made during a Fox News event in December when he said that if he won the 2024 election he would be a dictator, but only on “Day One”, to close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling.
Kamala Harris and fellow Democrats argue that Trump is a threat to democracy, something Trump denies and has said is true of the Democratic candidate.
Retired US army brigadier general, Republican Steve Anderson, said on a call with reporters organised by the Harris campaign that he was disappointed Kelly did not go as far as endorsing Harris after his criticism of Trump.
In the Times interview, Kelly stressed that as a former military officer he was not endorsing any candidate.
The government in London on Wednesday played down claims of meddling in the US Election, after Donald Trump’s team charged that having members of Britain’s ruling Labour Party work for his opponent Kamala Harris’s campaign was “blatant foreign interference”.
Trump’s legal team filed an official complaint to the US Federal Election Commission, alleging that the “British Labour Party made, and the (Kamala) Harris campaign accepted, illegal foreign national contributions”.
The submission cited media reports that Labour officials, including the prime minister’s new chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, travelled to the United States to advise the Democratic party campaign.
They also included a now-deleted LinkedIn post by Labour Director of Operations Sofia Patel calling for volunteers to travel to North Carolina, and offering to “sort out your housing”.
Foreign nationals are allowed to volunteer in US elections but may not be compensated.
The claim from Trump’s team claim blew up as Starmer jetted to a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) on the Pacific island of Samoa, prompting a mid-air rebuttal.
Starmer insisted it was normal for volunteers to campaign and that he had established “a good relationship” with Trump, whom he met for dinner over two hours at his Trump Tower residence in New York last month.
“The Labour Party has volunteers who have gone over (to the United States) pretty much every election,” he told reporters travelling with him. “They’re doing it in their spare time, they’re doing it as volunteers, they’re staying, I think, with other volunteers over there.
“That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, that’s what they’re doing in this election and that’s really straightforward.”
Starmer also denied suggestions that it could damage relations with the UK’s most important ally should Republican party candidate Trump beat Harris and secure a return to the White House after next month’s vote.
Other senior Labour ministers tried to smooth over any cracks. Defence Secretary John Healey also insisted that any Labour members were helping in a personal capacity and that had no bearing on formal bilateral ties.
“We will work with whoever the American people elects,” he told a joint news conference with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius in London. However, Healey — an MP for more than 25 years — indicated that Trump’s team was playing politics. “This (the filing to the FEC) is in the middle of an election campaign,” he noted.
‘This is war’
How Starmer’s centre-left government will deal with a second Trump presidency has long been a source of speculation in the UK, given the party’s vocal criticisms of him when Labour was in opposition.
David Lammy, who is now Foreign Secretary, called Trump a “woman-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” in a 2018 article for Time magazine but since his appointment in July has trod a more diplomatic line.
Both Boris Johnson and his predecessor as prime minister for the previous right-wing Conservative administrations have been critical of Trump, only to temper their views when he came to power.
Trump himself waded into the British election campaign in 2019 by launching a stinging attack on Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader, the veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn, saying he would be “bad” for the country.
He also urged Johnson to unite with his friend, the eurosceptic hardliner Nigel Farage, to deliver Britain’s departure from the European Union, prompting Corbyn to accuse him of interference.
In the event, Corbyn lost spectacularly and Johnson won, in part after Farage agreed not to run candidates from his Brexit Party in key seats needed by the Tories.
Adding to the latest row is Trump supporter Elon Musk, who wrote on his X site on Tuesday “This is war” after the Centre for Countering Digital Hate campaign group suggested one of its objectives was “to kill Musk’s Twitter” —X’s former name.
The group and think-tank is led by a former Labour adviser and McSweeney is a former director.
The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the alleged mastermind of last year’s October 7 attack to which Israel has retaliated with a brutal military offensive in the Gaza Strip, marked a major triumph for Tel Aviv.
But Israeli leaders are also seeking to lock in strategic gains that go beyond military victories — to reshape the regional landscape in Israel’s favour and shield its borders from any future attacks, sources familiar with their thinking say.
With US elections approaching, Israel is rushing to inflict maximum damage on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and seizing the moment to carve out de facto buffer zones in a bid to create an irreversible reality before a new president takes office in January, eight sources told Reuters.
