Author: Michael

U.S. leaders have mismanaged their country’s policy toward Iran for decades. The Eisenhower administration’s willingness in 1953 to join the coup against Iran’s elected president, Mohammad Mosaddegh, that British intelligence masterminded set the tone. Washington not only helped restore the autocratic Shah of Iran to power, but the United States also made that ruler its de facto gendarme in the Middle East and excused his many abuses committed against domestic critics.  When the Islamic revolution finally ousted the Shah in 1979, bilateral relations with Tehran soured even more.

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Named after a mythological one-eyed figure, the USS Cyclops just disappeared.
The U.S. Navy bulk cargo ship departed Barbados for Baltimore on a scheduled nine-day voyage. The vessel—540 feet long and 65 feet wide—carried more than 300 people along with approximately 11,000 tons of manganese ore. The metal is a key ingredient in steelmaking and heavy artillery.
Also Read: How a Frenchman made a World War I artillery shell disappearThe last known sighting of the Cyclops was on March 4, 1918.

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Russia’s autocratic president, Vladimir Putin, is paying his highest price yet for his 4.5-year-long “special military operation” against Ukraine, although some would reasonably argue that it’s ordinary Muscovites who are bearing the literal, physical brunt of the suffering rather than the well-sheltered Russian head of state. Putin’s adversarial counterpart, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, has launched the biggest attack on Russia’s capital in the past two years.

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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has once again capitalized on his attendance at a NATO summit by signing defense cooperation agreements in what is being called the “Drone Deal format” with Estonia and the Netherlands. At the same time, Ukraine has also moved forward with parallel negotiations for similar agreements with Canada and Finland, which are expected to be concluded in the coming weeks.

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On the occasion of its founding, the first NATO Secretary General, Lord Hastings Ismay, summarized the alliance’s Cold War mission as having three primary objectives: 1) keep the Russians out, which meant deterring Soviet (and today Russian) expansionism and aggression, 2) keep the Americans in by securing a permanent US presence in Europe, and 3) keep the Germans down. This meant binding them to democratic Western values and preventing a resurgence of militant nationalism or an independent German rearmament in the post-World War II era.

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The Ukraine War Keeps Intensifying: On the Morning of July 6th (local time), Russia carried out a massive drone/missile attack against the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv as part of an intensified campaign against what Kremlin propagandists call the “terror regime.” The attack resulted in the deaths of seven civilians, with at least 24 more wounded across the region. This, along with the previous missile attack from last week, marks a significant increase in civilian casualties as a result of Russian attacks.

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