BEIRUT — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a defiant speech on Friday, excoriating protesters as “saboteurs” and insisting the Islamic Republic would “not back down,” even as the country remains in the throes of a full communications blackout amid growing antigovernment demonstrations. Speaking before a crowd that periodically broke into chants of “Death to America,”…
In Springfield, Ill., in 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln delivered a powerful speech decrying the “ravages of mob law” throughout the land. Lincoln warned, in eerily prescient fashion, that the spread of a then-ascendant “mobocratic spirit” threatened to sever the “attachment of the People” to their fellow countrymen and their nation. Lincoln’s opposition to anarchy…
A day after a woman in Minneapolis was killed by an immigration federal agent, clergy leaders and advocates gathered on the steps of the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building to honor her and denounce the killing. Holding printed photos of Renee Nicole Good, the woman shot in the head by a federal immigration agent,…
BEIRUT — Nabbing Nicolás Maduro — a Hollywood-esque operation in President Trump’s telling that saw Delta Force spirit the Venezuelan leader out of Venezuela — shocked U.S. friends and foes alike, with governments from Colombia to China to France sputtering condemnations. Yet perhaps no nation is as alarmed as Iran. Its leaders, facing a fresh bout of…
WASHINGTON — A highly confidential CIA assessment produced at the request of the White House warned President Trump of a wider conflict in Venezuela if he were to support the country’s democratic opposition once its president, Nicolás Maduro, was deposed, a person familiar with the matter told The Times. The assessment was a tightly held CIA product…
WASHINGTON — Venezuela risks “a second strike” if its interim government doesn’t acquiesce to U.S. demands. Cuba is “ready to fall,” and Colombia is “very sick, too.” Iran may get “hit very hard” if its government cracks down on protesters. And Denmark risks U.S. intervention, as well, because “we need Greenland,” President Trump said. In just 37…
MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday again condemned the U.S. capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, criticizing the Trump administration’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America for threatening the stability of the hemisphere. “We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries,” Sheinbaum said in her daily news conference. “The history of…
Like many other Venezuelans, Ramón Arape said the image of ex-President Nicolás Maduro in U.S. custody was a stunning — and welcome — sight. “I confess that I felt a sense of relief when I saw the photo of Maduro in the hands of los gringos,” said Arape, 59, a welder and father of three….
WASHINGTON — Top officials in the Trump administration clarified their position on “running” Venezuela after seizing its president, Nicolás Maduro, over the weekend, pressuring the regime that remains in power there Sunday to acquiesce to U.S. demands on oil access and drug enforcement, or else face further military action. Their goal appears to be the establishment of…
CARACAS, Venezuela — It was about 2 a.m. Saturday Caracas time when the detonations began, lighting up the sullen sky like a post-New Year’s fireworks display. “¡Ya comenzó!” was the recurrent phrase in homes, telephone conversations and social media chats as the latest iteration of U.S. “shock and awe” rocked the Venezuelan capital. “It has begun!” Then…