By intensifying its military operations against Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel wants to ensure that its enemies and their alleged chief patron, Iran, don’t regroup and threaten Israeli citizens again, according to Western diplomats, Lebanese and Israeli officials, and other regional sources.
US President Joe Biden is expected to use Sinwar’s killing to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wind down the conflict in Gaza. However, the Israeli leader may prefer to wait out the end of Biden’s term and take his chances with the next president, whether the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, or Republican rival Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu has had close ties.
Before considering any ceasefire agreements, Israel is accelerating its military campaign to push Hezbollah away from its northern border while thrusting into Gaza’s densely packed Jabalia refugee camp in what Palestinians and UN agencies fear could be an attempt to seal off northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave.
It is also planning a response to a ballistic missile barrage carried out by Iran on October 1, its second direct attack on Israel in six months.
“There is a new landscape, a new geopolitical change in the region,” said David Schenker, a former US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank.
Before Hamas’ attack on Oct 7, 2023, Israel was “willing to tolerate a high-level threat”, responding to rocket fire from the Palestinian group and other foes with limited strikes, Schenker said. “No longer.”
“This time Israel is fighting on many fronts. It’s Hamas; it’s Hezbollah, and Iran is coming soon,” he said.
Hamas-led fighters killed around 1,200 people and seized more than 250 hostages during the assault in southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health authorities in the enclave.
Netanyahu said in a statement on Thursday that Sinwar’s death “settled the score”, but he warned that the Gaza offensive would continue with full force until Israel’s hostages were returned.
His office said it had nothing further to add.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sinwar’s elimination marked a “great achievement” in efforts to destroy Hamas’ military apparatus, but added there were other commanders in Gaza.
On Friday, Hamas’ deputy leader in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, confirmed Sinwar’s death and said Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israeli “aggression” ended and its forces withdrew.
Israeli forces have inflicted other big blows on its enemies.
A series of high-profile strikes wiped out senior leaders including Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, head of its military wing, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and its top military commander, Fuad Shukr.
Israel also claims to have eliminated thousands of the groups’ fighters, captured deep tunnel networks and severely depleted their weapons arsenals.
In September, thousands of booby-trapped communications devices used by Hezbollah members were detonated — an attack for which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
But Israel’s ambitions are broader than short-term military victories, however significant, the sources who spoke to Reuters said.
Broader ambition
A ground offensive launched in Lebanon over the past month aims to drive Hezbollah back around 30 km (20 miles) from its northern border, to behind the Litani River, and ensure the Shia group is fully disarmed after 30 years of military support from Iran.
By doing so, Israeli officials argue they are enforcing a United Nations resolution intended to keep peace in the area and protect its residents from cross-border attacks.
Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted after Israel’s last conflict with Hezbollah in 2006 and repeatedly violated by both sides, authorised a peacekeeping mission known as the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (Unifil) to help Lebanon’s army keep the area south of the river free of weapons and armed personnel other than those of the Lebanese state.
Israel complains the two forces never gained control of the area from Hezbollah, long regarded as Lebanon’s most potent military force.
Hezbollah has resisted disarming, citing the need to defend Lebanon from Israel. Since last year, its fighters have used the border strip as a base for near-daily exchanges of fire with Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli officials say the only way to enforce Resolution 1701, and ensure the safe return of some 60,000 residents evacuated from northern Israel, is through military action.
“At the moment, diplomacy is not enough,” an Israeli diplomatic source told Reuters.
Lebanese authorities say the offensive against Hezbollah has displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon, mostly members of the Shia community from which Hezbollah draws support.
Israel has also faced international criticism over incidents in which its forces fired at UN peacekeepers’ posts, injuring several of them.
A Lebanese security official and a diplomat familiar with the situation in southern Lebanon said it appeared that Israel wanted to drive Unifil from the area along with Hezbollah.
The security official said Israeli forces were fighting for access to strategic overlook points, which are where Unifil bases are located.
“Their goal is to clean up this buffer zone,” the diplomat said.
This could take a few weeks, if Israel aims to clear Hezbollah positions and infrastructure from a narrow band of Lebanese territory along the border, they said, but anything deeper would take much longer at the current pace.
On Monday, Netanyahu rejected accusations that Israeli troops were deliberately targeting Unifil’s peacekeepers but said the best way to assure their safety was to heed requests to temporarily withdraw from combat zones. Israel’s military says Hezbollah has been operating from sites within and adjacent to Unifil posts for years.
The UN has said its peacekeepers will not leave their positions in southern Lebanon.
“We have to stand against … every suggestion that if resolution 1701 was not implemented it’s because Unifil did not implement, which was never its mandate,” UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix told reporters on Monday, stressing Unifil has a supporting role.
UN, US and other diplomatic envoys agree that reviving the resolution could provide the basis for a cessation of hostilities, but better implementation and enforcement mechanisms are needed.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon told Reuters on Monday that he wanted to see “a more robust mandate for Unifil to deter Hezbollah”.
Any changes to the mandate would have to be authorised by the 15-member Security Council, and diplomats said there were no such discussions at the moment.
Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has said the government is prepared to deploy troops to enforce Resolution 1701 as soon as a truce takes hold. The United States and France have said that strengthening Lebanon’s army would be crucial to this endeavour.
Buy-in from Iran will also be needed, said the diplomat familiar with the situation in southern Lebanon. But they said Israel did not appear ready to start negotiating any truces.
“They want to push their advantage, to be in an even stronger position to negotiate,” the diplomat said.
Purging borders
Israel informed several Arab states last year that it also wanted to carve out a buffer zone on the Palestinian side of Gaza’s border. But it remains unclear how deep Israel would like it to be or how it would be enforced after the conflict ends.
Israel’s ongoing offensive in Jabalia, an area that endured heavy bombardments early in the war, has raised concerns among Palestinians and UN agencies that Israel wants to clear residents from northern Gaza. The Israeli military denies this and says it is trying to stop Hamas fighters from regrouping for more attacks.
In May, Israeli forces moved into the so-called Philadelphi corridor, a narrow strip running along Gaza’s southern frontier with Egypt, giving Israel effective control over all of the Palestinian territory’s land borders.
Israel has said it will not agree to a permanent ceasefire without guarantees that whoever runs Gaza after the conflict ends will be able to prevent the corridor from being used to smuggle weapons and supplies to Hamas.
Iran is also in Israel’s crosshairs following the recent missile attack, launched in retaliation for Israeli strikes against Iran and its proxies.
The Middle East has been on edge about Israel’s response, worried that it could disrupt oil markets and ignite a full-scale conflict between the arch-enemies.
Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said last week the response would be “lethal, precise, and, above all, unexpected”, although he has also said Israel was not looking to open new fronts. Iran has warned repeatedly that it will not hesitate to take military action again if Israel retaliates.
The US, Israel’s chief weapons supplier, has supported campaigns against allegedly Iran-backed targets like Hezbollah and Hamas, which it has designated foreign terrorist organisations. But tensions have grown as US officials have tried to persuade Israel to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza, curb airstrikes on residential areas and negotiate ceasefires.
Biden’s attempts to engage with Iran through indirect talks about restoring a 2015 nuclear deal and his opposition to any strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have also been points of tension. Israel views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat.
Some diplomats suspect Netanyahu is also considering how a ceasefire might affect the election. Any breakthrough could help Harris, when Netanyahu would prefer to deal with Trump, whose hardline views on Israel, Palestinians and Iran align more closely with his own, they say.
“There is no reason for Netanyahu to stop his wars before the American elections,” said Marwan al-Muasher, Jordan’s former foreign minister, now vice president for studies at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He’s not going to give Harris any credit or gift before the polls.”
For now, Netanyahu appears determined to redraw the map around Israel in his favour by purging its enemies from its borders.
“He put his win in his pocket and is pursuing his wars and imposing a new (regional) status quo,” said the Lebanese political official.
Header image: Israeli military vehicles drive through the so-called Philadelphi corridor in southern Gaza, on Sept 13, 2024. Photographs were reviewed by the IDF as part of the conditions of the embed. No photos were removed. — Reuters/File
WASHINGTON: The Pakistan Political Action Committee (Pakistan PAC) has endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential election, emphasising his potential to improve US-Pakistan relations and support democratic principles in Pakistan.
“We are proud to endorse Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election,” the committee announced on Friday.
“After extensive meetings with the Trump and Harris campaigns, we believe the former president is the candidate who will improve US-Pakistan relations and promote true democracy in Pakistan,” it added.
In the United States, a Political Action Committee (PAC) is a tax-exempt organisation that gathers campaign contributions from its members and directs those funds to support or oppose political candidates.
The committee criticised the Biden administration’s stance on political issues in Pakistan, stating that it “has taken no action to stop political repression in Pakistan”. In response, allies of Pakistan PAC in Congress have taken action, with a bipartisan group sending a letter to the Biden administration, urging immediate measures.
Meanwhile, a group of leading Muslim American figures in the US national security sphere has voiced its support for the Democratic ticket in the upcoming election.
The Pakistani-American Public Affairs Committee (PAKPAC USA) endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for the November 5 US elections on Friday, citing an alleged “legislative coup” by the Pakistani government under the Biden administration that led to the ousting of jailed PTI founder Imran Khan.
In the US, a PAC refers to an organisation that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to support or oppose candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation.
PAKPAC USA, which promotes Pakistan’s interests in the US Congress, claims it aims to strengthen democracy in Pakistan and does not support or oppose any political party or group.
Imran was removed from office in 2022 after the opposition, according to to Article 95 of the Constitution, moved a successful no-confidence motion against him.
The former premier has repeatedly claimed that his government was sent packing and PM Shehbaz’s regime was subsequently “imposed” on the country as part of a “conspiracy” hatched by the US against his insistence on having an independent foreign policy.
According to a statement issued by PAKPAC on the X platform, the committee was “proud to endorse former president Donald Trump” for the US elections next month.
“We believe the former president is the candidate who will improve US-Pakistan relations, secure the release of all wrongfully imprisoned political prisoners in Pakistan, and work towards reversal of Pakistan’s dangerous democratic backsliding,” the statement said.
It added that the former US president had met with the ex-premier Imran during his visit to the US, fostering dialogue between the two nations.
During Trump’s presidency, it continued, administration officials travelled to Pakistan, engaging in direct talks with Pakistani ministers, alleging that such efforts were seen under the Biden/Harris administration.
It alleged that, under US President Biden, “the Pakistani government was pushed into a legislative coup against the popular and democratically elected” premier Imran.
“And the administration has done nothing since to secure the release of the former prime minister and other political prisoners,” it said, adding that international observers and state department officials have acknowledged election irregularities.
“After tireless discussions with the Harris campaign, we fear these policies would persist under a Harris presidency, further straining relations between our two nations,” it said.
“We believe that Trump’s leadership will promote stronger diplomatic and economic ties, and ensure that Pakistani-American interests are represented at the highest levels of government,” it added.
In 2022, the US State Department denied Imran’s claim that Washington was behind an alleged conspiracy to overthrow his government. According to Khan, Donald Lu, the Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs in the Department of State, had allegedly threatened a regime change in Pakistan.
In response to the allegations, US’s Deputy State Department Spokesperson Jalina Porter said, “Let me just say very bluntly there is absolutely no truth to these allegations.”
Later, the US State Department called Imran’s arrest in the Toshakhana case “Pakistan’s internal matter” and a spokesperson from the department stated, “We call for the respect of democratic principles and the rule of law in Pakistan, as we do around the world.”
Earlier this year, US Senator Chuck Schumer warned regarding Imran Khan’s safety when speaking to Pakistani Ambassador Masood Khan, according to The Intercept. He had previously said that the former PM’s anti-American statements worsened tensions between the two countries stating, “Your former prime minister did not talk positive about the US,” Geo News reported.
A United States man with a loaded handgun, a shotgun and a high-capacity magazine was arrested outside of the site where former president Donald Trump addressed supporters, police announced on Sunday.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s office identified the man who was arrested Saturday as Vem Miller, a 49-year-old resident of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Miller was arrested at a checkpoint “without incident” and booked into the John J Benoit Detention Centre for possession of a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine for the handgun.
Police said the incident did not impact Trump’s safety, nor the safety of rallygoers at the Coachella, California venue.
Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, who attended Saturday’s rally with his family, told reporters that Miller belonged to the far-right anti-government “Sovereign Citizen” movement. The fringe group denies that any government has authority over them without their explicit consent.
Bianco maintained that sheriff’s deputies prevented a third assassination attempt on the former president.
“I truly do believe that we prevented another assassination attempt, and it was solely by our effort of keeping those types of people out,” Bianco said. “We know that we prevented something bad from happening. And it’s irrelevant what that bad was going to be.”
He did not provide any information on a potential motive.
Multiple passports and driver’s licences were found in Miller’s car when he was stopped at a checkpoint after deputies identified “homemade” licence plates on his car that are typically associated with the sovereign citizen movement, according to Bianco.
A deputy “noticed that the interior of the vehicle was in quite disarray” after the initial stop, he added. Authorities said ammunition for both the handgun and shotgun were found inside the black SUV, which was not registered.
Miller has since been released from custody ahead of trial in state court on the firearms charges. Bianco said any additional charges will be left to federal authorities.
The US Attorney’s Office, US Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a joint statement in which they said they were aware of Saturday’s arrest, and that “while no federal arrest has been made at this time, the investigation is ongoing”.
Law enforcement has dramatically increased security at Trump’s rallies ahead of November’s election after Trump was shot and lightly wounded while addressing supporters in rural Pennsylvania in July.
A second attempt on his life unfolded in September when authorities apprehended a man outside of his West Palm Beach, Florida golf course that they say camped outside of the facility for 12 hours before Secret Service officers found him with a long rifle poking through a fence on the course’s perimeter.
The world’s total public debt is set to exceed $100 trillion this year for the first time, and may grow more quickly than forecast as political sentiment favors higher spending and slow growth amplifies borrowing needs and costs, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday.
The IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor report showed global public debt will reach 93 per cent of global gross domestic product by the end of 2024 and approach 100pc by 2030. That would exceed its 99pc peak during COVID-19. It would also be up 10 percentage points from 2019, before the pandemic exploded government spending.
Released a week before the IMF and World Bank hold annual meetings in Washington, the Fiscal Monitor said there are good reasons to believe future debt levels could be well higher than currently projected, including a desire to spend more in the US, the world’s largest economy.
“Fiscal policy uncertainty has increased, and political red lines on taxation have become more entrenched,” the IMF said in the report. “Spending pressures to address green transitions, population aging, security concerns, and long-standing development challenges are mounting.”
Campaign spending promises
The IMF’s concerns about rising debt levels comes three weeks before a US presidential election in which both candidates have promised new tax breaks and spending that could add trillions of dollars to federal deficits.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s tax cut plans would add some $7.5 trillion in new debt over 10 years, more than twice the $3.5 trillion added from the plans of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, according to the central estimates the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a budget think-tank.
The report finds that debt projections tend to underestimate actual outcomes by sizeable margins, with realised debt to GDP ratios five years ahead averaging 10pc higher than originally forecast.
And debt could be further increased significantly by weak growth, tighter financing conditions and greater fiscal and monetary policy uncertainty in systemically important economies such as the US and China.
The report includes a “severely adverse scenario” involving these factors that shows global public debt could reach 115pc in just three years, 20 percentage points higher than currently projected.
Spending brakes
The IMF repeated its calls for more fiscal consolidation, saying the current environment with solid growth and low unemployment was an opportune time to do so. But it said current efforts, averaging 1pc of GDP over the six years from 2023 to 2029, are insufficient to reduce or stabilise debts with a high probability.
A cumulative tightening of 3.8pc would be needed to achieve this goal, but in the US, China, and other countries where of GDP is not forecast to stabilise, substantially greater fiscal tightening would be needed.
The US this month is expected report a fiscal 2024 deficit of about $1.8 trillion, or more than 6.5pc of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
It said the US and other countries where debt is projected to keep growing, including Brazil, Britain, France, Italy and South Africa, could face costly consequences.
“Postponing adjustment will only mean that a larger correction is needed eventually, and waiting can also be risky, because past experience shows that high debt and lack of credible fiscal plans can trigger adverse market reactions and can limit the room that countries have to deal with future shocks,” said Era Dabla-Norris, the IMF’s deputy fiscal affairs director.
She said cuts in public investment or social spending, tend to have a much larger negative impact on growth, than more poorly targeted subsidies such as for fuel.
Some countries have room to broaden their tax bases and improve the efficiency of tax collections, while others can make their tax systems more progressive by taxing capital gains and income more effectively, Dabla-Norris said.
WASHINGTON: The Arab American Political Action Committee has said it will not endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris or Republican former president Donald Trump citing what it called their “blind support” for Israel in wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Nov 5 US elections will mark the first time AAPAC has chosen not to endorse a candidate since the group’s 1998 inception. It usually endorses Democrats.
Polls show the race between Harris and Trump as tight.
Arab and Muslim Americans overwhelmingly backed President Joe Biden in 2020 but have been vocal opponents of US support for Israel, which has eroded their backing of Democrats.
Trump has historically had low approval from that community due to past statements and his policy of a travel ban targeting Muslim-majority nations when he was in office. Like Harris and Biden, Trump has also been a vocal supporter of Israel.
Analysts said Harris’ chances could be hurt if Arab and Muslim Americans did not vote or voted for a third party. Many from those communities have lost relatives in Gaza and Lebanon and have urged supporters to not vote for Trump or Harris. Some like advocacy group Emgage Action have backed Harris, citing Trump as a bigger threat.
“Both candidates have endorsed genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon,” AAPAC said in a statement on Monday. “We simply cannot give our votes to either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump, who blindly support the criminal Israeli government.”
WASHINGTON: The Arab American Political Action Committee has said it will not endorse Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris or Republican former president Donald Trump citing what it called their “blind support” for Israel in wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Nov 5 US elections will mark the first time AAPAC has chosen not to endorse a candidate since the group’s 1998 inception. It usually endorses Democrats.
Polls show the race between Harris and Trump as tight.
Arab and Muslim Americans overwhelmingly backed President Joe Biden in 2020 but have been vocal opponents of US support for Israel, which has eroded their backing of Democrats.
Trump has historically had low approval from that community due to past statements and his policy of a travel ban targeting Muslim-majority nations when he was in office. Like Harris and Biden, Trump has also been a vocal supporter of Israel.
Analysts said Harris’ chances could be hurt if Arab and Muslim Americans did not vote or voted for a third party. Many from those communities have lost relatives in Gaza and Lebanon and have urged supporters to not vote for Trump or Harris. Some like advocacy group Emgage Action have backed Harris, citing Trump as a bigger threat.
“Both candidates have endorsed genocide in Gaza and war in Lebanon,” AAPAC said in a statement on Monday. “We simply cannot give our votes to either Democrat Kamala Harris or Republican Donald Trump, who blindly support the criminal Israeli government.”
The world’s total public debt is set to exceed $100 trillion this year for the first time, and may grow more quickly than forecast as political sentiment favors higher spending and slow growth amplifies borrowing needs and costs, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Tuesday.
The IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor report showed global public debt will reach 93 per cent of global gross domestic product by the end of 2024 and approach 100pc by 2030. That would exceed its 99pc peak during COVID-19. It would also be up 10 percentage points from 2019, before the pandemic exploded government spending.
Released a week before the IMF and World Bank hold annual meetings in Washington, the Fiscal Monitor said there are good reasons to believe future debt levels could be well higher than currently projected, including a desire to spend more in the US, the world’s largest economy.
“Fiscal policy uncertainty has increased, and political red lines on taxation have become more entrenched,” the IMF said in the report. “Spending pressures to address green transitions, population aging, security concerns, and long-standing development challenges are mounting.”
Campaign spending promises
The IMF’s concerns about rising debt levels comes three weeks before a US presidential election in which both candidates have promised new tax breaks and spending that could add trillions of dollars to federal deficits.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s tax cut plans would add some $7.5 trillion in new debt over 10 years, more than twice the $3.5 trillion added from the plans of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, according to the central estimates the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a budget think-tank.
The report finds that debt projections tend to underestimate actual outcomes by sizeable margins, with realised debt to GDP ratios five years ahead averaging 10pc higher than originally forecast.
And debt could be further increased significantly by weak growth, tighter financing conditions and greater fiscal and monetary policy uncertainty in systemically important economies such as the US and China.
The report includes a “severely adverse scenario” involving these factors that shows global public debt could reach 115pc in just three years, 20 percentage points higher than currently projected.
Spending brakes
The IMF repeated its calls for more fiscal consolidation, saying the current environment with solid growth and low unemployment was an opportune time to do so. But it said current efforts, averaging 1pc of GDP over the six years from 2023 to 2029, are insufficient to reduce or stabilise debts with a high probability.
A cumulative tightening of 3.8pc would be needed to achieve this goal, but in the US, China, and other countries where of GDP is not forecast to stabilise, substantially greater fiscal tightening would be needed.
The US this month is expected report a fiscal 2024 deficit of about $1.8 trillion, or more than 6.5pc of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
It said the US and other countries where debt is projected to keep growing, including Brazil, Britain, France, Italy and South Africa, could face costly consequences.
“Postponing adjustment will only mean that a larger correction is needed eventually, and waiting can also be risky, because past experience shows that high debt and lack of credible fiscal plans can trigger adverse market reactions and can limit the room that countries have to deal with future shocks,” said Era Dabla-Norris, the IMF’s deputy fiscal affairs director.
She said cuts in public investment or social spending, tend to have a much larger negative impact on growth, than more poorly targeted subsidies such as for fuel.
Some countries have room to broaden their tax bases and improve the efficiency of tax collections, while others can make their tax systems more progressive by taxing capital gains and income more effectively, Dabla-Norris said.
A United States man with a loaded handgun, a shotgun and a high-capacity magazine was arrested outside of the site where former president Donald Trump addressed supporters, police announced on Sunday.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s office identified the man who was arrested Saturday as Vem Miller, a 49-year-old resident of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Miller was arrested at a checkpoint “without incident” and booked into the John J Benoit Detention Centre for possession of a loaded firearm and a high-capacity magazine for the handgun.
Police said the incident did not impact Trump’s safety, nor the safety of rallygoers at the Coachella, California venue.
Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, who attended Saturday’s rally with his family, told reporters that Miller belonged to the far-right anti-government “Sovereign Citizen” movement. The fringe group denies that any government has authority over them without their explicit consent.
Bianco maintained that sheriff’s deputies prevented a third assassination attempt on the former president.
“I truly do believe that we prevented another assassination attempt, and it was solely by our effort of keeping those types of people out,” Bianco said. “We know that we prevented something bad from happening. And it’s irrelevant what that bad was going to be.”
He did not provide any information on a potential motive.
Multiple passports and driver’s licences were found in Miller’s car when he was stopped at a checkpoint after deputies identified “homemade” licence plates on his car that are typically associated with the sovereign citizen movement, according to Bianco.
A deputy “noticed that the interior of the vehicle was in quite disarray” after the initial stop, he added. Authorities said ammunition for both the handgun and shotgun were found inside the black SUV, which was not registered.
Miller has since been released from custody ahead of trial in state court on the firearms charges. Bianco said any additional charges will be left to federal authorities.
The US Attorney’s Office, US Secret Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a joint statement in which they said they were aware of Saturday’s arrest, and that “while no federal arrest has been made at this time, the investigation is ongoing”.
Law enforcement has dramatically increased security at Trump’s rallies ahead of November’s election after Trump was shot and lightly wounded while addressing supporters in rural Pennsylvania in July.
A second attempt on his life unfolded in September when authorities apprehended a man outside of his West Palm Beach, Florida golf course that they say camped outside of the facility for 12 hours before Secret Service officers found him with a long rifle poking through a fence on the course’s perimeter.
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump issued a sinister election-related threat to “radical” leftists on Sunday, saying he could support US military force against Americans he described as “the enemy within” if they disrupt the vote next month.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy within, not even the people that have come in and destroyed our country,” the Republican presidential candidate told Fox News show, Sunday Morning Futures, referring to American citizens as opposed to migrants he criticises for flooding the country.
“We have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military,” Trump said. “Because they can’t let that happen.”
The former president was responding to a question about what he expects will transpire on election day, after President Joe Biden said last week that while he believed the vote would be free and fair, he did not know “whether it will be peaceful”.
Donald Trump claimed in his remarks that fellow Americans are “more dangerous than China, Russia and all these countries”. The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris swiftly pushed back on the Republican’s extraordinary remarks.
“I know people have grown numb to Trump over the past decade, but this should be shocking” to Americans, said Ian Sams, a Harris campaign spokesman.
“Donald Trump is suggesting that his fellow Americans are worse enemies than foreign adversaries, and he is saying he would use the military against them,” Sams said.
“Taken with the supreme court’s decision to give presidents immunity (for their official actions as commander in chief), and Trump’s vow to be a ‘dictator on day one’ willing to allow the ‘termination’ of the constitution. Scary stuff,” he added on X.
Battleground states
Kamala Harris and rival Donald Trump campaigned in critical battleground states on Sunday, seeking 11th-hour advantages in a deadlocked White House race, as new polling shows the vice president underperforming among some traditional Democratic voter demographics.
Harris was in North Carolina, a state hard-hit by a hurricane two weeks ago that devastated several communities and left more than 235 people dead across the US Southeast, as she seeks to counter Trump’s claims that federal agencies have done little to help storm victims.
Her boss, President Joe Biden, was in Florida assessing the damage from more recent Hurricane Milton which raked across the southern state and highlighting the federal government’s commitment to rescue and recovery efforts.
With just 23 days before the Nov 5 election, Republican former president Trump and his running mate Senator J D Vance continue to thrust the federal disaster response squarely into the presidential race.
Asked on ABC Sunday talk show “This Week” whether Trump has been accurate in describing the federal response as incompetent, Vance said “it’s to suggest that Americans are feeling left behind by their government, which they are.” Biden took an aerial tour of the devastation in Tampa Bay and nearby St Petersburg, and received a briefing of storm response efforts.
While he described the impact as “cataclysmic” in some neighborhoods, Biden said Florida was fortunate it was not worse. “It’s in moments like this, we come together to take care of each other, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans,” the president said.
Trump was set to appear at his own rally in Arizona, where he will reinforce his border policies and amplify his aggressive — often false — rhetoric about migrants.
A day earlier he held a roundtable with Latino leaders in neighboring Nevada, another swing state with a substantial Hispanic population.
WASHINGTON: Democratic White House candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday, as she aims to put pressure on Republican nominee and ex-president Donald Trump to publish his own health records.
“Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency”.
According to Simmons, her most recent physical exam, conducted in April, was “unremarkable”. Simmons noted that Harris suffers from seasonal allergies and hives, which are managed by non-prescription as well as prescription medications. She is slightly nearsighted and wears contact lenses, the report said.
“She possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander in Chief,” the doctor wrote.
The US vice president’s team seeks to put the spotlight on the physical health and mental acuity of 78-year-old former president Trump, who has so far refused to release any detailed medical information.
Republican Trump became the oldest presidential nominee in US history after 81-year-old President Joe Biden withdrew from the White House race in July.
Biden passed the torch to 59-year-old Kamala Harris after a disastrous debate against Trump raised concerns in the Democratic Party about his own mental sharpness.
Harris’s campaign drew attention to a recent series of articles in the New York Times that raised concerns about the fact that Trump had failed to disclose basic information about his health.
The newspaper also published an analysis of Trump’s language showing that his speeches are increasingly long, “confused” and include vulgarities, a trend seen by experts as a possible sign of cognitive change.
Trump insists he is fully fit, but he has not released any full medical report for his campaign.
In late 2023, Trump released a note from his former White House doctor declaring him to be in “excellent” health, but it was short on details and did not say what tests Trump had undergone when he had a physical in September 2023.
The same doctor, Ronny Jackson, issued a statement in July after Trump’s ear was wounded by an assassin’s bullet at a rally in Pennsylvania, saying the former president was doing well.
Trump, meanwhile, boasted about a cognitive test he had undergone with Jackson while president in 2018, but then immediately flubbed his doctor’s name, calling him “Ronny Johnson”.
